NorthSide

At the beginning of June, Eskelunden stops feeling like simply a large green park south of central Aarhus and becomes, for three days, one of Denmark’s major music gatherings. NorthSide combines international headliners, Danish artists, electronic music, pop, rock, hip hop and harder-to-classify sounds on a site designed to retain a sense of proximity even while welcoming tens of thousands of people. Between the main stages are food areas, places to sit, DJs, installations and Sideshow, the festival’s deliberately eccentric corner. NorthSide began in 2010, although the event experienced today is the product of a much larger transformation than that first one-day experiment.

The inaugural edition took place on 19 June 2010 at Tangkrogen in Aarhus, attracting around 5,000 people to an entirely Danish five-act bill featuring Mew, Nephew, Veto, Turboweekend and Selvmord. It was essentially a test of a more ambitious idea: Aarhus could have its own urban festival, capable of attracting major international artists while maintaining a strong relationship with Danish music. NorthSide moved to Ådalen in 2011 and expanded to two days as demand rose and prominent international acts began arriving. In 2012 it made another decisive leap to three days, establishing a duration that would become central to the festival’s identity.

For almost a decade, Ådalen became the landscape most closely associated with NorthSide. The festival grew from a comparatively compact event into one capable of presenting Arctic Monkeys, Portishead, Queens of the Stone Age, The Black Keys, Grace Jones, Wu-Tang Clan, Radiohead, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, New Order and Tame Impala alongside a constant flow of Danish artists. That combination still explains much of its musical character. NorthSide is not exclusively a rock, indie, pop or electronic festival; it functions as a broad contemporary programme in which international stars, established Danish performers and artists still building their audiences can occupy the same weekend.

After the 2020 and 2021 interruption, the 2022 return opened a new chapter. NorthSide moved to Eskelunden, a substantially larger green space than Ådalen that provided room for different environments, improved crowd flow and a broader festival experience. The shift involved more than geography. A dedicated electronic-music area appeared, while NorthSide also took some of its most visible steps toward the environmental model it had been developing for years. Eskelunden now works as a temporary musical park embedded in Aarhus: large enough to contain contrasting moods but still closely connected to the city. Camping is not the organising principle; most visitors leave the grounds after each day and return when the gates open again.

The recent site design revolves around three principal music stages. ASTRA remains the large open-air platform for the biggest productions. NOVA has developed into an enormous covered stage capable of hosting bands and electronic artists while giving the audience protection from Danish weather. A third, more intimate stage creates room for emerging performers and shows that benefit from a different scale. The layout deliberately leaves smaller spaces, seating areas and opportunities to slow down between the main musical points. NorthSide is therefore experienced not only through the concerts selected in advance but through what happens while moving between them.

Sideshow provides the least predictable part of the grounds. Over the years it has included cabaret, circus, silent discos, unconventional performances, improvised wedding ceremonies and various experiments that sit well outside a conventional concert programme. This stops NorthSide from feeling like nothing more than a sequence of large stage productions. It also reflects the variety of the audience: some visitors arrive with every concert carefully scheduled, while others are easily diverted by something strange happening along the route. Large-scale pop shows, guitars, DJs, hip hop and performance spaces coexist closely enough for the festival to feel more like a temporary cultural neighbourhood than a series of isolated venues.

Sustainability has become structural rather than decorative. NorthSide has repeatedly used its operation as a testing ground for reducing the environmental impact of a large festival. At Eskelunden, all food became plant-based and organic, bottled water was removed, and the event began drawing its electricity from the grid instead of relying on the conventional fleet of large generators. Reusable cups, waste sorting, transport planning and supplier choices belong to the same approach. Food therefore does more than keep visitors fed; it forms part of the festival’s identity and makes NorthSide’s environmental ambitions visible in something every guest encounters.

Musically, that identity remains deliberately difficult to compress into one genre. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Massive Attack, Pulp, Kaytranada, LCD Soundsystem, RAYE, Jack White, Skepta, IDLES, Father John Misty and Peggy Gou belong to different stages of NorthSide’s history but illustrate the breadth its programming has developed. Danish artists remain woven throughout, preserving the relationship with the scene from which the festival originally emerged. When the final performance ends and Eskelunden starts emptying, stages, tents and small corners that have functioned like a city within the city fall quiet again. NorthSide has travelled a long way from its rainy 2010 debut, but the underlying idea remains recognisable: bring the musical world to Aarhus without losing the feeling that the festival belongs there.