Roskilde Festival: A place for understanding Danish culture
In the last week of June 2017, I went in a train towards a city close to Copenhagen to work at a music festival. Roskilde was my destination, the city that was for almost 500 years capital of Denmark, being replaced by Copenhagen in the 16th century. Roskilde music festival is a traditional music festival in Scandinavian peninsula and it is the largest not only in Scandinavia but also in Northern Europe. The festival is a non-profit organization for development and support of music, culture, and humanism, with a focus in 2017 for gender equality. All income made from June 24th to July 2nd, the last day of the festival, will be donated to charity and in special the ones who fight against gender inequality.
According to the festival organizers, around 130,000 people took part and once again they sold out the days of concert. It is the size of a small town and that what I could see on these days that I was part of this event. On Saturday 24th and in the following days, thousands of youth got off of the train in Roskilde Station towards the venue that is located 2.5km far from the station. With enormous backpacks, tents, chairs and many cans of beers, these youths get their wristband to have access, check in and run to find a perfect spot in one of the camping area that they offer. Around 50,000 tents are pitched during the festival days as reported by Jyllands-Posten, a newspaper from Denmark. Mainly of these are teenagers who just finished their high school and are there to celebrate this rite of passage to the “adult” life.
Roskilde Festival was created by two hippie high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, with the focus to be oriented to hippies. Today the festival covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. Even though the festival is one of the largest in Europe, it is primarily known by Danes and their neighbors. In 1972 Roskilde Foundation took over the control of the festival, which has since run the festival as a non-profit event. For this, the festival counts with thousands of volunteers who each year goes to the festival to have in the organization and running it for they offer the best experience for those who are enjoying the music festival. The volunteer traditional is so strong in the region of Roskilde that has passed for ages in the families, from grandparents to their grandsons and granddaughters, all of them have been part of the festival.
From Saturday to Tuesday, the camping is the biggest attraction in the festival, once the festival started the official lineup from Wednesday with The Weekend as the headliner. During these days, the festivalgoers made their own party with small speaker “trucks” (Speaker Stacks) and everyone gets around it to drink and dance. The event is so traditional that there is a competition for the nicest and biggest speaker stacks and some of them got famous for the previous years. The festival in order to create some entertainment for them, start with a preliminary lineup until Wednesday with some small bands that are traditional for Danes.
The headliners for this year were Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire, The XX, Ice Cube, Justice, The Weekend, and some artists that attract a great audience were presented even they were not the headliners as Lorde, G-Easy, Icona Pop and many others. With an eclectic music sound, the festival also offered a great number of different activities with a graffiti, blót (a typical Viking celebration with songs, dance, and food), and even a naked marathon where people run naked in a weather of 7° degrees Celsius this year.
The weather is another challenge, with a “summer” weather that can vary from 5° to 24° degrees, camping is not easy. Besides the wet summer of Denmark, where there is always a possibility of raining. That what happened on the Thursday and Friday, with a strong raining, the site of the festival turned into a muddy area where only the rubber boots were capable of protecting. Danes know that every year this happens and most of them brought not only the raincoat but also the rubber boots to walk around.
The festival is full of innovation everywhere, being part of it, I could see how innovation is strong in Denmark. Apart from the construction of a temporary city in Roskilde Festival with supermarket, pharmacy, tobacco shopping, and many other stores that allowed them to stay 24h on the site, they had services that you cannot imagine if you are anywhere else world. As the power in Roskilde is a big issue and people today needs to charge their phone, camera and everything else, Roskilde Festival has an area called cloakroom that besides being a place to save your things, it is also a place to charge phones or cameras for free. The other option for this issue, it is a company called Volt who offer a service of charged power banks. Once you subscribe the service for a fee, you can have once a day the power bank swapped, what allows you to charge your phone once you are using it. The usefulness of this service attracted many festivalgoers, who live in a digital world and cannot be without their phone and take photos to remember the experience that they were living.
Do you stay on the line for a long time without thinking what you want to eat before you order? The festival launched an app called Fast Track with the goal to shorten the lines and people could choose what they want to eat once they have been waited on. The order can be also paid in the app since they inserted the card information, then it will be approved once they scan a QR code with the attendant. Voila! The order is made and you do not need to take your card or wait for your turn to pay for it.
As you can see, even in a traditional culture as the Danish one, the “Vikings” allowed to use their innovation to bring more convenience and opportunity to enjoy a festival that still with their roots strong, but they are open to bringing diversity and open to innovation connecting the society to the current world. Understand how strong is the tradition of this festival for Danes is part of understanding their culture and values. Being a volunteer in Roskilde festival is part of their process to maintain their roots and providing a better future for others with all money donated to charity as the result of their work. Ideas that should be spread in the world to make it better.
