JUNE 15, 2017 // 11
“We were a hit,” Tinner said.
“We were so cute.”
Word spread. Pretty soon,
the local Scandinavian groups
— such as the Swedish Lodge
(Vasa), the Sons of Norway and
the Finnish Brotherhood — were
inviting the troop to perform.
Obie, Tinner and Norrman —
three troop mothers — decided to
turn the troop into a dance group,
giving rise to the Astoria Scandi-
navian Folk Dancers.
SUB MIT TED PHOTO
n
fi rst Astoria Scandinavia
An original ticket for the
festival.
The fi rst festival
The young dancers became traveling entertainers, and their
venues grew increasingly prestigious. Twice they performed live
on Portland’s KGW. Between high-profi le gigs — including at
the Lloyd Center, Seattle’s Space Needle and Knott’s Berry Farm
in California — they journeyed along U.S. Highway 101, dancing
at Scandinavian lodges.
“I remember a lot of laughing, I remember a lot of dancing,
and I remember sore feet,” said Supple, who was 10 when the
dance group was formed.
By the time the group disbanded in the early 1970s, the group
of eight girls had expanded to 24 girls and boys.
On June 15, 1968, at the old 4-H site, the dancers hosted a
festival to raise money for a trip to Disneyland and Solvang, a
Danish village near southern California. They invited the local
Scandinavian lodges to set up booths and sell food and crafts
items, while the dancers headlined the event.
“We didn’t know if anyone would be interested or not,” Tinner
said.
The dancers needn’t have worried: “I’m not kidding you: You
couldn’t get in. It was so packed,” she said.
This was the fi rst Scandinavian festival — the event that be-
came the model for each one that followed — “and it was a huge
success,” she said.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
The cover of the original
program for the fi rst Scandi-
navian Midsummer Festival.
COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
Shirley Tinner holds up a photo of performers at one of the Scandanavian Midsum-
mer Festivals which includes her daughter, Kim Supple.
Tinner has been collecting
newspaper articles and mem-
orabilia related to the festival
since the beginning of the
event, 50 years ago.
Traditions
Though the inaugural festival had a built-in fan base in the
Scandinavian town, the event’s popularity reached beyond Scan-
dinavian cultural groups and families of the dancers. “Everybody
came,” Tinner said.
In that fi rst year, the founders laid down festival traditions
that have continued for fi ve decades — from the Scandinavian
court, to the walking parade, to the hex burning (a Danish ritual
in which participants throw straw dolls into a fi re to ward off bad
luck for a year).
Even a fi rst-year ceremony that received mixed reviews —
namely, the princesses’ speech “What My National Heritage
Means to Me” — has enjoyed unexpected longevity.
“Afterwards, a lot of people said, ‘Oh that’s dumb,’” Tinner
recalled. However, “they’re still using that today.”
‘In awe’
Supple, who lived through the folk dancers’ adventures and
the festival founding, later served as Senior Miss Finland and was
crowned Miss Scandinavia.
She remembers her mother coming home from her full-time
day job as a Clatsop County judicial assistant, cooking dinner,
then working into the night to plan the festival entertainment.
SUBMITTED PHOTO/KIM SUPPLE
Continued on Pg. 23
Kim Supple, pictured here second from the right in the fi rst row in a photo from a previous Scandanavian Midsummer
Festival, was also heavily involved in organizing the annual celebration in Astoria.