One of the key ways that we learn and enjoy Scandinavian dance and music in the United States is by going to weekend or week-long dance camps. This is also true of many other interests in the US, so there are fiddle camps and chorus camps and klezmer music camps and Balkan dance and music camps.

This is the beautiful dance hall at Ogontz, New Hampshire. In this photo we are doing an American contra dance.

Our American teachers Linda Brooks and Ross Schipper are to the left, with Bitten and Sven Olsson, who came from Sweden to teach at this camp, on the right in costume.

Eating on the deck with a view of the lake and the dance hall.

Jamming and clog dancing on the deck before dinner.

For the Scandinavian dance camps we invite really good teachers every year from Norway and Sweden, as well as fiddlers for the dance traditions to be taught, and a nyckelharpa teacher. Camps have been conducted in the Mendocino Woodlands north of San Francisco, California since 1981 or so, and in the East Coast (Nordic Fiddles and Feet, first at Buffalo Gap, West Virginia, now  moved to Ogontz, New Hampshire) since 1985. Each year about 100-120 people come together during specific weeks in the summer and spend the week learning new dances and/or tunes, or reviewing dances or tunes learned before, and eating wonderful food and having concerts and dance parties.

6 graduates of the year-long nyckelharpa/fiddle class at the Eric Sahlström Institute jamming for happy hour.

Our Washington, DC group attending Nordic Fiddles and Feet in Ogontz, New Hampshire summer 2015.

It is a bit like in the movie Brigadoon, where a community and place comes together and exists only for that week of the year. Each year people return who have been there before, with 20-30 new people trying camp for the first time. It is a lovely community, and is delightful every time. But each year is also a bit different. We think of the analogy that when you put your foot in the river it is never exactly the same twice as the water is always changing as it runs past.
People take the dances back to teach locally in their communities, and recruit and teach newer dancers to come to camp next year.

I have found it is a really good vacation for a single person. People are there to have a good time and to socialize. There are lovely people to eat with and dance with. But many who come are there as a couple, and others come with or without their non-dancing spouse.