ja må han leva!

The birthday weekend was really great. I had a really good time meeting more of Fredrik's family, and it was really nice to just sit around in the living room joking with each other, talking and eating good food. We ate "halv special" which is a Swedish specialty. Toasted hot dog bun, with a "korv", better known as "hot dog' to us, with mashed potatoes on top. Usually you put mustard and ketchup, but I don't! And as you can see, you can also put other kinds of "toppings" on. Here in Sweden, they have some weird salad type thing you eat on bread. I don't really enjoy them, but the Swedes sure do like them!

Also, Swedes love to sing to celebrate. They all sing at the same time, really loud, and at their own pace. As you can hear, it doesn't sound like our traditional "Happy Birthday to you". This is a song titled "Ja må han/hon (depending on the sex of the person) leva." You can see that everybody is standing up, singing however they want, and people are sitting down, and still standing, and still singing! It's chaos, but it's really funny! When I heard this the first time, I laughed, I laughed hard. THEN we sang it a second time, since we were celebrating 2 birthdays. And at the end, you can hear somebody should "skål!" which is "cheers!".



The Swedish word of the day is "skål" which obviously, means "cheers" and is pronounced "skoal!" I really dont think, in Sweden, you can say this word enough. It gives you a reason to drink!