The Hårga

Evil Organization
Full Name	Harga
Alias	None
Origin	Midsommar
Foundation	About millions of years ago.
Headquarters	North Sweden
Commanders	Father Odd Grandmother Siv Dani Ardor
Agents	Pelle Ingemar Ulf
Powers / Skills	Performing festivities Electing a May Queen Luring outsiders and killing them as human sacrifice offerings Having outsider have sex with one of the members as a breeding ritual
Goals	To hold a festival every 90 years, elect a May Queen and perform human sacrifices
Crimes	Murder Human sacrifice
Type of Villains	Evil pagan cult

The Harga are a Swedish pagan cult and the main antagonists of the 2019 film Midsommar.

History

Residing in North Sweden, the Harga are a cult that promote white supremacy and pagan rituals. They believe in empathy and sharing pain, always looking out for one another and being very choosy about who gets to join. Every 90 years they celebrate the festival of Midsommar, where they perform human sacrifices and elect a May Queen. They wish to remain secret, and go to any extreme to defend their secrecy.  

They dress in Ukrainian wreaths and vyshvankas, practice attestupa when their members reach age 72 and become useless, and assign jobs and roles based on traits members show as kids. Their language is ever evolving and forbidden to outsiders. 

Members 

Ingemar

Ingemar is the brother of Pelle and Dagny. For the festival of Midsommar, Father Odd decided to task Pelle, who he remarked has an immaculate sense for people, and his brother Ingemar, with bringing them from abroad. Pelle brought college students Christian, Dani, Mark, and Josh, while Ingemar brought his co-workers, Simon and Connie. Connie was killed and her corpse was desecrated while Simon was subjected to the Blood Eagle Norse pagan torture ritual. At the end of the festival, Ingemar offers himself as a sacrifice.  

Maja

Maja is a redheaded Hårga girl who has a crush on Christian Hughes, the boyfriend of protagonist Dani Ardor. She attempts to seduce Christian by spiking his drink with menstrual blood and putting her pubes in his food. She had eyes on Christian ever since Pelle showed a picture of him to her. After the mating ritual, he is disposed of as per the wishes of the May Queen, Dani Ardor. 

Father Odd

Father Odd is a Hårga elder who oversees the Midsommar celebrations and gives Josh and Christian trivia about their practices. 

Grandmother Siv

Siv is a Hårga elder and the cult's matriarch and leader. She mostly organizes the festival and its traditional practices and ceremonies. She convinces Christian to cheat on Dani with Maja, saying that it can give him an exclusive look about the mating rituals of the Hårga. Her manipulation is successful. She later has Dani sacrifice Christian along with the rest of the outsiders. Siv is portrayed by Gunnel Fred.

Pelle 

• See article Pelle

Dani Ardor

• See article Dani Ardor 

Dani Ardor is the current May Queen of the Harga. She was one of the outsiders lured by Pelle to perform in their traditions. After being elected May Queen, she discovers Christian having sex with Maja and decides to sacrifice him. She is successful.

Inge

A young girl who takes advantage of Mark's naivity and nymphomania to kill him. After Mark urinates on the ancestral tree, the next morning, Inge asks to be alone with him. It is not shown what exactly happens next, but when Josh photographs the rubi radl despite the wishes of the elders, he is killed by someone who is wearing Mark's flesh as a disguise. 

Ulle

Ulle is a Hårga woman whose specialty is aphrodisiacs and chemistry. She is knowledgeable about drugs and uses them to paralyze Christian before his death at the hands of the orders of the May Queen. 

Etymology 

The name "Hårga" comes from a Swedish folk song called Hårgalåten. In the song, a mysterious man plays on a fiddle and the people of Hårga Village "forgot about God and the world". The villagers are bewitched by the fiddler to dance on the peak of Hårga Mountain until they die. Name aside and isolated community aside, the ättestupa and the May Queen dance. The former takes place on a cliff where an elderly man and woman sacrifice themselves, while the latter recites a story eerily similar to that of the folk song; the woman running the show says that a "Black One" once seduced the youth of their village into dancing until their deaths. The woman then concludes that the May Queen dance is their means of defying that being by dancing and falling by their own terms.

Trivia

• They practice ritual inbreeding to produce new oracles. The horribly deformed Ruben is a product of this. However, they do show a desire to bring in outsiders to breed with in order to keep the gene pool from getting too small. All couples have to be approved by the elders as well. 
• Although their exact beliefs are somewhat ambiguous, it's possible that they are a Religion of Evil. However, they sometimes refer to the sun as their "Father" and there is mention of the Norse giant Ymir earlier in the movie, though it's never made clear if he's a deity they worship.
• According to the film’s press notes, Aster—who knew little about Swedish culture before writing Midsommar—teamed up with Stockholm-based set decorator Henrik Svensson to do his research. Together, they wrote a 100-page document about the film’s stylized universe. Aster ultimately shot the film in Hungary, with Budapest standing in for Hårga.
• As brutal as their practices are, they're surprisingly egalitarian and non-hypocritical as well, as the members are always prepared to offer up their own lives as well as those of outsiders should the ritual require it. It is probably very debatable, depending of the viewer, whether all this makes them less creepy, or more.
• Director Ari Aster made them more brutal and violent in the original version 

Gallery

The Hårga in their traditional uniforms

Maja (actor - Isabelle Grill)

Grandmother Siv (right) with Christian

Dani and the Hårga sharing empathy

Pelle kissing Dani when she becomes the May Queen

Maja ready to have sex

Christian is sacrificed and boiled to death by the Hårga

Announcing Midsommar

The May Queen

Finishing off the dead

Dani is crowned

Congratulating Dani

Ulle

Dani Ardor in the final shot of the movie

Meeting the elders

Unironic answer to "what do the Hårga do when their members get too old?"

Artwork of Hårgan women

Hårgans in the shape of a rune

These guys really love their blood rituals

Pelle and the Hårgans

Hate when this happens

Hårga artwork

Passing the torch

Ingemar

Paintings of the Hårga

Settling down for a feast

Ulf and Josh

Sacrificing for Midsommar

Gathering for rituals

British tourists horrified by the Attestupa ritual

A Hårgan yelling at Mark for pissing on the ancestral tree

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Preparing for the mating ritual

May Queen on her crown