It had been a couple of years since my last pilgrimage into the forests of Värmland, but Arvikafestivalen still felt like coming home. Black clothes, questionable sleep, thousands of people voluntarily living in cold tents for the privilege of seeing loud music performed in unpredictable weather.
The glorious camping site, before the storm.
The first days were almost suspiciously perfect. Blue skies, blazing sun and dust hanging over the paths between the stages. It looked as though someone upstairs had finally decided to give Sweden a proper summer weekend. That optimism lasted right up until the sky changed its mind.
Without warning, the clouds rolled in like an invading army. Sheets of water slammed into the campsite with enough force to flatten tents, flood walkways and convince even the most seasoned festival veterans that perhaps Noah had been onto something after all. By sheer luck, I happened to be standing under a roof watching In Strict Confidence when the apocalypse began. Others weren’t nearly as fortunate, as this video shows:
The soundtrack of the video says everything. Screams. Laughter. Pure chaos. Around the two-minute mark someone starts laughing like an escaped supervillain while hundreds of soaked younglings sprint through what used to be a campsite. Civilization is apparently only ever one thunderstorm away from complete collapse.
Veterans immediately started comparing it to the legendary downpour during the Sisters of Mercy concert back in 1998. Festival people love measuring disasters. Some count concerts. Others remember mud depth.
My empire of dirt.
An hour later, the camping area looked like civilization after the apocalypse. Mud swallowed chairs, tents leaned at impossible angles and people wandered around carrying beer with the solemn determination of Arctic explorers. Nobody complained. Misery shared is one of the oldest festival traditions.
The festival crew dug frantic trenches to drain the water. Soon there were puddles and mud instead of a lake, which was a great improvement. Combichrist somehow sounds even better when you’re ankle-deep in sludge. Mud apparently isn’t a bug, it’s production design.
Johan Van Roy, Suicide Commando.
The skies stayed dark for the rest of the evening. Douglas McCarthy’s line about “waiting for the Lightning Man to strike” kept looping through my head while I quietly hoped the festival organizers had remembered to install lightning rods on those enormous metal stages.
Fortunately, the thunder kept its distance. By morning the storm had become just another story to tell over breakfast beer, and the sun returned as if nothing had happened. Festival weather has no memory, just wet socks.
Walking on sunshine through the camping area.
S.P.O.C.K celebrated both their ninth Arvika appearance and their twentieth anniversary by bringing former member Eddie Bengtsson back on stage, a reunion that felt entirely appropriate in a place built on nostalgia and stubborn devotion.
Other highlights included Suicide Commando, And One, Rotersand, The Crüxshadows, Lola Angst, Alice in Videoland, Deathstars, Behemoth and several others who provided the soundtrack to another wonderfully strange weekend.
The campsite slowly dried out. Patrik perfected his zombie cone-head impersonation. A mysterious pig continued its long-running campaign of stealing my beer. One of our neighbors turned out to be Mattias from The April Tears, that I used to listen to a lot once upon a time. That’s Arvika in a nutshell. You arrive for the bands and leave with stories that have almost nothing to do with the music.
See you next year at Camp Glenn!
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