The last day of April brings we of Nordic heritage to another celebration of the season: Valborgsmässoafton, or Valborg, perhaps best known as Walpurgis.  Nowadays, it is the prelude to the May First celebrations around the world, particularly in Europe.  Walpurgis Night (Valborgsmässoafton in Swedish, Vappu in Finnish, Walpurgisnacht in German) is a holiday celebrated on April 30.

The night is linked to Pagan rituals occurring everywhere in the Old World, from the British Isles to the European Continent.  The most noted (modern-day) tradition of Valborgsmässoafton is the construction and lighting of huge bonfires, usually along the shore of a lake or river, where people gather to (sometimes) consume copious amounts of alcohol, grill and eat and sing songs far into the night.

All the various countries' celebrations seem to be named from an ancient lady named Valborg (there are alternate spellings).  Born somewhere around Dorset, on the south coast of England, together with her siblings she traveled to Germany, where she eventually became a nun in a convent founded by her brother Wunibald, in Heidenheim.  Valborg died in the year 779, but her legend lives on.  Brought to sainthood the following May after her death, February 25, Valborg is still remembered on the Catholic and other names-day  calendars.

What would spring be without the celebration of Viking fertility celebrations.  Traditionally occurring around the end of April, Valborg soon became associated with these, as the Viking influence was spread in their travels and conquests.

And today Walpurgis is one of the mainstay celebrations in the Nordic countries, right up there with Jul (Christmas) and Midsommar (the longest day of the year, around June 21). Valborg was joined with already established traditions, such as the one in southern Sweden where at sundown, youth collected greens and branches to adorn the houses in the community and were rewarded with eggs.

Of course any reason to celebrate with the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol is quickly taken up by students; Walpurgisnacht was and remains no exception.  My own first experience with the day/night, was only in studying though when, as a student (drama minor), I read and wrote a paper on Germany's Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's two-part dramatic tragedy, "Faust".

Walpurgisnacht, the night before May first in Germany, is the night when the witches on the Blocksberg (Germany's tallest peak) celebrated while awaiting the arrival of Satin.

Fin de Siècle, originally an upper-class celebration in Finland, has since been taken over by graduated university students, where among other traditions, they place a student's cap as a crown atop a nude female statue in Helsinki.  There is also the publishing the magazines of Äpy and Julkku, the former being a joke (printed on toilet tissue or a bed sheets) though the latter is a real student magazine.

In Finland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, because of the long Soviet occupation, the tradition came before the typical May Day celebrations for Communists and Socialists. But now, other institutions have also taken it up as a day for special music, speeches and celebrations to agitate the common people against governments, most often in Germany, when riots have broken out in recent years.