“I’m so excited to be in Copenhagen!” Every few hours, another artist shouts it into the crowd gathered beneath Roskilde’s towering Orange Stage. A polite chorus from the Danish audience rolls back almost immediately: “Roskilde.”

It’s an easy mistake to make. Denmark’s biggest music festival sits half an hour outside the capital, in the city it’s named after, and for eight days each summer becomes home to roughly 130,000 people. It often draws comparisons to Glastonbury for its scale, and the quality of its line-up isn’t far off. This year’s blockbuster bill featured The Cure, JENNIE, Zara Larsson, Bladee b2b Yung Lean, Addison Rae, Jane Remover and Frost Children, to name just a handful.

At a time when the festival landscape feels increasingly dominated by corporate-backed events, Roskilde manages to sidestep many of the problems that have become synonymous with modern festivals. Of course, comparing a festival in its 54th edition to newer events still finding their footing isn’t entirely fair, but there’s plenty to learn from the model itself. Entirely not-for-profit since 1971 and powered by around 30,000 volunteers, Roskilde has built a formula that has endured for more than five decades – still convincing people to happily spend eight days living in a field year after year.

The first half of the festival is dedicated to local talent, with this year's programme featuring talent like Angående Mig, dark-metal electronic artist KRØYER and dream-pop duo Snuggle. By day four, when the international artists (and press) arrive, the mostly youthful Danish crowd has already settled into festival life. But between the music (and copious drinking), the early-week schedule is also packed out with countless other activities: including skate jams from local teams, craft workshops and community dinners. Sadly, the infamous Naked Run (Nøgenløb) is yet to happen.

The camping grounds at Roskilde are another festival within a festival. At its heart is Dream City, the audience-driven community space that has become its own unofficial after-hours world, known for the raves that go on long after the official stages clear out for the night. Around it are hundreds of other themed camps blasting their own music into the cooling Danish air, most happy to invite any guests to join the party. My first interaction in the grounds came from a pair of baby-faced Danish teens, their hair dyed and faces covered in piercings, who, bemused by my British accent, invited me back to their queer camp instantly.

But for all of Roskilde’s chaos, there is a surprising amount of order. The clearest example comes before the biggest shows. While diehard fans at many festivals will spend all day pressed against the barrier, sitting through sets they might not care about just to secure a spot for their favourite artist, Roskilde has created a queue system that keeps the process surprisingly civil. Every morning at 9am, wristbands are released that later grant access to a specific artist's pit. This means from the early hours, queues begin to wind around the perimeter of the site as fans arrive with camping chairs and settle in for the wait, choosing the lesser evil of a few hours of patience over the inevitable FOMO later on.

Once inside the crowd, there is still a lot to learn from Roskilde etiquette. Aside from the chaos of particularly intense pits, shoutout EsDeeKid and Ken Carson, there is a lot of consideration between strangers, with people happy to make space for those coming and going, and moving with a respect that is found less and less in live music crowds. Whether that could be replicated everywhere is another question. As the eight days wind to an end, it’s hard to imagine another festival quite like this, but maybe that’s the aspiration.