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Yuletide 2021
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Published:
2021-12-25
Completed:
2021-12-25
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3,251
Chapters:
2/2
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37
Kudos:
309
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2,774

The Midwinter Podcast

Summary:

Connie's sister makes a podcast investigating what happened during that one eventful midsummer for the Hårga. Reddit and facebook react.

Notes:

Happy holidays APortraitofRasputin,

So your prompts really spoke to me! I have this tendency to like thinking about the aftermath of horror movies and how people might talk about them online if a case goes viral somehow. I feel like this very well might happen after Midsommar ends. The tourists all seemed to have a decent amount of ties to people back in their pre-vacation lives. Josh's thesis advisor will probably be going wtf, for one. Dani also has that friend we hear her talking to before she learns what happened to her family. On the other hand, it would probably be very easy for the Harga to say the tourists underestimated the shrooms, wandered off into the wilderness, and then perished in the elements. Basically it's all prime fodder for the true crime industrial complex since they could debate forever about whether these disappearances were an accident or a murder! Also there would be the still-living Dani who would probably be something of a fascinating enigma to people

So yes I basically took your interest in an epistolary-fic and your interest in Dani/Pelle's future and ran with it. What's up with Dani/Pelle is mostly implied through this but I did my best to check in with them from afar. I also tried to weave some Harga worldbuilding throughout.

I really hope you like this and thank you for the intriguing prompts!

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Missing on Midsummer

Madeline Dutta

True Crime | 4.6 stars | 44k ratings | 10 Episodes

PRELUDE

In 2018, six tourists traveled to a midsummer celebration with the Hårga commune in rural Hälsingland, Sweden. Five disappeared during the course of festivities. One married into the commune and is refusing to return to the United States. How did it all go so horribly wrong? Read more >

▶️

EP 2: FURTHER NORTH

The podcast host gets a call from her sister’s employer; Connie Dutta has not shown up to work in two weeks. Madeline hasn’t heard from her sister even longer than that and has been trying to get law enforcement involved. Madeline tries to trace her sister’s last steps and it takes her further afield than she ever expected. Read more >

▶️

EP 2: NO SERVICE

The first few days of the tourists’ trip to Sweden are remarkably well-documented. Instagram bragging, Facebook complaints. Notes on Google docs from the group’s most serious scholar. The further they travel, the posts become more and more sparse due to the lack of reliable cell phone service. We’re reliant on the Hårga when it comes to piecing together the tourists’ final days. Read more >

▶️

EP 3: ELDER FUTHARK

The Hårga are the last people to see the five missing tourists alive. But who are they? Their oral tradition would have you believe they are a commune with roots going all the way back to pre-Christian times. Scholars of neo-Paganism claim they had to have been founded no earlier than the 1920s. What is their true history? Read more >

▶️

EP 4: CHRISTIAN, JOSH, AND MARK

For these three cultural anthropology students, the invitation to partake in the Hårga community’s midsummer celebrations seemed like a dream come true. For some it would help with their studies, while others were just looking for an adventure. Interviews with their social circle show there was a great deal of simmering resentment within this friends group. But was it enough to cause foul play? Read more >

▶️

EP 5: CONNIE AND SIMON … AND INGEMAR

A few years before her disappearance, Connie met a man from the Hårga commune and went out with him. He believed it was a date, she believed it was a platonic outing. A few weeks later she met her future fiance, Simon. Connie believed that Ingemar took the rejection well, but recently leaked group chats showed he nursed a grudge. He has also gone missing, too. Read more >

▶️

EP 6: PSILOCYBIN

The Hårga maintain that the tourists constantly ingested psychedelic mushrooms that week and were unprepared for the potent effects. Their official story is that each of them had bad trips, wandered into the vast wilderness, and succumbed to the elements. How well does this theory hold up? Read more >

▶️

EP 7: ÄTTESTUPA

Just before her disappearance, Connie attempts to send text messages expressing her distress at witnessing an extremely troubling ritual. While a bad signal kept them from reaching their target, her phone company managed to salvage these texts. During her visit to the Hårga, Madeline learns more about what upset her sister so much. Read more >

▶️

EP 8: THE MAY QUEEN AND PELLE

Only one of the tourists remains alive and accounted for. Hailing from a background of unbelievable tragedy, Christian’s girlfriend Dani Ardor was welcomed with open arms by the commune. She has since married one of the Hårga and plans to remain in Sweden. What does she know and what is making her stay? Can Madeline convince her to talk? Read more >

▶️

EP 9: MIDWINTER

Madeline never finds her sister, but she does participate in the Hårga midwinter celebrations. Although she feels closer to her sister because of it, she also feels further from the truth than ever. Read more >

⏸️

-

Podcast Transcript

#9: Midwinter, the final 4 minutes

[Snow crunching under foot, flutes and pipes, background talk in Swedish about looking forward to the yuletide feast.]

