Yesterday was a day of great sorrow in my home town and today isn’t much better. The Hultsfred festival that’s been arranged here for twenty-four years has been cancelled due to not enough tickets being sold this year. Three years ago this was the biggest rock festival in Sweden with more than 30 000 tickets sold but after two years of only around 20 000 tickets sold and this years only 5000 they cancel the festival. After loosing money for two years they found it impossible to arrange a festival that would mean loss of money for the third year in a row and yesterday declared their bankruptcy.

An era of music, fun and party in Hultsfred has come to a end. This is sad for everyone who visited the festival but especially for us who live here. Hultsfred is a small town with only 5000 inhabitants and the festival was pretty much the only thing going on here. This is what Hultsfred is known for. This was what was good about living in this town. This was the thing you looked forward to every year. But no more.

There’s a Facebook group called “Vi som åker till Hultsfred ändå!” (We who are going to Hultsfred anyway!) though. It’s a group for people who are planning to come here to camp and party anyway, even though there’s no festival. I’m obviously a member of the group and I’m looking forward to participating in some kind of party during this weekend and next week. Like I said, no festival is especially sad for us who live here so it’s wonderful that people are still coming here. It would have been horrible with a week of absolutely nothing going on when there was supposed to have been a big festival taking place. Of course this will be nothing like what the festival would have been but at least it’s something. A last hurrah.

To those who made the festival possible: Thank you for the five wonderful years of festival fun I was lucky to be a part of. I will miss it a lot.