Midsummer in Riksgränsen

In a year of Covid-19 with extended travel restrictions and global uncertainty, Visit Sweden wanted to inspire and keep the dream about Sweden alive so that international travels would choose Sweden as their destinations when they are able and allowed to travel again.

To do so – during the midsummer weekend of 2020, we created a digital event together with Visit Sweden and Swedish Lapland as well as shot still images of the whole celebration.

On the 19th of June 2020, Visit Sweden invited the whole world to celebrate midsummer. Midsummer Live was a virtual celebration, spanning from Österlen in southern Sweden all the way up to Riksgränsen in the most northern part of Sweden. The celebration consisted of personal and local features, each live broadcasted and streamed during 15-20 minutes on Facebook during the whole day. The features were published in France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, US and on another platform in China.

In my role as a creative director for Riksgränsen, I was asked to create a feature from the solstice skiing under the midnight sun in Riksgränsen. I received the enquiry 2 weeks prior to the event and was asked if we were able to pull it off. Who would miss this chance?! Of course we would pull it off! During 2 intense weeks, I casted the team, created the script, managed the project from Riksgränsen’s side and made sure we could deliver an inspiring and fun feature.

This project was rare and challenging in the way that the team not only had to be creative, technical and comfortable infront of the camera – we all had to be able to talk, broadcast and ski at the same time. We also had to time our feature so it would fit in to the 15-20 minutes we had live. During this time, we had to sync our script with getting on the chair lift, making sure to time our conversations with how long time it would take us up to the top of the mountain, ski down the whole slope and finish off at the bottom of the mountain. Everything had to be timed and memorised into the smallest detail.

The result was a success. The internal stakeholders in Riksgränsen were impressed, our partner Swedish Lapland was very happy and our feature reached over 20k views, 200 comments and 500 reactions live. Midsummer Live reached over 140k views during one day. 116 international and national articles were written about the project and the total value of PR was estimated to 10M SEK.

Showcased here is a selection of the still images from midsummer in Riksgränsen that I have directed. To watch Midsummer Live, go to the link below.

Team:
Creative Director: Madeleine Lithvall
Sport Manager & Skier: Linnéa Arrhén
Snowboarding Videographer & Still Life Photographer: Johan Nyström