Roskilde — probably the best festival in the world.
Roskilde Music Festival — The Mothership Of All Festivals (at least for the Scandinavian fleet.)
Among festivals in Northern Europe, the Roskilde Festival Foundation is the mothership. Dating back to 1971, created for and by hippies, it’s arguably the longest lasting — and one of the most important — festivals in the world: ‘Still crazy after all these years’, as seasoned festival-goers will eagerly tell you from amid a mist of sweet smoke. Over the years, it’s changed the life of many young Scandinavian festival virgins, as well as many musicians’ lives, and it’s been the most important school for Scandinavia’s music and festival industry.
Roskilde Festival is the first — and perhaps the only — encounter young people from small and ‘boring’ places from the Nordic countries have with an ‘ideal city’, as teenagers slip away from Social Democratic homes and emphatically overprotective parents where safety comes first and helmets are worn by all. A 30-minute ride from Copenhagen Central Station, this music lover’s Shangri-la pops up every year at the start of July as a medium-sized conurbation on farmland outside the town of Roskilde, west of Copenhagen on Zealand island (Danish: Sjælland). It rises, pulsates, breathes, lives and propagates over an intense, lengthy week, until, once again, it’s disassembled and the land returns to agriculture for another year.
Though this city is ephemeral, for its 160,000 inhabitants it’s real enough: a temporary parallel world with a clear identity, where commitment and volunteering take top priority. “The Orange Feeling”, the slogan taken from the ‘Canopy stage’ — the main stage, a huge orange musical tent that the festival acquired from the Rolling Stones after they used it on their 1978 European tour — has indeed maintained its 70s texture and feel. The feeling of ‘community’, of unity and of belonging the first time one participates in Roskilde — that sense of being part of something bigger — is a key experience that returns, again and again, any time one revisits the festival. (The ‘community’ feeling at the 80 hectares campsite (or gravel pit), can, at times, be too intense, for some.) Everyone is there to enjoy this incredible event together, and it’s this ‘ingredient’, something all other festivals try their best to seed, which Roskilde has kept as a hippie imperative since the 70s. Because the festival is structured as a foundation, any surplus goes back to making an even better festival in the years ahead (as well as to support the community in and around the town of Roskilde, and, additionally, to help fund national and international aid).
The ‘Canopy stage’ — or ‘Orange stage’ — is not only a symbol for great music, peace and love, but also a remembrance for a very a tragic incident in which nine young men from five different countries lost their lives in 2000 during a Pearl Jam concert, crushed to death in front of the stage. In the following year, the accident led to significant changes in safety procedures in order to avoid similar situations — not just at the Roskilde Festival, but also at other festivals across Europe. These days, you can even take a masters degree in crowd safety at the Centre of Disaster Research at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Roskilde festival.
The festival has always been at the forefront of music while preaching a gospel of experience, activism, and engagement — from art and architecture to food, the environment and ecology, not forgetting peace and love. And, yes: Roskilde has the world’s best audience. Furthermore, the festival has been at the forefront of other remarkable activities, not least their ‘from piss to pils’ — innovation. To coin a phrase, Roskilde refreshes the parts other festivals can’t reach.
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