Festival Season

There is no better place to start than with a twisted ankle, a bike and a 4km downhill ride to town. Oh and let’s not forget the rain – summer West-Norwegian rain.

Summertime in Europe is the season of festivals. Outdoor celebrations of sunshine, abundance, unregulated spending and often too much alcohol. My first sunshine festival lacked just that! The wind was frigid and the town of Voss looked to me like any other centre of consumerism. Little human interaction, wet tar and unsmiling shoppers. There were the obligatory kebab shops and a rundown almost grubby second-hand shop. Do Norwegians shop in second hand shops? Everywhere I saw designer clothes and nice cars (at least compared with what I'm used to), loaded high with expensive sports gear... but with the festival tents in the foreground and the lake reflecting the blue skies (yes they did finally appear on day 3! ) the awesomeness of the characters that partook in Veko (the biggest extreme sports festival in the world) made the take home stories more wild than fiction.

Festival Characters

I have come to personally know some of these rule-bending natural-world living characters and despite full investment in the proper gear they live their lives from meal to meal, campground to campervan, and sure, beer to beer, party to party, but most of all location to location. All beautiful and still linked to raw nature and imbued with the pure essence of life.

At Veko, long-borders cruise downhill switch-back bends at dizzying speeds wearing less protection than I had ever imagined. Speed-fliers, paragliders and sky-divers tumbled one after the other from planes that buzzed ceaselessly across the sky as long as the wind held back and heavy rain stayed away. Trail-riders covered in mud and exhausted from trail building merged with slackliners, kayakers shuttled from river run to river run, wind tunnel athletes looked slick and toned, while speed climbers fingered pouches of chalk, cliff divers stretched in preparation, parasailers hitched up to boats and SUP paddlers lay spread like colourful confetti over the lake.

Full Immersion?

It all felt a little overwhelming as I signed up for the ‘Vossakrigar’ fun obstacle course that will sum up the weeks festival for many spectators.

But soon I too am flying in the wind tunnel, sure my legs are awkwardly splayed and I do keep turning in odd directions but Iam actually flying with no stabilizing hand around my waist!

Next I try my luck at paragliding and on first flight I am hooked. We are taking off, flying and landing solo down a steep hill over two to three hundred metres stretches, each time exhausted but happy to climb back up the hill and try again and again and again.

I go from watching the EU qualifying race for the pro kayakers to kayaking on one of the easiest sections myself... with a bit of a swim but I had borrowed an expensive dry suit and the cold weather didn't even make me gasp.

Andy the shy biker from Australia filled me in on tales from the muddy biking trails and then politely inquired one afternoon with such worry that he might be keeping me from some other important work, if I knew where the med team was as he might need stitches!

Every evening the day’s events were showcased at ‘Video of the Day’ where athletes from all disciplines collected, drank beer, congratulated each other, asked after the outcomes of hospital visits, drank some more beer and cheered the days prize winners.

The Veko stunt of the week brought home all that was, is and can be in extreme sports. As one silhouetted figure walked a tight rope across one of West Norway’s famous fjord valleys, a speed flower flew above and one below spreading the ashes of a base jumper who never made the end of last year's festival but who died doing what he loved.

But although that perspective is enough to scare some from never feeling the euphoria that comes with or from extreme sports, the daring here participated where they could. Many a cliff dive ended in a belly-flop as novices took to the water competing for pain thresholds. The speed climbing heats were slowed a little as non-climbers completed with smiles. Friends of friends kayaked, nobodies tandem skydived, someone attempted riding a unicorn down a waterfall (that ended in a hospital visit! ), but we all left base jumping to the professionals.

On the dance floor, long-borders danced salsa, wannabes crowd-surfed naked on an inflatable couch, water pistols got some thrown out of the arena, winds pulled one unlucky skydiver into the festival palisades (no injury), and still the athletes were up in the morning to partake in precision landing competitions, gnarly creek runs, more biking, flying, kayaking, swimming, racing and athletic festival fun.

Should I Compete?

I'm a no-one in the sports outdoors world - I guess I'm a wannabe, and the internal ego that made me sign up as a challenger was about to be rudely assaulted when I saw the Vossakrigar obstacle course (stage one) that I was to compete in. In parallel with the current world obsession of Crossfit, the designers had gotten carried away: criss-crossing tyres, up and over high tables, floor shunting in kayaks, up a bouldering wall to ring a bell, through a pool, flipping over large tractor tyres, up a long rope attached to a crane, loading weights into a wheelbarrow and at a run, threading through and around three deck chairs and then transferring the weights onto a bar to then perform a straight leg deadlift, followed by piecing together a puzzle of the festival logo and finally back through the tyres - and all this carrying a beer keg... empty thank goodness!

There was no way I had the strength, agility or even ability to compete against the very serious looking men and women that lined up in micro sports gear to show off chiselled muscles toned for competition.

To top it all off, I was over an hour late and had missed the competition brief!

I had only one thing going for me here - in order to get a free festival pass I had worked three shifts in the ticket office. Most of the spectators had no memory of buying the ticket off me but I recognised them and felt the only thing I could do in the situation I was in, was recruit them to help me perform a comic run and so I set to.

At 2 p. m. in the afternoon and before the evening beer drinking the Norwegians are back to being their shy selves and I had to work hard in my recruitment. I found a paddle for the kayak, had a bystander hand me a carrot for energy and others pour water over my athletic self as per Tour de France, used a long stick to ring the bell at the top of the climbing wall to save me actually climbing, took my shoes off for the water run and managed to borrow a lacy bra to do a pretend striptease in the pool, climbed the crane itself not the rope, had an audience member jump into my wheelbarrow (forget the weights! ), did a dead-lift up over my head of the weightless bar, stopped for a beer with another audience member in the deck chairs, put all the puzzle pieces in my pocket and ended the competition last but with a hard-to-recruit adoring fans blowing kisses and handing me flowers as I crossed the finish line... and all this to the chant Kenya - Kenya – Kenya!

The trouble was that I was invited back to compete in the finals the next day... I feigned a hangover... or hold on, was it real?

Are you an Erasmus Student wanting to experience Exstremsportveko, the worlds largest extreme sports festival?

• The festival is a week from midsummer each year.
• To get a free festival pass you need to work three 8 hour shifts over the week
• To sign up as a volunteer email [email protected]
• If you are trained in a certain sport you can volunteer on location
• Be aware that the sports happen over quaite a large radius in and around Voss so if you can hire a car between a group of you it is worth it so as to get the most from all the competitions.
• Volunteers also get half price camping.

Photo gallery