Summer songs are a whole genre in Sweden. And by "summer songs" I don't mean "whatever catchy hit people latch on to for summer parties in a given year". This isn't a WAP in August 2020 or 'Brat Summer' 2024 situation.
In Sweden, there's a whole cottage industry of songs about summer – and not, as a general rule, about the nostalgia of a particular summer (à la Summer of '69). Rather, they are specifically about summer as a season of the year (årstid in Swedish): about sun and vacation and swimming and staying up round the clock through the bright northern nights.
And although Swedish songwriters and musicians dominate the global music industry, until you've spent time in Sweden you likely wouldn't have have heard any of the summer songs that the country has on repeat in June and July. This is one songwriting industry that they keep to themselves, something you can tell by the simple fact that all the summer songs are in Swedish, not English. They have titles like Sommartider (Summer Times), Midsommarnatt (Midsummer Night), and Sommar Sommar Sol (Summer Summer Sun), and lyrics such as Nu är det sommar och sol/ Sommar sommar sol igen (Now it's summer and sun/Summer summer sun again).
Children's groups and child singers have their own hits: in 2013 there was Nu är det sommarlov (Now it's Summer Break) with the lyrics Sommarlov/ Nu kan vi bada i havet (Summer break/Now we can swim in the sea) – and then, ten years later, there's Sommarlov (Summer Break) in 2023, by 13-year-old Grannen Måns, whose high happy voice I hear daily from the schoolyard speaker across the street singing, Sommarlov/Vi ska sola och bada/ Sommarlov/ Ja nu är vi glada! (Summer break/We will sunbathe and swim/Summer break/Yeah, now we are happy!).
All this comes with a certain flavour of nostalgia, but it is the generalised nostalgia of a conglomerate ideal of summers past, combined with an expression of joy in the fact that it is summer today – however briefly.
It's this last aspect that's central to Swedish summer songs. The ephemerality of summer in Sweden is legendary for Swedes; it's not only that the winter is much longer than the summer here, it's also that the summer itself is mercurial – it's not at all reliably warm or sunny, and when it rains, which can be often, the rain is cold.
This irrevocable fact lends even the boppiest Swedish summer songs a certain elegiac quality: their slightly manic joy in the brief existence of sunshine, warmth, and light is predicated on its very brevity. There is here in Sweden, in what seems to me very in line with a long Germanic tradition of elegy for transience, an open acknowledgement of how fleeting and unreliable warmth and comfort is, of how, inevitably before anyone feels remotely ready, the cold and the dark will return.
I have spent three midsummers in Umeå now – one on a visit from Toronto in 2022 and the last two as a resident of Sweden. During my first two Swedish midsummers there was perfect weather by most people's definition: clear blue skies and about 23C with a light wind that was warm but fresh.
The third year Midsummer's Eve came and went without Umeå weather rising above 14C with the windchill. I was almost happy to have a chilly cloudy midsummer that year because it meant I began to understand what a quintessentially Swedish experience it is.
On Midsummer's Eve in both 2022 and 2024 – the years with perfect warm sunny weather – the most frequent comment made to me by my in-laws was warning that such ideal weather on midsummer was "not typical, I'm afraid". In this way, the Swedish approach to life is basically the opposite of the (North) American habit of plastering a smile on your face and pretending, to yourself and everyone else, that everything is just TOTALLY AMAZING 🥰☺️🤩!!!!!!
All this is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the most popular Swedish summer songs is an upbeat early-80s bop called The Summer is Short (Sommaren är Kort). It's worth giving the lyrics of the chorus (with an English translation) in full:
Sommaren är kort (The summer is short)
det mesta regnar bort (it mostly rains away)
men nu är den här (but now it's here)
så ta för dig (so seize the day [lit. so take (it) for yourself])
solen skiner idag (the sun is shining today)
hösten kommer snart (the fall is coming soon)
det går med vindens fart (it goes with the speed of the wind)
så lyssna på mig (so listen to me)
solen skiner (the sun is shining)
kanske bara idag (maybe only today)
Indeed.