‘Touchstone’

Mark Tasker is of Swedish descent and his son, born last September, has a Swedish middle name. So his father decided that Morgan Nils Tasker shouldn’t pass up the chance to see his first Midsommar.

A teacher who lives in Etna, Mark Tasker has no connection with the Swedish colony centered in New Sweden. But he values the way the community has nurtured its heritage.

“This is a good touchstone type of place, with the folk music and all the traditions, and of course they speak a little bit of the language.”

The language is important to Tasker, who learned Swedish as an adult from a woman who ran a bakery in Orono.

“I got hooked on it,” he said. He wound up studying Swedish and earning a masters in Scandinavian area studies.

Digging deeper

Originally from Tennessee, Jennie Dynesius discovered New Sweden while she was living in southern Maine and decided to delve deeper into her Swedish heritage by scouting out a Midsommar festival.

“I’m just enthralled by the area and the people. They took me under their wing,” she said.

Dynesius flew up to Maine from Charlottesville, Va., marking the fifth year she has taken part in New Sweden’s annual celebration.

Her contribution to Midsommar was the introduction of the Dala Horse painting activity for children. She had 700 of the small horses cut out of wood.

Special sauce

Lingonberry sauce has won renown as a Swedish delicacy, but the lingonberry plant remains little known – at least outside parts of northern Europe.

At the Midsommar festival, Andrew McNeally was selling lingonberry plants that he grew in Maine from seed stock and cuttings obtained from an agricultural research station in Sweden.

McNeally described the fruit as “halfway between a cranberry and blueberry – not as tart as a cranberry and not as sweet as a blueberry.”

While the tasty berries may be the top priority for some, McNeally noted that the glossy plants also are prized for their ornamental value

Part of the proceeds from the plant sales were being set aside for victims of the arsenic poisonings at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church.

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She was wearing a traditional costume from the town of Fjallbacka, located in the province her father hailed from. After she send her measurements – in metrics – it took six months to have the hand-embroidered work completed.