Festival

On 28–30 June 2018, the nineteenth Kilkim Žaibu invited visitors into a “parallel world” beside Lake Lūkstas in Varniai. Two professional stages had become an integral part of the festival, which brought together almost two hundred musicians and around a hundred historical re-enactors and craftspeople. Both participation and attendance exceeded every previous edition.

One of the programme’s themes was the cultural friendship between the Baltic region and Ukraine. Musicians and living history enthusiasts helped visitors explore the connections between these cultures, traditional crafts and tribal ways of life. The expanded historical programme also included communal singing sessions called “Dainuojantys Žaibai”. Audiences danced, sang, played and competed, while guests from Ukraine, Poland and Czechia marvelled at the harmony between art and history that had developed at the festival.

After the previous year’s rain, the weather finally favoured us, with neither heat, cold nor damp causing discomfort. We avoided serious incidents, and both stage operations and visitor services ran smoothly. Our one regret was that Infernal War could not attend because of a band member’s illness. As more visitors arrived from distant countries, we could feel our festival community growing. A successful event gave us the energy to prepare for the twentieth anniversary.