Wet, dirt, and too much rain?

This summers festivals has experienced a lot of bad weather. Glastonbury and Roskilde almost got entirely lost in the mud, and the pictures seen from the festivals alone is enough to frighten the most experienced festival goer.

It was high expectations for the festivalsummer in 2007. Glastonbury was back on track, and there were exciting things happening in Norway as well. Toffen Gunnufsen, a man who created the Quart festival in Norway, decided to leave Quart, and create a new festival in Norway at Hove, Arendal. The vision behind this project was a big festival where the festival goers could camp right next to the concert area, creating a small Roskilde festival in Norway.

The expectations to Hove grew strong when the line-up was announced. Queen of the Stone Age, The Killers, My Chemical Romance where only some of the headliners, and the interest for the festival certainly grew high.

I travelled down with some friends from all around Norway, and our expectations were high as well. Could Hove even be compared to Roskilde?

Our first impression were mixed. We arrived a couple of days before the festival started, and after the tent were raised, we were hungry for food and beer. But as it turned out, the shop was closed for the night, and it was a long way to travel down to the nearest shop, or Arendal city. This would never happen at Roskilde! Hungry and pissed we decided to take a look around, and the evening was saved when we met some friendly neighbours with food and beer.

Then the festival started, and along came the rain. The newspapers were full of pictures of mud, deserted camps and people who were leaving. My mom rang and wondered if I was alrigh, and i was like; “yeah, it’s just a bit of rain!”. Well, the rain continued for some time, and I must admit, it ruined Amy Winehouse and Queens of the Stone Age a bit, but that was just because I was soaked, and not nearly drunk enough. One of my friends had an excellent time!

To sum up my first experience with the Hove festival, I have to say we were lucky. Yes, we had a couple of rainy days, but compared to Glastonbury and Roskilde it was nothing. I suppose I choosed wisely this year. This being said I think I’m going back to Roskilde next year. Not because I didn’t like Hove. Hove was great in lots of ways. It is a smaller festival than Roskilde (ca. 13000 visitors pr. day), and that is good in lots of ways. Shorter lines, much easier to meet people and so on. That being said, Hove was expensive and you could tell it was the festivals first year. The food could have been better, and the organization as well.

Even though, I’m proud of Toffen and his guys for creating Hove. It contributes to make the festival offer in Norway more exciting , and I certainly had some excellent times at Hove 2007!