26-29th August 2021
Odinsborg's mead festival is arranged by us at Mjödhamnen in collaboration with Pop-Up Events. This is an historical event and is the first festival in Sweden that focuses primarily on mead, but of course we offer other refreshments, honey of all kinds, food, and crafts.
This year's festival will take place inside Odinsborg upstairs in the Viking room. The main purpose of the festival is to show the magical world of mead, but the party will be due. covid-19 a little different compared to earlier years. Instead of an open house, our fantastic employees at Mead Geek will hold mead tastings continuously during the entire festival. In addition to Mjödhamnen's own selection, Polish and American mead will also be served in our outdoor bar.
In addition to the mead tastings, there will be honey for sale, both locally produced and honey from different parts of the world, and some craft venders.
There will also be a BBQ.
We keep our fingers crossed that our unique meadbus will be in place.
As always at Odinsborg's mead festival, entertainment and maybe even a secret guest entertainer will appear! We hope for many spontaneous outbursts in addition to this and have heard rumours that Vikings may make an appearance on Saturday...
Hope to see you soon!
Program:
Friday
4 PM
7 PM
Saturday
2 PM
6 PM
9 PM - Late night special
Sunday
3 PM
Old Uppsala is the place in Sweden that was considered a political and religious center in the early iron age ("Vendel age"), and was regarded as such during the entire Viking Age. This is the location of the impressive and mysterious King's heights. It´s believed that these are graves for prehistoric kings, but according to the legend, the gods Thor, Oden and Freya rest in them.
If you are new to mead, which many still are, you should first of all know that mead is a yeast drink made from honey. An easy way to describe it is honey wine. Traditional mead is made of honey and water only. It can be both completely dry and even a bit crisp like a white wine, or extremely sweet as a dessert wine and all the places in between. On the whole, mead is floral and lighter in comparison to wine. Some meads are absolutely incredible.
In the early days the word mead and medicine was one and the same.
There are, in addition to this, lots of variations of mead that include all possible ingredients besides honey. Usually, small amounts of fruit, berries or spices may be used, but sometimes the water is completely replaced by, for example, fruit or berry juice.
There is also the possibility of producing mills (Mölska), which is made of both malt and honey and usually resembles a beer rather than wine. In principle, the possibilities are endless and then you have not even entered the variation in honey, which is also infinite and often actually clearer in mead than in pure honey.
Odinsborg is an Inn built in the middle of the 19th century. At that time, the Viking Age was extremely romanticized, and drinking mead at Odinsborg or on top of the King's heights became a fashion. Odinsborg has been open to the public ever since and have continued to serve mead. The quality of the mead, however, has been very inconsistent during the 20th century, so the reputation and prestige of mead has in many ways been destroyed and unfortunately the same applies to Odinsborg. But now that Mjödhamnen takes control of the mead service at Odinsborg, the quality of the mead will be something completely different. We hope to once again bring back mead as a beloved drink, enjoyed and regarded as a delicacy without equal, just as it was done in ancient Scandinavia.
