The Scandinavian Midsummer Festival

I spent the closing day of the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival's first year in Golden wandering Parfet Park with a camera — a dance stage on one side of the grounds, a row of vendor tents on the other, and Nordic Daughter playing a set under one of the festival tents that same weekend. That's how I first met them.

From the crowd it read as one continuous set — violin and vocals trading the melody, the drummer and keyboardist filling in behind, the whole tent full for it.

On the dance stage, a troupe in flowing black dresses, trailing teal fabric off their arms, worked through a slow, deliberate routine on the plywood boards. A few of the dancers wore pale, ghost-white face paint. The crowd sat in folding chairs and on blankets right up to the stage edge, tents and Nordic flags at their backs.

Through the vendor tents, tables were loaded with dragon figurines, engraved goblets, and jewelry trays, parasols hanging from the tent poles, a Danish flag catching the breeze overhead. Shoppers moved slow through the shade while the foothills rose right behind the last row of tents.

Nordic Daughter's full band took the plywood stage under a different tent — Nordic flags hung behind them, canvas overhead, the crowd seated right up to the edge. Guitarist Jason Lycan led out front; I'd shoot him again a few weeks later fronting his other band, Something for Tomorrow, at a show across town.

From the crowd it read as one continuous set — violin and vocals trading the melody, the drummer and keyboardist filling in behind, the whole tent full for it.