https://vo.rs/tags/alesund/Recent content in Alesund on vo.rsHugoenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Sat, 14 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/encore/slinningsbalet/Sat, 14 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/encore/slinningsbalet/<p>Every summer in the coastal town of Ålesund, on the west coast of Norway, a group of local teenagers spends about seven weeks hand-stacking wooden pallets into a tower dozens of metres tall, without cranes or machines, and then, on the Saturday nearest midsummer, they set it on fire and burn the whole thing down in front of the town. In <strong>2016</strong> the tower reached <strong>47.4 metres</strong> — roughly a fifteen-storey building — and took the Guinness World Record for the world&rsquo;s tallest bonfire. This is Slinningsbålet, and it is one of the most astonishing feats of pure communal stubbornness in the Nordic calendar.</p>