Roskilde: 11 Things You Won't See at U.S. Festivals

In 2009, a video of a naked man at Coachella went viral after he was arrested and tased for not putting on his clothes. This is unheard of at Roskilde. One naked man in his early 20s told us that he lost his clothes (they were hanging over his shoulder). When he walked around, he received looks ranging from apathy to celebration. He was later spotted high-fiving three teenagers, who asked, “Can I touch your penis?” When they were politely refused, one of the teens began tapping on the man’s penis with his sneaker as if it was a hacky sack. The incident ended with more high-fives. “Yeah, man. That’s Roskilde,” said a nearby bartender nonchalantly. Other sartorially challenged men jovially posed for pics with the clothed among us. Other nude situations are more organized. Since 1998, the festival has organized Nøgenløb (“Big nude race”), pictured above, an annual nude run around the festival.

Roskilde, and most of Europe, has long solved the bane of many U.S. festivals: Intolerably long bathroom lines. Rather than subject both sexes to Porta-Potties for all your waste disposal needs, the festival featured P-Trees (portable urinals attached to a tree), standing urinals known as pissoirs and one of the world’s longest troughs at nearly 2,800 feet. Lest we get accused of sexism, there’s also the “missoir,” a standing urinal for women. The multiple outlets are not just for convenience; they’re part of a bigger conservation and sanitation effort by the festival to decrease the total amount of water used.

Sweden—Denmark’s neighbors to the northeast—was represented with the Balder Thor food stand, featuring “Sliced reindeer meat in mushroom, onion and creamy sauce with mashed potatoes, lingonberries and cucumber” for 60 Danish krone (about $10). Reindeer are as plentiful in Denmark as in the U.S. (read: nil), so this was as popular with carnivorous Danes as American music journalists.

Look carefully at the above photo of the Roots’ Saturday afternoon set. No cell phones. Not one. This was not unique. Fuse saw more than 50 acts and barely anyone was taking pics, recording songs or holding their phone in the air to play for a friend. I told a festival organizer that this wasn’t the norm for a U.S. festival and asked why no one was holding up phones or cameras. He looked at me quizzically and said, “Because they’re paying attention to the music.”

Want some elderflower juice to wash down that smørrebrød (open-faced sandwich with rye bread and pieces of meat, fish or potatoes) and flæskesteg (roast pork with crackling and pickled red cabbage)? Done. Vodka and rhubarb juice? Easy. Sadly, though, our quest to determine what was in a “Richard and water” was fruitless. To accommodate the 1 million liters of beer consumed during the festival, organizers provided a cardboard five-pack beer holder, a convenient alternative to the U.S. equivalent of balancing five beers in your hands.

Positioned next to a giant wall stating “Rights for all don’t grow on a wall,” the stand above, which sold traditional Middle Eastern food, was emblazoned with the Palestinian flag, a guard tower and a tank.

The rules for the above game are simple: Lie down on the bench and rotate 360 degrees under and back over the bench without it toppling. Complete this deceptively simple task and win three Jäger Bombs (a shot of Jäger mixed with Burn energy drink). From the participants we spoke to, this is difficult to complete sober. Drunk: next to impossible. Two (sober) Fuse employees tried and failed, and in our highly unscientific observation, roughly 10% of people were actually able to finish the task. Nearby, contestants competed to see who could drive a nail into a piece of wood in the fewest amount of hammer swings. The winner received a lei for reasons that remain unexplained.

Having been to many U.S. festivals, we’ve seen people read to pass the time between acts, but never from a book borrowed from a festival library. Roskilde set up its own lending library on the festival grounds, allowing concertgoers to donate and borrow books at their leisure to foster a communal, interdependent vibe.

When Bjork ended her 90-minute set Sunday night with the chant “Raise your flag” from 2007’s “Declare Independence,” the sentiment, unlike in the states, was literal. Fans bought or made hundreds of flags commemorating their country, favorite band or, in one case, an alien having sex with a cow (which, when lifted up and down, provided a bizarrely brilliant juxtaposition with Alison Krauss’ soulful bluegrass). The flags have a practical purpose too, allowing groups to easily meet up among 125,000 people.

In one camping area called Poor City, festivalgoers can receive a free shave, haircut or massage from asylum seekers who have applied for the right to live as a refugee in Denmark. There are more than 100,000 Danish refugees, with festival organizers creating Poor City to allow guests to, according to organizers, “sample life on the edge of society and thereby change prejudice to a new position on the issue and take initiative to action.”

The typical security guard at a U.S. festival is a surly man who wants nothing more than to get you coming out of a crowd-surf and body slam you to the pavement. At Roskilde, guards seemed genuinely happy to help pass out water or direct you to a stage, contributing to the “We’re all in this together” vibe. “The security guards are giving out water,” said singer Mikal Cronin. “Usually they’re beating the s**t out of a kid.”