Roskilde Festival

The first Roskilde Festival was held on 28 and 29 August 1971, originally named the Sound Festival. It was inspired by festivals and youth gatherings like Newport, Isle of Wight and Woodstock. It was characterized mainly by poor management but also great enthusiasm. The festival's inaugural year saw roughly 20 bands ranging from folk, jazz, rock and pop genres all playing on a single stage, which lasted for two days with approximately some 10,000 visitors per day.[3]

In 1978, festival organizers acquired the Canopy Scene, an orange musical stage previously used by The Rolling Stones on a European tour. Since its beginning, the Canopy Scene and its characteristic arches have become a well-known symbol and logo representing the festival.

In the 1990s, electronic music was introduced to the festival. In 1991, Club Roskilde was held, which was an electronic music dance club held in the evenings. In 1995, electronic music artists received their own stage. In the following years, even more room for electronic music was created by the establishment of the chill-out zone and the Roskilde Lounge. Since then, artists like Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, Basement Jaxx and Chemical Brothers appeared on the main stage.

By the 1990s, the number of tickets offered for sale was restricted and later even reduced. Due to steadily increasing popularity of the festival, the number of visitors had increased to up to 125,000. In addition, 90,000 tickets for about 25,000 volunteers, 5,000 media people and 3,000 artists were added. In order to preserve the quality of the festival, the festival organizers decided to limit the number of participants. The distance from the rearmost part of the camping area to the stages of the festival management seemed to have become unreasonable. The festival had become so popular that the festival management decided in 1994 to expand the festival area to the west. The festival site was now on divided by the railway line into two parts. In 1996 the festival had its own station, which should facilitate the arrival of visitors. In 1997, another tent called Roskilde Ballroom was built.

Bruce Springsteen performing on the Orange Stage

The bands presented at Roskilde Festival are traditionally a balanced mix of large, well-known artists, 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 color of the tents for a period, it was decided to rename all stages except the Orange Stage, the central and main stage. The Orange Stage is open in front of a huge field, whereas the other tents cover the whole audience, the largest of which is the Arena stage (formerly known as Green Stage), the largest tent in Europe with an official capacity of 17,000 people. The 2007 edition saw two new tents, replacing Ballroom (1997–2006) which presented mainly World music, and Metropol (2003–2006) which presented mainly Electronica. In 2010 two stages, Astoria (from 2007) and Lounge, did not return, due to a slight shift in focus towards fewer, but bigger bands. In 2014 the Odeon stage was cancelled along with the surrounding sustainable-style food outlets, and the area was replaced with pre-booked tents for festival guests that prefer not to bring their own.

The music covers such styles as rock, Hip Hop, Metal, urban, electronica and 3rd world contemporary music. It has become a tradition to let a Danish act 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. The current tents are:

The festival campsite covers nearly 80 hectares and access to it is included in the ticket price. It usually opens on Sunday morning prior to the festival itself. Apart from the small and separate Camping South it is divided into two areas, East and West, each comprising a service center with establishments ranging from food stalls to a cinema. The campsite is further divided into 'agoras' that provide toilets, cell phone charging and luggage storage. They also host events according to each agora's theme: dance, skate, swim etc.

Over the most recent years, the opening of the campsite has turned into an event of its own; large areas of the campsite each year is turned into gravel pits which has increased demand for prime spots in the campsite. Thousands of people arrive during Saturday (some even arrive several days before), to wait in the queue until 16:00 that afternoon when the gates to the campsite officially open. Due to this, the festival has introduced temporary transit areas (in both East and West), making it possible to let all these thousands of people get in at the same time. The last couple of years the fences around the transit areas has been knocked down several hours ahead of official opening by festival guests eager to get the spot for their tent.

In recent years, the fences into the camping site have been overrun earlier than the official opening. This is called "Væltning af hegnet" (The overturning of the fence). The festival has improved security at the fences up until the festival, but without success. Thus the camping site was overrun in 2008 and again in 2009.[4]

As of 2018, a new gate system has been installed. This means that all guests arriving first fill 7 rows of the gate system (1000 people in each). Behind this, a large field holding all remaining guests. At 16:00 on the opening Saturday, the gates open, one row at a time at approx 90sec intervals. Once this is complete, the remaining guest in the back area are free to enter the camping area.

Every year since 1999, on the Saturday of the festival (held on a Thursday in 2015, 2016 and 2017), Roskilde Festival Radio organizes a naked run around the camp site. One male and one female winner receive a ticket for the next year's festival.[5] In the past few years, the naked run has become so popular that the Festival Radio has been forced to arrange qualifier events for the male participants.

During Pearl Jam's concert at the Orange Stage on 30 June 2000, a crush occurred. Nine people died, and twenty-six people were injured, three of them seriously. The dead included a 26-year-old cadet police officer from Hamburg, a 23-year-old Dutchman and three Swedes, two aged 22 and one 20. Three Danes, including a 17-year-old, also died. These nine victims died when they were crushed as the crowd rushed toward the stage.[6] The reasons for their deaths were examined by police, public prosecutors, and subsequent civil trials, all of which determined that the causes were accidental. Many people fell down at one place; when they did not immediately get up, crowdsurfers fell into this "hole", and people at the bottom died of suffocation. On the day of the incident, there was also heavy rainfall, which could have contributed to the ground being slippery.[7] By the time security guards in front of the stage got to the area of the accident, it was too late. The band was informed and stopped the music, and told the crowd to step back. Some bands canceled.[8] As crowd surfing seems to have been among the precipitating factors, it was subsequently forbidden across most festivals in Europe.[9]

In the following year, the accident led to significant changes in safety procedures in order to avoid similar situations – not just at Roskilde Festival, but also at other festivals in Europe. Before the accident in 2000, Roskilde Festival was considered one of the safest festivals. Many other festivals have smaller safety systems than Roskilde Festival and revised their procedures even further. Glastonbury Festival in England chose to cancel its festival in 2001, in part to consider lessons from Roskilde, although mainly due to an influx of 150,000 non-ticketed visitors at its own 2000 event . Each year Roskilde Festival makes an extensive health and safety assessment on the basis of which the festival is executed. The accident at the Orange Stage led to the construction of a memorial ground on the festival site containing a stone with the inscription "How fragile we are" (a quote from the Sting song "Fragile") surrounded by nine trees.

Pearl Jam's song "Love Boat Captain" references the tragedy with the line "Lost nine friends we'll never know... two years ago today." When performed in concert, lead singer Eddie Vedder modifies the lyric to reflect the passage of time since the tragedy.

The 2010 festival officially opened with a memorial to those killed in 2000. Patti Smith held the short pre-concert ceremony, and she chose to open the tribute with accompanying music from Mozart. Her lead guitarist, Lenny Kaye, then read out the nine men's names while Smith threw nine roses into the crowd.[6][10]

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Roskilde Festival.

• Official website of the Roskilde Festival
• Official community website of the Roskilde Festival
• Roskilde Festival forum
• Festival radio website
• High quality photos from the Roskilde Festival