Old Swedes hold their first Swedish summer festival – Town Square Delaware LIVE
Old Swedes Historic site, a quiet corner of First State National Historical Parkwill this month hold its first summer festival, complete with a Swedish meatball competition.
The organizers hope that the midsummer festival, which takes place on June 25 on Wilmington’s east side, will be an annual event and highlight old Swedes.
Leoné L. Cahill-Krout, who became CEO of Old Swedes last year, said she got the idea for a festival after realizing how many ethnic festivals there are already.
“You look around and you have the Polish festival, the Greek festival, the Italian festival,” she said. “There is a very strong Swedish heritage here as well.”
She plans to honor the birthright with a Midsummer festival – popular in Sweden – by including folk music performances, food trucks, a beer garden, cornhole and flower crowns.
The festival will also include Eastside neighborhood groups, such as the Xperience Drum Corps from nearby The river of love Christian Center, and attractions from other small museums.
It will show off sheep from Greenbank Mill and Mary Torbey, a curator at Newark History Museumwho will dress up as a revolutionary soldier and play fife.
The Old Church of Sweden is built of local blue granite and the bricks that were the ballast for Kalmar Nyckel when it sailed to the colonies. Cahill-Krout had been a lawyer and owned a real estate company before deciding to return to school under museum management. Prior to that, she was on the boards and volunteered at the Rockwood Museum, Military Museum, Newark History Museum and Wilmington & Western Railroad.
“So many of us provincial museums have to constantly compete with the more recognizable and better funded mansions of du Pont,” said Cahill-Krout.
She hopes inviting them to participate in some way with the festival will help elevate their profiles as well.
In her case, she also has to contend with the nearby Kalmar Key Foundation’s tallship and its splashing Copeland Maritime Center.
“It’s pretty amazing,” she stressed. “So all the exposure that we can get, that helps tell our story and helps elevate our program is just so appreciated.”
An important part of the festival is the Swedish meatball competition.
Among the groups that will compete at 14 there are Jerry Deens (the only seated restaurant on the eastern peninsula, she says) Pizza by Elizabeths, Ole Tapas, BBC Tavern, Maiale Sausage and Go Vegan Philly.
Cahill-Krout said that the organizers tried to get hold of the Swedish furniture store IKEA in Philly to also participate, but it could not be resolved.
Old Swedes is the nickname for Holy Trinity Church, the center of the property on East 7th and Church Street in Wilmington. It is believed to be the oldest church in the country still used for worship services.
It was built with local blue granite and the Swedish brick which was the original ballast Kalmar Key. That ship, built by the Dutch and sold to Sweden, sailed from the old country with pimples on the oars.
They landed in 1638 on the cliffs at nearby Fort Christina.
The church was inaugurated on June 4, 1699 and was visited by many who had been part of the colony of New Sweden, which stretched from Delaware to Pennsylvania. The colony was captured by the Dutch in 1655.
A cornhole game at the festival will include a painting painted with a Swedish flag and another painted with the Finnish flag, said Cahill-Krout.
Admission to the festival is free. Food, beverages and handicrafts will be for sale and four vendors will display and sell their wares.
They include honey supplier Iris & Callistos apiarywhich has hives in the eastern part of the city, as well as a jewelry artist, resin artist and soap maker.
The festival activities will be spread over the property.
Cahill-Krout wanted to use the carriage house, where women would have been dropped off for services, but old Swedes could not get permission for that.
Instead, beer and wine will be served from the community building, where the meatball competition also takes place.
Xperience will perform in the maze and other performances around the site.
Cahill-Krout believes that the Old Swedes’ historic site has a lot of potential that has not been exploited.
“Its origin was to be an important gathering place for this urban community that surrounds it,” she said, “and I think it could still do that.”
Betsy Price is a Wilmington freelance writer with 40 years of experience, including 15 at The News Journal in Delaware.