FILM · 2019 · USA
Midsommar
27 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
27 Interesting Facts About Midsommar
Interesting Facts (20)
- #001
When the film opened in Sweden, many viewers laughed rather than screamed, and plenty of Swedish critics hailed it as a perfect black comedy.
- #002
When Josh sneaks off to photograph the pages of the sacred book 'Rubi Radr', he thinks he sees Mark standing at the temple entrance. It's actually Ulf, the man who screamed at Mark for urinating on the ancestral tree, wearing Mark's skin (the script confirms this). Earlier, Mark had asked Josh whether he thought Ulf would kill him for peeing on the tree.
- #003
Near the end, as Dani is lifted onto the platform to be carried to the dining table, her sister's face can be made out in the trees, with an exhaust pipe in her mouth.
- #004
Most of the Swedish spoken by the Hårga villagers is deliberately left without subtitles, so viewers share the outsiders' sense of isolation.
- #005
After the sex scene, Christian was meant to flee wearing the robe he had put on. Jack Reynor suggested he run out stark naked to look more vulnerable, which is why he is fully nude as he tries to escape. Reynor had just watched The Last House on the Left (1972) and was struck by how, as in so many horror films, the women are stripped, humiliated and attacked before they die; he felt it was time a male character got the same treatment.
- #006
The MPAA first gave the film an NC-17. According to Ari Aster, about 30 minutes were cut from the final film, mainly for content; the director's cut, released shortly after the theatrical run, puts that footage back.
- #007
Although they are the leads, neither Dani nor Christian says a word in the last twenty-five minutes, apart from screams and shrieks.
- #008
For Dani's birthday, Pelle gives her a drawing he made himself with two runes at the bottom. The same symbols later appear on her dress during the dance contest.
- #009
Throughout the film, Dani hallucinates plants that respond to her and grow inside her, foreshadowing her final transformation into the flower-covered May Queen. The plants grow bolder as the film goes on: a tuft of grass sprouting from her hand, grass swallowing her feet, vines on her throne moving with her arms, the flowers in her crown "breathing" with her and, in the last scene, a dress and crown made entirely of flowers, a sign that the community has absorbed her completely.
- #010
Mark's extreme fear of ticks comes from Ari Aster's own fear of insects and disease. Like Mark, Aster wore two pairs of socks pulled over his jeans to keep the bugs off.
- #011
The name Hårga comes from the legend of Hårgalåten (the Hårga song), told fairly faithfully at the start of the dance scene. In the legend, the Devil, disguised as a fiddler, led all the young people of the village of Hårga up a mountain, where they began to dance. Under his spell they could not stop, even as they grew more and more exhausted; they danced until their bodies wore away completely, and even then their heads kept bobbing on the bloody ground as if still dancing. Hårgalåten is one of Sweden's best-known folk songs.
- #012
At the start of the film, as the camera moves through the Ardor house where Dani's parents die in their sleep in Terri's murder-suicide, a laurel-like wreath of flowers can clearly be seen over a picture of a young girl, possibly Dani as a child, foreshadowing her crowning as Hårga's May Queen at the Midsommar festival.
- #013
When Father Odd greets the group, he says "Welcome" to Josh, Mark and Christian in turn, but "Welcome home" to Dani.
- #014
Read from left to right, the opening mural foreshadows the whole film and hints at Dani's and Christian's opposite fates. Looked at closely, it also reveals that Pelle is the one behind the invitation to Hårga. When the visitors arrive, Connie and Simon study a tapestry of a woman who falls for a man, puts flowers under her pillow and then hides her pubic hair in his food, which makes him fall in love with her and get her pregnant: exactly what Maja will do to Christian before and during the May Queen celebrations.
- #015
Many details in the film depict real Swedish folk customs and old beliefs. In old Swedish culture, Midsummer night was one of the most magical nights of the year, when magic and supernatural beings could more easily reach people. So it is tied to many traditions originally meant to protect yourself, your family and your animals from black magic, or to draw on good magic. Picking flowers while walking backwards is a local variant of a very common midsummer custom: following certain rules, you pick 7 (or 9) different kinds of flowers. The rules vary around the country, but a common one is to walk backwards, climb over 7 fences and keep silent the whole time. The flowers go under your pillow, and that night you should dream of your future husband. Eating very salty herring from the tail first serves the same purpose, and herring in every imaginable form is one of the traditional midsummer dishes. Dancing around a decorated pole really is a big part of the celebrations, though in reality the songs and dances are usually very simple old children's singing games.
