Rock, Fish and the Midnight Sun

The gentle pace of the afternoon begins to hasten and there’s a trace of a reminder that this isn’t forever. But for now, it doesn’t matter: the group has gathered, glowing and woozy, making plans and promises that everyone knows will likely unravel as evening sets in – though there’s a comfort in making them anyway. Its fleetingness can be heartbreaking, but ultimately what gives it its endless allure.

Imagine a place where the golden hour never ends, and you’ll be close enough to Bukta Tromsø Open Air Festival. Held every July at the far edge of town in Northern Norway’s largest city, Bukta is one of the northernmost music events in the world, meaning that while in winter its bay can gift a sweeping glimpse of the Northern Lights, in the summer months it basks in the famed midnight sun.

For first-time visitors such as myself the effect can be delirious, at times a gleeful surprise that it’s 11pm, a minute later a jarring suspicion it might all of a sudden be six in the morning. Once adjusted, there is a fizzing joy in revelling with festival-goers beneath a sun that barely nudges an inch, painting with its stubbornness Bukta and the surrounding fjords a pinky-yellow hue.

Positioned over 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, Tromsø is known as the ‘Arctic Capital’ or the ‘Gateway to the Arctic,’ and walking around the quaint historic centre, you can feel it even in summer. Stuffed polar bears, old ropes and whaling paraphernalia embellish pub interiors, not just museums, while the city’s triangular, bone-white cathedral juts out like an iceberg. The waters are gin clear and piercingly cold, as I find out after a plunge from a floating sauna, and except for a colossal cruise ship, most of the boats in the port look like they’re ready for action.

I can’t quite figure out the ‘Paris of the North’ epithet also attributed to the city, but I’m told it’s something to do with a surprising level of sophistication. Tromsø has a rich cultural history, probably going back to the meeting of traditional Norwegian and Sami people with European guests and influences during Arctic trade. A certain buzz about the city made it popular with the young many years ago, and today its university is as significant a pull as its tourism.

Musically, it is notable for Norway’s underground electronic scene, as the home of acts such as Biosphere and Röyksopp, for example. But Bukta is more a celebration of “rock and fish,” as the festival’s director Mariane Saus proudly puts it on the eve of its 21st edition, as if announcing the next Sarah J. Maas novel.

That evening we head into town to Bastard Bar, Tromsø’s answer to CBGBs or so I’m told. It’s cramped, dark and a little dingey, the only pop of colour a deep cherry red glowing from the bar and a pair of velvet curtains. “Welcome to Norway, we’re gonna blast your head off,” laughs Bukta’s head programmer Isak Harbitz, as local thrash-metal band Cult Member get going.

This country is famous for its love of heavy metal; even the Norway signs at Oslo Airport’s souvenir shops are written in that thorny, near-illegible death metal font. Cult Member is just about the heaviest it gets at Bukta, but its programme definitely doesn’t skimp on the scuzzier and serrated side of rock music. It’s actually a little surprising when looking at this year’s two headliners, The Cardigans and The War on Drugs, who might top the posters of any indie-rock festival on the continent. With at least a third of all acts booked from Northern Norway, perhaps the heavier vibe reflects the region’s musical tastes, or maybe these more popular and bigger names help a decades-long festival pull in more international guests and keep up with competition.

“We are blessed to have an audience that is both music-loving and curious,” says Harbitz. “I believe that the audience doesn’t always know what they want, until they get it. We try to make a diverse festival program where international and domestic headliners are mixed with international and local talent. Rock is the foundation, and we always strive to renew ourselves and be open-minded.”

Walking around the festival grounds – a tranquil, tree-lined park with trails that snake off into green spaces before leading to its sandy, panoramic bay – the crowd of all ages certainly seem happy as they pass me by, and remarkably respectful as they flit between the three stages, enjoying beers from the local Mack Brewery or queuing up to have a go smashing dried cod with a hammer (the smashing part is fun, the tasting part not so much; fish burgers are a wiser choice).

For a few hours on Saturday afternoon, not a drop of beer is poured as the gates open for Bukta for Alle, a free event where families and children can enjoy a festive experience with some easier-to-digest music acts; that said, at one point several toddlers can be seen wiggling around and tumbling over while a 15-year-old STORM screams about dying young. It might not be the crowd the teen metalcore star had in mind, but he has all the time in the world and it’s very endearing.

