Nightwish Fan Meetup 2024
August is here, which meant that it was time for my second road trip to Kitee this year, this time for the Nightwish Fan Meetup. I admit that I’m not normally really a fan of ‘fan events’—I’ve always felt that, to be a truly professional journalist, being a fan is often inappropriate—but after having met so many truly lovely people from the fanclubs this year, I figured I would at least go and check it out to see what all the hubbub is about. The Nightwish Fan Meetup (formerly known as the Nightwish Days, as I understand it) generally takes place over the first week of August, I believe, with this year taking place from the 5th-10th (though some folks showed up already on the 4th).
Photo by Joël Horisberger
My group involved myself, my photographer/videographer Joanna Orchide, and her husband/our driver. We drove up to Kitee on the morning of the 5th, making a stop in Lappeenranta just because Jo had never been there before and wanted to touch down. I suggested that we visit the Lappeenranta sandcastles, because they’re one of the coolest things you can see in that town during the summer!
We arrived to Kitee while the second group was visiting Nightwish Story, a museum exhibition that shows off a lot of cool Nightwish memorabilia. There, the event’s host, Plamen Dimov, was giving a tour and talking about a lot of the things we could see. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s a Bulgarian music teacher who’s lived in Finland for several decades and taught Tuomas Holopainen and some of the other original members music classes during their grade school years. It was honestly an extremely cool exhibition—they had old props and costumes from music videos, the snowman from the Imaginaerum movie, a wall of fan art, various gold records, old photos from back in the day, and more. It was a very cool look at the band’s history—I hope that if they update it again in the future, they’ll give me a call to edit their English texts, because they looked very much as though they’d been run through Google translate and many parts of the text didn’t make much sense.
After our trip to the museum, we headed back to the school where our lodgings were located and got settled into our rooms and checked out the overall layout of the event. The main school building has rooms set up, along with a cafeteria where meals and coffee are served throughout the day. The next ‘event’ was a barbeque out back of the school, so in the meantime we walked over to see the other main point of tourist interest in a town of only about ten thousand: Kitee’s stone church, which is surprisingly beautiful compared to many other Finnish churches. It was closed so we weren’t able to go inside, but it seems as though later in the week, the group went there to record themselves singing “Sleeping Sun,” which is rather fun, I think!
Once we were back from the church, we took a little drive since my group had never been to Potoskavaara before—known as the place where it all began, aka the island where Tuomas Holopainen first expressed an interest in forming a band—the three of us drove out there. I had only ever been once before in January when the lake was totally frozen over and covered by a meter or so of snow, so it was a nice experience to see it during a beautiful summer day as well.
After our private excursion, we headed out back of the school to meet some of the other fans who were there. Folks were a little bit shy at first, but we tried to make sure to be friendly and introduce ourselves to as many of them as possible. It was incredible, right away we met people from all over the world: Finland, Germany, France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, even Brazil! Even better, they were all really lovely and friendly. It’s very easy to talk to people there, you can just ask their names, how they learned about Nightwish, and how they ended up at the fan meetup, and voila! You’re immediate friends, sharing stories about shows and favorite songs and travel tales, the whole works. It’s such a warm and lovely atmosphere; frankly, I’m not used to such general pleasantness in Finland, so it was a really lovely experience.
The barbeque was nice! There’s a little gazebo out back, with some people inside tending to the fires, while others were outside hanging out; one of the coordinators, Anita, even had her kids with her all the way from Denmark, so some people were kicking balls around with them.
Following the BBQ, there was an announcement that during the Röskö trip later in the week, they’d be able to listen to the new single that was coming out (“The Day Of…”), after which the sauna was warmed up. We took that time to rest, do some general prep for the next day’s activities, and then decided we’d like to see the lake if we could. Fortunately, a few of the others were also thinking of walking down to the lake, so a little group of us headed down to the town’s beach, which is on Kiteenjärvi and was surprisingly nice. The water was very warm and at least one of our party was jumping off the pier and swimming around.
After our swim, we had a bit of a visit with the others still and headed off to sleep—I, for one, am not a great sleeper these days and I wanted to be fresh for the big day we had coming up on the morrow.
My comfy little room
As per usual, I did wake up at around 7.00, but that meant I had a bit of time to myself to do some maintenance yoga and that sort of thing before my friends woke up and we went to join the others for breakfast. One of the things that Plamen and I had arranged was for a few of the fans to tell me their stories about how Nightwish had affected them, so here are some touching stories of how Nightwish has changed lives:
“I lived with a man for almost 40 years and he didn’t like music. I love music, I’ve always loved music, but with time it grew less and less because I always heard, “oh it’s too loud, please turn off that noise.” So for many years, I didn’t listen to music at all, only with friends or when he wasn’t at home.
Then he died, 9 years ago now. It was tough, because we had a company together and shared the work. Finally, I started to go look for music from YouTube. I had heard of Nightwish before, from the beginning, and had thought it was nice music but had never found time to form a connection with them. So then I found their name and remembered that I used to like the music, and came upon this first concert with Floor at Wacken and was really blown away.
I started to listen more and more and really connected with the lyrics. I think Tuomas is really a genius, with both music and words. You can interpret the lyrics in so many ways. It helped me rediscover my love of music and everything fell into place. I listen to music all the time now, 24/7. ”
Eva recommends: “Shoemaker” & “Perfume of the Timeless”
“I discovered Nightwish because I like musical theater and someone showed me their version of “Phantom of the Opera.” My first concert was in 2015 and I became an even bigger fan when I first saw them live.