Madeline:

In the course of my research, I saw a lot of people saying the Hårga worship the sun. That’s a simplification. The sun matters to them, yes, but so do all the other things that make up the seasons. The temperature. The weather. Whether they should be planting, or harvesting, slaughtering or resting. They like to say they live a lifestyle that has them more in tune with the planet’s rhythms than most of us, and sometimes during my month out here I’m inclined to believe them.

[All at once, the chattering voices start to sing a hymn about midwinter.]

And so things have cycles, and so things have their natural counterparts, even when it comes to loss and grief. My sister disappeared in Hälsingland during one solstice, and I went to Hälsingland during another solstice. Dani Ardor lost her family during a terrible winter, and I lost mine during a terrible summer. Maybe the Hårga had my sister locked up in a building I never managed to find on the Hårga’s lands. Maybe her body is out there, somewhere, silently witnessing the changing seasons in a land far from her birth. Maybe her bones are in an ash pile, drifting on the winter wind. Every time a gust of wind kicks up I end up flinching.

[Madeline saying ‘oh, is this for me? Okay, thank you!’ There’s a noise that sounds like a breeze at first until you hear the sound of crackling. Then you realize it’s a large bonfire.]

I didn't know what happened to Connie when I got the call that started this all, and I still didn’t know during my final days among the Hårga. The constant darkness creeps under your skin out there, even when you’re resisting all the psychedelic mushrooms and trying to remain alert so you find the key crack the commune’s veneer. On the longest, darkest day of the year I ended up gathering with all the Hårga. I held a torch someone offered me and used it to burn the same Yule Goat that I had helped construct. I had been grilling commune members for information while building it, but there had also been something satisfying about the hands-on labor.

And it was also satisfying to set fire to it and watch it burn. I want to say something satisfying here about how truth may grow from these ashes and someday I’ll know what happened to my sister. In that moment, though, I was filled with a rage that burned brighter than the torch I held. I can catch Dani looking at me constantly but she never approaches me during these festivities. She never tells me what else she knows.

Grief is better at consuming us than fire. That’s what I want you to take away from this podcast. Strip away the talk about runes and love triangles and cell phone records and ash covered in bear fat.

Once upon a time I had a sister and then I lost her.

I still don’t know why.

-

Customer Reviews:

4.6

out of 5 | 44k ratings

*****
Incredible
This podcast is amazing! The host manages to make all six tourists feel like real people, even though that’s a lot of perspectives to cover. She also does a great job of explaining the Hårga, Scandinavian neo-Paganism, and northern Sweden as a whole. I wish there was more of it but it’s better to have a short and good podcast rather than one that goes on and on you know?

*
Annoying narrator
I’m sorry she lost her sister and everything but oh my god the host is so whiny. It makes it hard to follow along with the story when she’s just talking about her own feelings all the time.

***
 Pretty good, could be better
Overhyped since it’s probably just a bunch of dumb Americans that played stupid games and won stupid prizes.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

[Posted on /r/MissingOnMidsummer one second after the final episode of Missing on Midsummer was released. Five highest ranked comments.]

