Skanderborg Breaks Records – Again

The record-breaking crowd at Denmark’s Skanderborg Festival enjoyed themselves by knocking back 36,000 gallons of beer as something approaching summer weather finally arrived.

In fact, organizers are blaming the wet Danish summer for slow early ticket sales – last year sold out six weeks in advance – but it still ended up as the biggest "Smukkeste" festival that’s ever been staged.

Slight changes to the site configuration and increased capacity suggest the per-day paying crowd would have been at around 34,000. At press time the final figures were still being calculated.

The hundreds of volunteer helpers at Skanderborg are given free tickets to use when they’re not working, which means it takes a little longer to work out the final figures.

Apart from the beer, fans also drank what’s been loosely described as "an enormous amount" of vodka and orange. It’s a description that’s made troubling by the fact the festival got through 50 tons of oranges.

Skanderborg, which is in the centre Denmark just south of Aarhus, is well-known for selling more beer per head that any other event staged in the country.

"The crowd drink a lot but they have a good time and there’s always a very pleasant and laid-back feel to the place," was how festival chief JP Andersen once described it.

This year’s catering operations at Skanderborg are believed to have taken something in the region of 40 million Danish (US$7.4 million).

The acts appearing August 8-12, and possibly helping out with the drinking, included Peter Gabriel, Razorlight, Zucchero, Gavin DeGraw, Status Quo, Within Temptation and The Blue Van.