Hello, I'm Josefin, a spinner of wool and crafter of words. In this space I practice being brave with my words to mold them into beauty. If you enjoy evocative writing about the little things in a big world, this space is for you. Bring your favourite tea mug and come sit beside me.
It's midsummer and the June solstice. Here in Stockholm, Sweden, the sun sets after 10 pm and rises again at 3.30 am. As a morning person I don't even see the dark this time of year.
There is a spot near our house, for just a few weeks in June, in a fifteen minute window in the evening, where the midsummer light turns the fresh grass into gold. I catch the light as I bind a crown of grass; bundles of strands with bulky heads over and around a ring of ivy.
I do this every solstice. At the height of the grass pollen season I wade – sneezing – through waist-high grass and gather material for a gräskrona, a grass crown that will last until the next June solstice when I make a new one.
I bind them differently every time – sometimes structured and even, straw by straw, other times bulky, wild and messy. This year it's something in between. I take bundles of plants from my foraged treasures and wrap each portion around the ring. The heads are draped underneath like spokes on a wheel, rays around the sun, protecting the ring with their joint strength.
The finished crown hangs on a nail just outside our front door. We can see it from our dinner table every day of the year – tossing and turning in the autumn winds, frosty in the November chill, wrapped in snow tinsel in January. The birds land on it through the winter months as they wait their turn at the feeding station on the next nail. In the spring when the grass crown is tilted, tousled and tawny, tiny sunflower sprouts shoot up from between the flagstones on the patio underneath. When I make next year's crown, the old one – withered and weathered – gets a new seat in the rose arch in our kitchen garden.
In the December solstice with only six hours of pale almost-daylight I look at the crown and know the sun will come back and there will be a new crown next year.
Below is a guide to making your own gräskrona.
Happy solstice!
P.S. you can catch a glimpse of that magic solstice light in my video Catch the light.
This is how I make my grass crown:
Make a ring, or two or three, depending on how fancy you want your grass crown. I have plenty of access to ivy, but other bendy branches like willow or hazel will work too, or whatever material you have close to you. I make a loop with the fat end of the branch and wrap the thin end around and around the loop until the end of the branch.
Collect your grass (be sure to take any allergy meds first…). The best time to do this is when it is in bloom and the plants are neither too soft nor too stiff. I like to use grass with chunky heads. They look better than the flimsy ones once they have dried. I collect them with the heads on the same level.
Choose your grass portion. It can be a set amount of plants, or just bundle by bundle in approximately the same thickness.
Place the bundle over the ring, fold it over, down behind and up beside the bundle. This is a left-handed instruction. For right-handed people, fold the bundle in the other direction. Place the bundle perpendicular to your ring with the heads down. Fold the ends over the ring and behind the grass/ring cross. If you are a leftie like me the ends come up to the right of the bundle, and if you are a rightie, they come up to the left. Hold the crown where the ends cross the folds. Pull tight.
Place the next bundle over the end of the previous bundle. Fold the new one over the previous ends and in between the previous and the current bundle. Pull tight.
Repeat 5 all the way around the ring. Every new bundle folds in the ends from the previous ones. Cut the excess grass every now and then.
To tie the join, use a few strands of soft grass, wrap them around the last fold and stick the ends underneath the previous round of the joining material.
Tie strings around the crown (preferably one tie on the join to secure it further) and hang your grass crown where it can flaunt its skirts in the wind.
You can make your crown with other plants as well. Flax and lavender work wonderfully even when the crown has dried, but you can also use more perishable plants like ferns, buttercups and other plants with stems that are bendy but strong.
I’d love to hear about your grass crown if you make one.
