#sittning

Ni kan inte har missat det ,men igår var jag och Anna med och hjälpte vår tatuerare med en live sittning. Detta är något som vi mer än gärna hjälper honom med då det är i rent reklamsyfte.

Ni kan inte har missat det ,men igår var jag och Anna med och hjälpte vår tatuerare med en live sittning. Detta är något som vi mer än gärna hjälper honom med då det är i rent reklamsyfte, försökskanin i detta projekt blev min sambo Anna. Hon fick den stora äran att göra en ros på vaden.

Till en början var det lite spänt med att sitta live och prata och diskutera saker, men ganska snabbt…

International Week

Okay so last week was international week at university. All of the schools hold an event each day of the week. To kick of international is the One World Sittning. I had no idea what the hell a sittning was when I came. But to put it into simple terms its like a Swedish university talent show. Every couple of weeks they are held by different committees and they have different themes (and like 40% they are in swedish, you can make my mistake and go to a sittning 100% in swedish, its funny but confusing). One World sittning was a special one due to the Australians very own appearance in the skits. The act was about a student travelling around the world to all these places until he found Sweden and eventually settled there. I have to give it to our Australian actors they worked pretty hard. Of course there were many Australian jokes that were missed by our multicultural audience but nonetheless, I was still so proud of the Australian boys.

Sittning (wiki): A sittning ("sitting", often shortened to sits or sitz, Finnish: sitsit) is in Sweden and Finland a seated meal held within a set time frame. In restaurants it may refer to a seating, i.e. the time given for a crowd to have their meal. The term is also used to denote the part of a party that is a seated meal. Though it can refer to any kind of meal, it is often used to refer to a student sittning.

“Sittning? What the heck is that... " … you might have thought after having arrived in Lund. Same happened to me when I first heard about this tradition. And of course, I also wanted to be part of it. As I quickly learned, a Sittning is a three-course dinner where you can have a lot of drinks, a lot of fun and sing Swedish drinking songs - the most traditional part of the evening. Sittnings are often held in a specific theme, meaning that you might decide for your elegant evening dress/suit on one night, while preferring a super hero costume the other night!

Especially at the beginning of each semester, many Sittnings are organized for newbies. I asked Jamina, Medical Student from Germany, about her first Sittning experience:

“Wear something under your costume, it might fall apart during the night“, they said.

“Don’t put so much effort in your costume, people usually make something up out of accessories / buy Second-Hand”, they said.

“You sing, you drink, you go crazy”, they said.

Stepping onto the bus, wearing a linen toga and a chaplet made of golden leaves around my head, I did feel a bit out of place. I expected people to stare at me, point at me, and maybe even laugh at me. But not in Lund. As if it’s completely ordinary to see Aphrodite taking the bus to her temple. I was on the way to my first Sittning.

At Östgöta Nation I met many interesting creatures: my male counterpart, of course also dressed in a toga. A “Just Married”- couple. 2 guys dressed all in pink having written “Bromance” on their costume. And of course Amor , who with his arrow kept pointing at two people’s heart and made them kiss. It was a Valentines- Sittning of course.

There were different groups of people who were placed at large tables. I was about to have the first bite of my meal, when it all started: the singing. The singing and the ‘standing-on-your-chair’ singing. The challenging of the other groups, who then sang even louder and almost took it to the next level and stood on the table. Mostly, I had no idea what we were singing. But I was also told to just go with the flow when it comes to that part, so I just made up the lyrics. 

Of course you could differentiate the Swedish table from the Internationals, because the Swedes had a much more advanced technique, like playing the drums on the table. Not to be missed, there is also the signing of the songbooks. They are passed around and you can leave a nice comment, a drawing or even a love letter in it.

Later at night the dining room quickly turned into a dancefloor, and the different groups melted into one big kaleidoscope of love and fancyness.

At the end of the night, while I was pulling out 2 million bobby pins out of my hair, I realized that they were partly wrong in what they told me. Inspite of heavy dancing and heavy drinking I was still Aphrodite from head to toe when staggering home. But they were right about the rest: Take it simple with your costume. And be prepared for a wild night.”

Wow! That sounds like a very Lundian way to party - so grab your friends and take part in this very unique party tradition!

Keep calm and sing songs :)    Anna-Lena