Lister

By Søren Folke Larsen
Translated by: Nadia Duthiers

It is only a few minutes past twelve when an exclusive group consisting of media and representatives from Roskilde Festival meet near Agora J, ready to deliver some very good news to the members of Camp Where’s Wally. Little do the camp members know what is about to happen, but when they see cameras approaching, the Wallys know that all their hard work has paid off as festival tickets.

One last appraisal

But the cries of joy are silenced for a short moment when Esben Danielsen says that the Camp of the Day panel is out doing a last minute judgement of the two finalists. The cold fear of having taken their victory for granted grips the hearts of the red and white hooped heroes and heroines. But after a few pithy words, Esben Danielsen announces Camp Where’s Wally as the Camp of the Year winner 2009.

”We won?”, ”Did we win?” they yell, confused and jumping about hugging each other. The joy is endless and the ‘ritual’ songs like Boten Anna and other fishy hits boom through the candy striped sound system. 

Overcoming barriers

The happy friends from Camp Where’s Wally had to overcome quite a few problems before they could finally step up as winners of the competition. Their car was stolen. Thomas threw up in the tent, and most impressively, they were not ready to carry out their theme until little over a week ago. 

”The whole thing was indeed last minute. We received the hooped shirts Wednesday last week and the hats came Thursday,” explains Brian Pilgren Mortensen, the only one we actually manage to drag out of the celebrating camp.

The idea for the winning camp’s theme came out of the well known festival problem of getting separated from your group.

“We would always get separated from each other close to the Orange Stage,” says Bue Tidemann. “And well, then we saw how the Top Gun boys won last year, and thought that we could do better than that.”

Festival spirit

What ended up convincing the jury was the fact that they had actually managed to capture the festival spirit. Every day the Wallys would spread out across the festival site, and when a Wally was found, he could be handed back to the Camp and traded in for a beer.

“You’re warm people and don’t mind inviting others to your parties,” Esben Danielsen said when handing over the prize. Camp Where’s Wally have no intention of resting on their laurels, though.

“We’ll be back again next year,” says Brian Pilgren Mortensen and continues:

“We already have a range of new ideas waiting, among others the black and an evil yellow striped Wally, a blue dog and pyramid tents.”

Thus Camp Where’s Wally has already raised the bar for next year’s competition. The question remains as to who will dethrone them.

Facts about Camp Where’s Wally:

• Total value: 20.000 DKK including T-shirts for distribution, a sound system, beer and, according to themselves, too little booze.
• Total weight: 2,2 tons including 120 crates of beer
• Population: around 15.