Today is the final day of the long Easter celebrations. It is a public holiday in all the Nordic countries.
Easter Monday is a day spent relaxing by most people. Cultural and sporting events take place today and some attractions open their doors for the first time since winter. One such place is Helsinki’s famous toy museum at the Soumennlina fort which opens for summer on Easter Monday each year.
Today’s Nordic Easter Exciter comes from Sweden and Greenland:
In Sweden Easter provides the perfect excuse for children to dress up as witches and head off door-to-door trying to sell off their drawings or paintings in exchange for sweets and chocolate. Sweden’s beautiful displays of decorated birch twigs meanwhile, are apparently a remnant of the good old days hundreds of years ago when young Swedes would whip each other with birch on Good Friday to commemorate Christ’s suffering.
In Greenland Easter has become associated with dog sled racing and each year more and more foreign tourists have been visiting at Easter to see the dog racing first hand.
Happy Easter to All.