Our second day in Sundsvall was on Lyslördag (the Saturday of Lights), which is the day each year that Sundsvall lights the Christmas lights in downtown Stone Town (see previous post). Another lovely tradition!
After catching a delicious breakfast at a local cafe, we headed out for an on-foot tour of the town, stopping in to hear jazz at the Kultur Magasin. This place is a renovated warehouse/manufacturing complex that has been enclosed by a glass roof and houses the library, city museum, art museum, cafe, and more. Very lovely.
We also enjoyed art by a local artist, Sune Blomqvist (picture courtesy Sundsvall Museum).
It was a mix of portraits and landscapes, and well memorialized this late son of Sundsvall.
We went on to take a look at the local university, Mittuniversitet (Mid Sweden University), which is spread among several northern cities. Here is the entrance...
And here is a shot of the campus, which is on a piece of land that juts out into the bend of the river. All these house-looking buildings were connected by either enclosed walkways or large glass spaces (that also looked like cute houses).
With all this snow, you could ski between classes. (haha.) But I digress...
As the light was getting dimmer, we gathered with the locals at beginning of main street, for The Parade. The Parade was led by an enthusiastic woman in a white cape and a choir of white-clad folk with torches. There were hordes of people who had come to celebrate, and it was nice to hear singing in the bitter cold wind. We got candles to hold, but the wind was blowing too much to keep them burning.
These torches are real! All throughout town, candles were burning as night fell.
After a moving speech by Sven Wollter, who is maybe the Jack Nicholson of Sweden (I mean by this he is a famous, dramatic actor who has been around a long time), the Christmas tree was lit to a chorus of angelic voices.
As well as the other buildings around the big square. 
And the lights along the entire main street! Ooooooh! Ah! [gasps of wonder]Then, we trekked with the torch-carrying choir, lady in white, Sven Wollter, and several of the crowd, over to the side of the river to witness the lighting of the [they tell us] World's largest Advent candle! You can see it on the right hand side of the photo below towards the top. I swear, it looked impressive in real life.
And maybe you can see Sven atop a platform, wishing us all a happy start to the Christmas season!
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