- #016
A few years after the film came out, Florence Pugh said of the last day of shooting: "I created such a sad person that I then felt guilty for creating that person and then leaving her. (…) I've never experienced that before. After leaving, I thought all my characters would 'be fine.' (…) She can't fend for herself, as if I had created this person and then abandoned her when I had to go and make another film."
- #017
After seeing the drugged Christian being raped by Maja, a hysterical Dani, who doesn't know he was drugged and couldn't consent, is comforted by Dagny and other Hårga women, who echo her sobs and wails to soothe her. It calls back to Pelle's words to Dani after the Attestupa scene, when he reassured her that no one had ever really held her.
- #018
Dani's surname, Ardor, seen on a computer screen in several shots, is Latin for "flame."
- #019
The film uses the terms May Queen and Maypole, which is misleading, since midsummer falls at the end of June. Here the Swedish word "maja" originally means "to decorate with leaves."
- #020
The film's strange mating ritual has little to do with real Swedish midsummer, but it is a fact that 9 of the 10 most common birthdays in Sweden fall in April, nine months after midsummer and July, the favorite month for summer holidays.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
- #021
The final frame is Dani's manic smile as she watches the temple burn with the sacrifices inside, and her expression almost exactly copies the Sun in the opening mural.
Deeper Meaning (6)
- #022
Connie's body, wheeled to the temple with the others, looks wet and bloated, which suggests the villagers drowned her in a nearby lake after supposedly driving her to the station. As Dani takes the meat pies out of the oven, she and Mark hear faint screams, implying that this is when the villagers seized Connie to drown her. The Director's Cut confirms it: in it, a child is nearly sacrificed by being drowned in the lake by the villagers, wearing the same sacrificial robe that Connie's body is dressed in.
- #023
According to Ari Aster, it was Pelle who beat Josh to death with a hammer after catching him photographing the book. In fact, when the camera cuts quickly from Josh's reflection in the mirror to "Mark" (pause at 01:33:40), Pelle can be spotted hiding out of Josh's sight.
- #024
Above the bed in Dani's apartment hangs a painting of a crowned girl with a bear: "Stackars Basse" by the Swedish painter John Bauer, known for his pictures of Swedish folklore and mythical creatures.
- #025
At the meal where the meat pies are served, Christian drinks a reddish juice while everyone else has yellow juice. An image early in the film suggests the reason: menstrual blood may have been added to his drink.
- #026
Simon's fate is based on the blood eagle, a supposed Viking method of ritual execution in which the victim was laid face down, the ribs were cut from the spine with a sharp tool, and the lungs were pulled out through the opening to form a pair of "wings." The victim is assumed to stay alive and conscious throughout, dying only some time later, possibly from blood loss. So when Christian finds him, Simon is barely breathing, if he is conscious at all. As part of the sacrifice, he dies at some point between Christian finding him and the final ritual; you could even argue he dies while Christian is there, since he takes only one or two breaths on screen. Realistically, though, he could hardly have been alive and breathing when Christian found him, since the lungs need the diaphragm to expand and draw in air. One explanation is that Christian is hallucinating, under the aphrodisiac the elder gave him earlier and the horror of what he is seeing.
- #027
The Midsommar festival revolves around the number 9: the whole ritual lasts nine days, and nine lives are sacrificed to purify the town. Pelle explains to Dani and the other newcomers that the Hårga life cycle has childhood ending at 18 (9x2), youth at 36 (9x4), maturity at 54 (9x6) and life itself in old age at 72 (9x8). The festival is held only every 90 years (9x10), so each sacrifice stands for ten years of purity for Hårga. Even the word Midsommar has 9 letters, and early on, when Dani leaves a message for her family, the answering machine counts up to 9 before the number leaves the frame. The importance of 9 goes back to the ancient myth of Odin, father of the Norse gods, who hung upside down on the World Tree Yggdrasil for nine days to bring knowledge to the world and created the Futhark, the runic alphabet.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work