Roskilde Festival

Facts

Scandinavia's biggest party

Roskilde Festival is a music festival held once a year in June and July on a cattle showground near Roskilde. When it started in 1971, it was a private initiative, but it is now run by the Roskilde Foundation. The festival draws mainly on volunteer manpower, and the profit goes to educational and humanitarian causes. Roskilde Festival has consistently managed to renew itself in terms of music and peaked in the 1990s with about 115,000 visitors. This extreme success was almost its downfall and the number of visitors is now limited to 75,000 people. The festival is still the largest of its kind in Scandinavia and has put Roskilde on the world map.

Public place

Selected entry

Experiencing The Slop" "

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Story written by Peder Bundgaard

Time / Periode 1971

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More than once, Roskilde Festival has been hit by the elements in the form of deluges, flooding and a sea of mud. A test of stamina – and not least the nostrils. This slush and mud is nicknamed The Slop". Sanitation and security are top-quality at Roskilde Festival. It is a model festival. It was therefore a tragic twist of fate when the crowd panicked on one rainy night in 2000 and nine people were crushed to death in front of the festival hallmark the orange Canopy stage. A beautiful memorial has been erected consisting of nine trees surrounding one stone bearing the inscription "How fragile we are". The memorial grove also symbolises the magic and life force that has made Roskilde Festival a rite of passage for many young people. "