I am so disappointed that I am not in Tromsø right now for the Bukta Festival, a huge 3-day long musikk festival that is close by to the nabolag (neighborhood) that I´ll be living in very soon. If you know the area it´s in Telegrafbukta, a small bay on the southwest side of Tromsøya. One of my friends sent me a Facebook message that he was there enjoying the company of good øl (beer), venner (friends), sol (sun), and musikk. I was very sjalu (jealous).
The festival officially started in 2004, but the idea came from a much smaller festival called ´North of Nowhere´ that had taken place in a different location in Tromsø (Åsgård) in 2002 and 2003. North of Nowhere was a gratis, family-friendly, non-alcoholic musikk festival staffed only by volunteers. In 2004 the very first Bukta Festival took place, attracting 5,000 attendees who enjoyed the musikk of Norwegian artister. Just a year later, the line-up included utenlandske (international) artister and boasted more than double the attendance as the previous year. 2006 was another successful year for the festival with 13,000 attendees and more utenlandske artister. In 2007 the festival grew from 2 to 3 days and in 2008 all three days were sold out with 30,000 in the audience. As you can see, the event is clearly a hit. Hence, my sadness for not being there…
Some of the bands that are playing at Bukta Festival Tromsø 2010 include: Big Bang, Hellbillies, Kråkesølv, Juliette Lewis, Dinosaur Jr., The Sonics, Sivert Høyem, Mew Clutch, Danko Jones, Navigators, Disciplines, Black Sheeps, Bad County, and Datarock, among others.
I just looked at some bilder (pictures) on the festival´s hjemmeside (homepage) bukta.no and it sure sounds like a good time. Just to give you an idea of what it costs to go to a musikk festival in Norway, the dagsbillett is NOK 630 ($100) and the Festivalpass 3 dager (3 day festival pass) is NOK 1250 ($200). So…I´m not sure why one would ever pay for 2 separate days… I´m actually not a huge musikk festival person, but I think that´s probably considerably more than what you would pay in the U.S. But again, if you are Norwegian, it doesn´t hurt like it does when you are tourist (shelling out that much penger for a weekend of musikk). Regardless, if I were there right now, I´d pay it. Tromsø doesn´t often see nice warm, sunny days like today was according to the reports.
If you want to check out the hjemmeside, it´s a pretty great site and a great way to practice your norsk (since you kind of already know what kind of information would be on the site, right?). Fear not, English is available.
If you are going to be in Norway this summer and you love musikk festivaler, check out this website for a map of dozens of festivaler in Norway!
Listen to the værvarsel (weather report) article5194129.ece.
