‘Once upon a Midsommar…’: Nature, nationalism and the Swedish folkloresque

Abstract

This article examines Ari folk horror film, Midsommar, in the context of Swedish ethnonationalist ideologies and their connections to environmental and cultural preservation. Reading the film through Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey A. Tolbert’s concept of the folkloresque, I draw correlations between its structural, fairy tale framing and manipulation of folkloric imagery in order to interrogate its deliberate representations of cultural and historical inauthenticity. Further, this article analyses Midsommar’s transnational milieu and its narrative emphasis on the ambiguous traditions and rituals of the rural Swedish commune, the Hårga, to argue that the film gestures towards a nostalgic appropriation of folkloric culture which highlights the ethnonationalist, anti-immigrant agenda of the far-right in Sweden. Midsommar thus provides a generative space for illuminating the complex relationship between folk tradition, nature and ethnic homogeneity at the intersections of environmental preservation and Scandinavian/American politics.