At Last A Festival In Bergen

The new one-day festival in Bergen, Norway, June 15 was a huge hit with the local and national media, with Bergens Tidende and Bergensavisen splashing it across five pages.

The huge media fuss was because while Norway’s second city has Bergenfest, which is an indoor event, it’s the first time the old Hanseatic trading port was celebrating its first outdoor festival.

The lineup included Rammstein, Alice In Chains and Hatebreed.

There were 13,000 people on the 15,000-capacity Greenfield site tucked between the old fort that once guarded the entrance to the port and the hills that overlook it. It’s usually used as a military training ground.

“Next year it will be three days and we’ll look at linking it with Norwegian Wood and Copenhell,” Live Nation Norway chief Henriette Lem told Pollstar. Live Nation also runs Copenhell, which is in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Oslo’s Norwegian Wood.

The 8,000-capacity, four-day event sited in a natural amphitheatre near the centre of the Norwegian capital attracted a total crowd of nearly 24,000.

The June 10-13 Norwegian Wood lineup included Van Morrison, Jackson Browne, Amy Macdonald, Mark Knopfler, Opeth and Porcupine Tree.