Roskilde Festival is a festival held south of Roskilde

Roskilde

Roskilde is the main city in Roskilde Municipality, Denmark on the island of Zealand. It is an ancient city, dating from the Viking Age and is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network....

 in Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 and is one of the six biggest annual music festival

Music festival

A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...

s in Europe (the other five being the Sziget Festival, the Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...

, the Paléo Festival

Paléo Festival

The Paléo Festival de Nyon, usually just called Paléo, started in a small way in 1976 as the Nyon Folk Festival. It was differently located, near the Lake Geneva and had only two stages. But today it is the second biggest open-air music festival in mainland Europe, after the Sziget Festival. Today...

, Rock Werchter

Rock Werchter

Rock Werchter is a Belgian annual music festival held in the village of Werchter, near Leuven, since 1974. It is one of the five biggest annual rock music festivals in Europe...

, and Exit Festival

EXIT (festival)

Exit is an annual summer music festival in the Petrovaradin Fortress of Novi Sad, Serbia. It is staged annually since 2000 and usually lasts four days ....

). It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer. In 1972, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation, which has since run the festival as a non-profit organization for development and support of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 and humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

.

It is Denmark's first real music-oriented festival, originally for hippies but today it covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 and the rest of Europe.