- Photo: Rasmus Weng Karlsen
Roskilde Festival 2008, 3 - 6 July
As it is often the case when following a rainful year, it was difficult to sell tickets to Roskilde Festival in 2008. 2007 had flushed many people away, and the result was that only 68,000 of the 75,000 available tickets were sold.
This did not put a damper on the party, though. In the camps there was persistent talk of a "party revenge". The weather helped with lots of sun from the first Sunday and all the way through the week until the final Sunday when a paltry 3.5 mm of rain fell. That may explain the impressive sale of ice cream at the festival – more than 80,000 stick ice creams were sold.
”Roskilde rocks! The best festival in the world!” Neil Young declared during his concert on the Orange Stage Saturday night. He scored raving reviews. So did Radiohead, Nick Cave's band Grinderman, the revived noise kings My Bloody Valentine and The Streets who – lead by a small Englishman on the Orange Stage – got 60,000 people to sit on their heels, only to jump up again at his command.
Roskilde proved to be perhaps the most peaceful festival in the world. According to the local police, the festival was safer and more peaceful than an average Danish provincial town – despite the fact that everyone parties in this festival town.
Roskilde Festival was also impressively clean in 2008. Under the slogan ”Less Trash More Music”, the audience helped collect garbage. Single-handedly they collected over 20 tons of garbage.
The humanitarian campaign headline of 2008 was "Fair Phone – Fair Future", focusing on production of mobile phones with sustainable materiale and without exploiting mine workers in Africa. The audience could donate their refund to the project, resulting in a collection profit of €150,000. This result corresponds to each festival-goer donating 15 cans.
2008 also saw new material about Roskilde Festival. Film director Ulrik Wivel presented his documentary with the simple and telling title "Roskilde", "Roskilde Festival – keep on rockin'" is the title of a book looking back on Roskilde '08, while the book "Roskilde Stories" consists of 300 audience stories from the period 1971-2007.