The final episode is here you guys… have at it

  • [-] PM_UR_RUBI_RADR_PICS: Woof. I actually really liked that. I’m already seeing people whining about how it’s just like Serial because it didn’t have a conclusion and I’m already annoyed by that. Yes, I also want to know what happened to Connie and Simon (and the other guys too I guess idk they were dicks) but there’s only so much Madeline can do. Like was she supposed to wander the the wilderness when it’s dark 23.5 hours, surrounded on all sides by murderous cultists? She’s actually insanely brave for going there at all and this has so much more to offer than most podcasts that fuck around with people who are barely related. People are already saying they must not be murderers because they let her go but none of us can know for sure and she still went. 
    • [-] CylindricalDigress: She’s insanely stupid too
      • [-] interrobanginnnn: Sometimes stupidity and bravery are the same thing
      • [-] PM_UR_RUBI_RADR_PICS: At least now people are on to the cult 
        • [-] feisty_metaphysics: I still don’t think they sound like a cult. They just sound like a group of weird people who want to avoid society and get high all the time. Which uhh… same???
          • [-] avocadontthinkaboutit: Did you miss the crypto-fascicism and THE LIKELY MURDERS my dude?
      • [-] kefka_iz_daddy: I agree. True crime forgets the victim all the time and also the victim’s family members. I feel like this started out as an investigation but in the end it was more about Madeline dealing with how she might never know what happened to her sister. 
        • [-] wildlyinnocentdespotism: Yes! I loved that! Don’t forget that it showed how none of us are immune to brainwashing. I know that people hate that her interview with Dani was mostly them talking about what Dani liked about her new life and then them doing the Harga communal breathing thing together but it’s not like Dani was ever going to say “yes I know what happened.” At least that showed that Dani drank the koolaid and also I think showed how appealing the cult can be.
          • [-] CylindricalDigress: flavoraid
            • [-] wildlyinnocentdespotism: read the room
          • [-] kefka_iz_daddy: Yes, that shit was so raw. It made me uncomfortable in a good way. 
  • [-] OBJECTION_EXCLAMATIONMARK: This remake of Wicker Man was actually really good.
  • [-] teamingemar: Fuck Dani, seriously.
    • [-] assortedhostility972: Why? 
      • [-] teamingemar: She was traumatized by losing all her family. That’s understandable. But now she probably has the key to what happened to five other people and isn’t sharing. At least she knew where her family members’ bodies were!
        • [-] assortedhostility972: She can’t do much if they really did wander off into the woods because they were high af. Everyone in Sweden and in America said that she and her boyfriend barely talked. What was she supposed to do if he got high without her and wandered off like a dumbass?
          • [-] teamingemar: you actually believe that story...
            • [-] assortedhostility972: I mean… Occam’s Razor…
          • [-] WorldlyMythology: That’s a good point about her family members’ bodies. She’s going to have to visit their graves someday right? Maybe someone can confront here then.
            • [-] Bride_of_Angler_Fish:Mod note: do not confront any of the real people involved in this case oh my god REAd THE RULES.
  • [-] theberserkdollar: Kind of underwhelming. I think the weekly release hurt this story in the end. Most of us already figured out everything from googling about it while waiting. Madeline also never touched on things like how Dani’s mother’s instagram showed flowers all over the house and then later on Dani joined a death cult that worships flowers. Maybe it’s out there but that can’t really be a coincidence, right? 
    • [-] trulynextmelodrama: /r/conspiracy is that way.
    • [-] OssifiedTrauma: They didn’t talk about Dani’s freshman year roommate either. They talked to each other the night of her family’s murder-suicide, and the roommate keeps posting stuff about Dani on Facebook. I don’t know why Connie didn’t reach out to her to get more insight on Dani and what she might be capable of?
  • [-] 420x365: came here from /r/all after smoking a bowl and who is harga what is a pelle and why do people keep talking about bear bone ashes and human bone ashes and not being able to get dna from them and why are you all on ancestry.com to figure out if a swedish guy is the producer of this one song????? what are you all doing?? what is this? are you all okay???????
    • [-] avocadontthinkaboutit: we aren’t

-

[Most recent Facebook post from Dani’s freshman year roommate, the last one to speak to her before her sister's muder-suicide. Posted three hours after the final episode of Missing on Midsummer]

Talia Ward
May 19

Getting a lot of messages about Dani that are clearly you all ranting about this made up version of Dani that you all have in your head. Some of you write about her like she somehow coerced Christian into dating her for 4 years. Some of you victim blame her for not leaving him. Some of you guys say both things in the same messages you send me. 

I need you guys to remember that things didn’t play out in real time the way you heard on the podcast. She isn’t an expert in that sort of culture like Josh, for example. Christian would also swear up and down in phone calls to her that he loved her and wanted to be with her, and then would text Mark five milliseconds later complaining about her! Yes you can pick up on that kind of shit, but its one thing to guess and another thing to have it confirmed. Dani never had it confirmed! She didn’t have the benefit of a podcast analysis laying out a timeline of everyone’s calls and trying to make them sound as inflammatory as possible. 

I know some of you trolls are going to say I’m just saying all this because you found out I have a women’s studies major and that’s all very funny to you but seriously … think about it. This might shock you to learn but these are real people who did average people shit. This isn’t a plot twist in CSI. This is my real friend who got married to a dangerous guy I barely know and this podcast is the first time  in a while I could confirm she was even alive. 

