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Narvik Winter Festival
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When:
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1 - 9 Mar 2008 (annual)
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Where:
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Narvik
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| Costs: |
Various
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| Opening Hours: |
Various
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Narvik's cultural festival, the Vinterfestuka, transports the entire town back in time to its Klondyke years. The programme features concerts, performances, exhibitions and readings, as well as more spectacular entertainment like ski jumping in the main street.
The town experienced a veritable gold-rush around the turn of the 19th century, as arriving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian engineers, workers and managers worked overtime to construct the immense railroad system that still operates today, transporting iron from the Swedish mines through Kiruna to the ice-free port in Narvik, for export to Europe.
The festival originated in 1956, when French legionnaires posted to Narvik held a festival, called the French Festival, which received much attention nationally and internationally. The French government sent entire trainloads of flowers and Steen & Strøm (Oslo's equivalent to Harrods) sent finery and beautiful apparel (draped around its best models).
The next year the event changed name to the Narvik Festival and the seed was planted. Enthusiastic locals appropriated the event and made it their own, digging into their own historical roots to find the most memorable moments of the largely railway-centred history of the young town. They found a vast gallery of characters, dramas and histories, based around the Rallare, the workers who pretty much carved an entire railway system out of the solid mountain rock of this frozen northern land with their pick-axes - pretty hardcore people. The first day is devoted to kids alone, with much of the action taking place outdoors.
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