Culture

WAN/ WEF 2008: A Very Swedish Party

Kristine Lowe

08 Jun 2008 — 2 min read

Since I had to leave this year's WAN Congress/ World Editors' forum on Tuesday to cover other events, I do not know how the show progressed from here, but this was by far the most surreal party I have been to for a very long time:

It kicked off with fiddlers in national costumes performing drinking songs, while the waiters served herring, aquavit and salmon...

an act which was followed by an ABBA look-alike band playing around with fake guns and singing cover versions of old ABBA and Grease songs..

As the music filled the restaurant tent, and the world's editors and publishers started dancing to old ABBA tunes and the light from a big advertisement screen for Volvo, I thought it safer to steal away with a few Brits and Norsemen to have beer in a less psychedelic setting... ( by which point my camera batteries were starting to go out, hence the darkness of the last two pictures)....

What made me feel very uneasy through most of this spectacle was knowing all too well that had this been Norway, it would probably have been fiddlers and an A-Ha look-alike band, and only the time of the year would have saved the guests from being served Lutefisk (cod in lye) or something even more exotic....

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