👍🏻❤️😠

 

Most relevant comments:

  • Well said! Intimate partner abuse isn’t a plot twist. It can be very complex and hard to detect. 
  • Girl you need to log off
  • Did you ever meet Pelle? 
    • Talia: Okay for the millionth time …… I met him one time at a party. I was very drunk. I wished his country well at Eurovision. No, I didn’t ask him if he was trying to groom my friend to join a cult. Yes after she disappeared I kept messaging him on instagram until he blocked me. No I don’t know how much he and Dani interacted before she left. She only mentioned him in the context of talking about all of Christian’s friends. 

-

[Posted on /r/MissingOnMidsummer one day after the final episode of Missing on Midsummer. Five highest ranked comments.]

I’m Pelle from the Missing on Midsummer podcast, ask me anything

  • [-] guinevere_was_framed: Hey Pelle!!!! Got two questions for you: Did you also think that parody of you on SNL made you sound more German than Swedish? Also if Dani is so happy in Sweden why the fuck did you block me on instagram when I asked about her well-being?
    • [-] intrepidembroidery: No way this is actually Talia Ward.
      • [-] interrobanginnnn: It is! If you go through her post history it goes back 5 years and she posted pics too. 
    • [-] surprisingly_deranged_bomber: I understand your motivation here but what do you think a reddit comment or an instagram dm will accomplish that Madeline couldn’t when she went to Sweden? 
    • [-] SqueakyTemplate: I hope you find out what happened to her.
      • [-] teamingemar: What happened to…… Dani? Dani is alive unlike the other 5. Don’t you want to know where they are?
  • [-] PM_UR_RUBI_RADR_PICS: What’s something weird that happened with the tourists that never made it onto the podcast?
    • [-] PelleMidsummer:Hmmm honestly Madeline did a great job of portraying everything. I guess I would have mentioned Mark peed on our sacred tree once.
      • [-] theberserkdollar: You need to elaborate on this!!
        • [-] evil_n_medieval: You don’t know how peeing works?
      • [-] PM_UR_RUBI_RADR_PICS: Was it the dead tree lying around in the pics on instagram/the podcast site? If so what makes it sacred?
        • [-] PelleMidsummer: So when our elders die their bodies are burned in the communal fire. Then their ashes are used to nurture the trees that give us life by providing fuel and fruit and so on. Eventually these trees die, too, though. That means they also enrich the soil just like our ancestors’ bones once did. Basically when a great tree dies like that it means the ancestors that fed that tree are on the next stage of being part of everything.
          • [-] throwaway3911232811: no wonder y'all killed mark
      • [-] FearfulDisservice: Was it a big deal that he peed on it?
        • [-] PelleMidsummer: Sort of. But we have rituals to cleanse that sort of thing.
  • [-] wildlyinnocentdespotism: So the podcast talked about how young adult Harga will go abroad for a while. What was your biggest surprise about living in America?
    • [-] PelleMidsummer:Honestly how alone everyone has to be when they’re sick. They either have to go to work and suffer through it and act like they’re okay, or a lot of people live alone and deal with their issues alone. Josh actually got appendicitis during finals one year and struggled to find someone to take him home from the hospital. And then he would text us talking about how hard it was to just pick groceries up when they were delivered. He also still had to complete his finals and was only given an extra week to do them. That would never happen with us among the Hårga.
      • [-] wildlyinnocentdespotism: How would you all handle sickness then?
        • [-] PelleMidsummer:For non-contagious diseases we keep them in the housing appropriate to their age group and always have two people on either side of their bed to get them what they need and help them express their pain. For contagious diseases they get to be in huts but they aren’t alone. Two members will set up tents outside and keep an eye on them and bring them food, etc.
          • [-] wildlyinnocentdespotism: That… doesn’t sound so bad.
  • [-] mercury_retrogay: did ingemar produce this red velvet song? One of the producers has the same last name as him
    • [-] PelleMidsummer:hahaha, how do you people find this stuff? Catchy song but, no, that’s not Ingemar. He worked on farms while abroad. He's pretty much tone-deaf too.
      • [-] mercury_retrogay: oh. ok. sorry for your loss by the way
        • [-] PelleMidsummer:Hey, thank you! I miss him and this means a lot.
  • [-] TheGuiltyStanza: Seriously how is Dani? Maybe you’ll answer me since I’m not Talia but I know its not likely. I don’t even want to know if she helped murder those guys or if you guys actually have a body double for her like some people say. She’d just been through so much and now most of her friends are missing. I almost hope she is guilty of something because otherwise that kind of loss is unfathomable. Really I just hope she’s okay as a fellow human. Is she alright?
    • [-] PelleMidsummer: Thank you so much for asking. Yes, Dani has gone through more than any person should endure. We’re doing our best for her, though.