Elsewhere, volunteers appear to pick up cigarette butts or beer cups as soon as they’re dropped, meaning the place remains spotless. There are even hand sanitiser bottles tied to trees for those wanting to pee in nature.

Like many festivals in The Nordics, Bukta couldn’t run without the help of local volunteers. Those that work for the festival office are all expected to help with the set-up and set-down, and as a nonprofit organisation, all money made is returned to local initiatives such as a promoter's school for ages 15–25, helping to sustain a busy live music model. I meet some warm and charismatic figures from the local scene, such as Fredrik Forssman from the music education service Musikkontoret North, or Vasil Gjuroski, a vibrant Macedonian-born local who puts on Tromsø World Festival and who seems to know just about everybody. “We all work together up here in Northern Norway,” Gjuroski explains. “It’s not a competition.”

All of this builds to a feeling of undeniable contentment. Now and again, such as The Cardigans’s career-spanning Friday night set that leaves the bangers until last, chillness can veer a little too closely to tameness as Nina Persson and her band try to rouse a little more energy from us. But the people of Bukta emote at their finest when the guitars are distorted and the vocals are raw. Oslo trio Hammok’s snarling post-hardcore tempts those at Little Henrik, the festival’s smallest stage, to form a hefty mosh-pit with spiralling bodies as its boundaries. A dual strike of High Vis and Kvelertak on Saturday afternoon is a whopping combo to keep up momentum; the former’s thumping, left-field take on hardcore is starting to sound very at home on festival main stages, while the latter already command it like they own it – stage dives and all.

Established Nordic greats are out in force, too. When The Soundtrack Of Our Lives disbanded back in 2012, Noel Gallagher called it a “f*cking sad day for rock‘n’roll.” The Swedes’ recent return is a big deal, then, and somethings never change: frontman Ebbot Lundberg is still donning a kaftan, and the expansive 60s riffs of “Sister Surround” and “Instant Repeater ‘99” sound just as big and blissful. Likewise, Hans Magnus Ryan and Bent Sæther arrive stacked with psych-rock stalwarts, including Dungen’s Reine Fiske, to help take a trip back through Motorpsycho’s eclectic, 30-odd year career. Later that afternoon the sweltering psych rock continues, as Texas’ Night Beats kick out the jams as the sun edges towards its midnight phase.

But there are also moving surprises to be found in some of the festival’s lighter moments, too. Sarah Klang’s early Friday evening performance is the perfect accompaniment as couples sit on rocks and look out at neighbouring island Grindøya, and its lightly snow-capped mountains that punctuate the skyline. The Grammis-winning singer’s voice is textured and powerful, counterbalanced beautifully with her band’s gentle Americana, as on “Halloween Costume”.

Back among the trees by Little Henrik on Saturday, I, like others, am caught off guard by a performance by Stéphanie Turcotte, a Quebec-born singer-songwriter who moved to Tromsø recently after studying music in Oslo. She currently has no songs released and won her spot at the festival through a competition, while receiving mentoring from Harbitz and the team. “Being relatively new in Tromsø and getting to play at Bukta already in the first summer has given me a strong feeling of belonging,” she tells me. Turcotte’s music spotlights her voice foremost, one that can spin from falsetto to charged as it traces cathartic melodies emboldened by dynamic instrumentation and delicate grooves. Light trickles in from above and catches on vinyl records hung decoratively from the branches, and it’s a perfect moment of peace.

“It might not be so unexpected but seasons here have a big impact on how I create,” she tells me. “We have three months of darkness in the winter and that generates good, sad songs! But there is something absolutely inspiring when the light leaves and comes back and how you have no choice but to slow down and to make nature your companion.”

Nature is certainly a companion at Bukta. If you were to drive around the lakes, fjords, mountains and winding roads of Northern Norway there’d be few better albums to blast than any pick of the The War on Drugs’ discography, and now here they are, paired together in front of us. Maybe the greatest compliment to their closing performance is how the backdrop becomes the focus; with every motorik beat from Charlie Hall, every Whoop from Adam Granduciel on “Red Eyes” and every cascading guitar on “Pain” or “Harmonia’s Dream”, my head shifts to the right to take in the sprawling view.

As The War on Drugs finish their set at the strike of 12, the midnight sun is here but the festival is over for another year. Even where the golden hour never seems to falter, all good things must draw to a close. “What better way to end a long and gruelling tour,” asks Granduciel, “than in heaven?”