"På midsommar lägger vi sju olika blommor under kudden."
Translation:On Midsummer we put seven different flowers under our pillows.
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You are supposed to see your future husband or wife in a dream if you do this. There are all kinds of similar traditional 'spells' like this. If you look into a well during Midsummer night, for instance, you can see your future spouse.
Depends on what you mean by real. It's a little like leaving stockings out for Santa - people do it for tradition, and because their kids really enjoy it, but it's not like adults expect the folklore to be true.
If you're considering this paganism, then it's alive and well all over the world because there are plenty of equivalently odd superstitious beliefs of about the same level of 'worship' throughout the world (see for example the English phrase 'knock on wood', or all the people who believe that breaking a mirror is bad luck).
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Is kudden here acting as a reflexive possessive, …under our pillows, like how e.g. jag tappar telefonen is I drop my telephone? The current literal translation as …under the pillow is a bit unclear in English.
Yes, that's the most likely interpretation. It should probably be the main English version too since that makes more sense.
Not really, saying "under the pillows" makes perfect sense, you would assume its your own, you dont break in to your neighbours house to put flowers under their pillow
It seems that Duo doesn't like "lay" for "lägger" (or at least, it rejected On midsummer we lay seven different flowers under the pillow and accepted On midsummer we put seven different flowers under the pillow). Is there a reason for that, or just a matter of a less-common wording not being added to the database?
Does English need to have the plural pillows here? In my native dutch I could say "our pillow" and everyone would know I'm speaking of the pillows of each of us, and not 1 pillow we all share. That's why I struggle to give the right translation each time this sentence comes up ;)
To my ears at least, it sounds wrong to have "We (something) our pillow"- indeed, it sounds like there's one single pillow that we collectively own.
I agree - we do accept "the pillow", though, since that makes it more obvious that it's just pillows in general, each probably belonging to a separate person.
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The pronunciation of "midsommar" sounds unduly formal. It would normally be pronounced MISS-SOMMAR.
Yeah, it's a problem all over the course. If we could correct it, I'd be happy to.
Technically two, but nobody cares about the second one, so just midsommar will just about always refer to only the first day. :)
Swedish tends to use the definite instead of a possessive if it's obvious that the thing belongs to the person in question.
Do people also run naked in a field during midsummer or is it a Finnish tradition?
No, that's just a regular Finnish weekend. :p
Seriously, though, I've never heard of that in Sweden. Upon googling a bit, it does appear that there are some traditions bound to nudity, but nothing nationwide or widespread.
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Is this a tradition still practiced? Is it Swedish only or in whole Scandinavia? That's so fascinating!