Akerselva Torchlight Festival - Autumn Solstice

On my flight to Haugesund on wednesday night, i picked up the inflight magazine, and by utter chance, came across an article on olso and its summer festivals. the last one mentioned was the akerselva torchlight festival, and as pure luck would have it, it was on the night of my return, and my only free night for a while. so i rounded up a few mates and took the 10 minute train ride from the centre of oslo to check it out.

the festival marks the autumn solstice, the day where the night is now as long as the day. oslo celebrates by turning all of the streetlights off, and lighting 2600 (i read it, i didnt count) torches along an 8km section of the river that runs into oslo from the north.

as i was late getting back from haugesund, we started from half way down in Nydalen and made our way down the windy, wooded path. along the way were bands of all sorts, from loud stuff at the top, to folk singers, to church choirs, all dotted along the route. it was really really pretty, and was a wonderful thing to behold (hmm...was doubting whether or not to use the word 'behold' sounds a bit pompous...but anyway, works better than 'see'...)

the only problem was that without a truly great camera (mine is not) you dont really get the beauty of it from these photos. anyway, use your imagination

it reminded me of the Otaru festival in Sopporo Japan (see blog entry from...oooh way back maybe jan 07?), which was much much bigger, and covered in snow, this was no where near as nice, but none the less, was a beautiful spectacle...to behold (sorry). we made it to the end at around midnight

(again, click on the photos for a bigger view)

ps. read from bottom up, it goes in reverse chronological order