A lot of things have happened in my life and after problems with work, problems in my personal life, health problems, and so on, I sunk into a very deep depression. When you are at rock bottom, nothing has any meaning and I lost interest in everything but music and I couldn’t see the future, wondering if I should even keep living. There was nothing.
I started going to therapy and one of the things I was encouraged to do was to explore my dreams from before I had spiraled. One of the things that I remembered was how much I had wanted to visit Finland. I saw a blog from a girl who had come here and Plamen had showed her around and having heard stories from him, I wondered how I could do such a thing. I realized that maybe my dream was to come to Finland. I heard about the NWFM online and thought about going.
Then, there was a Nightwish show in São Paolo and when I heard “Élan” and was a part of the crowd singing, I realized that I was glad I hadn’t given up yet. So it really helped me realize that there were things still worth living for. I came to the NWFM and had the most incredible experience of my life, meeting all of these people with different stories, different ages, but we are all connected through the music. ”
Pamela recommends: “How’s the Heart,” “Nemo,” “Dead Boy’s Poem,” & “Deep Silent Complete”
“I was 12 years old when I discovered Nightwish. I still remember it was the 24th of September, 2016, scrolling through my computer wondering if I should listen to the band that a friend had recommended. I put on “Phantom of the Opera” and heard Marko’s voice and they immediately became my favorite band. I just wanted to listen to them all the time.
Then my mental health went down because I was bullied in school, among other things. I ended up in a really bad place mentally and I had nobody to talk to and no understanding of what was going on with me, what should I do, should I do something to myself, or end it all. But there was music.
So I was listening to Nightwish all the time, when I was feeling good, when I was feeling bad. I was listening them to distract myself. But I thought, I need to stay alive so I can someday see them live and maybe even meet them and be able to thank them for the music.
As I was waiting for a show in Kyiv, I woke up one day to bombs. So I left the Ukraine (that show was canceled) and decided that, when I was sorting out my new life in Lithuania, I was going to see Nightwish no matter what.
Then I managed to get a ticket to see them in Kitee, and despite missing my ferry and my bus, I still made it in time to be in the front row and cried my eyes out during the show. It was the best day of my life.
After seeing them again in Ireland, I decided that I needed to move to Finland to start my life over and the friends I’ve made through Nightwish have helped me so much, giving me a place to stay, gave me furniture, and helped me with immigration paperwork, and being so kind to me.
Today, here I am in Finland and I finally got to meet Tuomas and thank him for his music, which means everything to me and has saved my life. ”
Nika recommends: “While Your Lips Are Still Red,” “Ocean Soul,” & “Edema Ruh”
After meeting these fans, we all gathered to go out front of a local cafe. I admit that I had no idea what was happening and I thought we were just taking a photo, but apparently what was actually happening was that we were waiting for Tuomas to show up and singing a small snippet of “Élan” to him as he arrived—not something I’d normally participate in but since I was squashed into the middle of the group by then, I figured, what the hell, that’s what this meetup is for, right? It felt very cheesy but it was nevertheless fun.
Photos by Joanna Orchide
It was extremely heartwarming to watch the meet ‘n’ greet that followed. Tuomas is very clearly not the most comfortable with having a lot of attention, but he is still very kind and everyone got the chance to take a photo and say hello and give him various gifts and letters.
Now, if anyone’s been wondering how I ended up getting my interview a bit before everyone else, it’s because I was on Dark River Festival’s merch crew again this year in Kotka, which exactly coincided with the press days in Helsinki, so I asked if there was any universe that I could do my interview while I was in town. I’m hugely grateful for this, because Tuomas did not need to go out of his way by any means. Even kinder of him was to move the interview to Nightwish Story, as we were booked for noon at a cafe, so I was in a fairly hefty panic about the background and noise. So that’s my little story about how the interview ended up being at the Nightwish museum.
After we wrapped up and shared some recommendations for fantasy and horror media to one another, our crew rejoined the others and found a few people practicing for the “Sleeping Sun” recording in what I assume was the school’s music room. We did a vocal warm-up together and had a rather lot of fun with it, having a hysterical laughter breakdown during the lip bubble practice. We sang a few songs together, including “Sleeping Sun,” “Last Ride of the Day,” and “The Islander,” before my group headed out to start packing, as we had to get back to Helsinki that evening. We tried to find as many people as we could to say goodbye to, but everyone was quite scattered at that point. I did run around looking for a missing shirt (I had stuffed it under my gear when we moved interview venues, which is why I couldn’t find it), and got gifts that one of the fans had brought to share (painted stones), got a lot of wonderful hugs, and we left feeling genuinely sorry that we weren’t staying around for longer.
Now, of course, my group had to leave early, but the fun was not over for everyone else. Alongside recording “Sleeping Sun” in the church, they visited Röskö, which is the place where many albums have been written, and Monttu Studio where some recordings have been done. I’ve heard nothing but warm feedback that it was a lovely event and many people are already looking forward to next year. And hey, since Dark River Festival has moved to July, perhaps I’ll join in again and stay longer. You never know what the future may bring, but a big thanks to everyone involved and everyone attending for making it such a lovely experience!
Photo by Joël Horisberger
