Roskilde Festival

Month : July
Place : Roskilde, Denmark
Famous For : Music Festival
Attractions : Rock, Punk Rock, Pop, Hip Hop, Alternative rock, World music, Electronic music

Roskilde Festival is festival held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the five biggest annual music festivals in Europe (the other four being the Sziget Festival, the Glastonbury Festival, the Palo Festival and Rock Werchter). It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfr and Jesper Switzer Mller, and promoter Carl Fischer. In 1972, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation, which has since run the festival as a non-profit organization for development and support of music, culture and humanism.

Major Attractions

It is Denmark's first real music-oriented festival, originally for hippies but today it covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. The festival officially starts the following Thursday at the Animal Showgrounds (in recent years simply known as the "Festival Site") and lasts for 4 days. The bands presented at Roskilde Festival are traditionally a balanced mix of large well known artists in the absolute live elite, cutting-edge artists from all contemporary genres, popular crowd-pleasing acts plus local Scandinavian headliners and up-and-coming names. The stages were until 2003 named after their colour, but as the names had not matched the actual colour of the tents for a period, it was decided to rename all stages except the Orange Stage, the central and main stage. The music covers such styles as rock, Hip Hop, Metal, urban, electronica and 3rd world contemporary music. It has become a tradition to let an up-and-coming Scandinavian band open the Orange Stage on the first day of the festival. There are often surprising performances by classical acts, film-music, opera etc. Apart from music there is always some theatre and 'lone acts' wandering around the festival site. Terrain and tents are always decorated in various ways.