Rømø Motor Festival
Till Next Year, Time Stops

Rømø Motor Festival is a three-day gathering on the Danish island of Rømø, bringing together vintage cars, motorcycles and the people who keep them alive. For its tenth anniversary, 124 racers arrived from around the world, culminating in a day of racing across the vast sands of Lakolk Beach. 

I arrived early, before the race had taken over the island. The first old engine greeted me before anything else could. A Chevrolet somewhere nearby produced a slow, bass-heavy rumble. Then another machine answered from further away. Slowly, the present began losing its grip. 

There was leather, fabric, steel and paint made when objects were expected to stay around for a while. Cars had shapes that seemed drawn by people rather than software. Engines had personalities and occasionally refused to cooperate with their owners. I had never lived in this period, yet somehow I missed it. Perhaps we can miss places in time as easily as places on a map. 

By race morning the public had not arrived yet, but the racers had. Cars came off trailers, motorcycles were prepared in the sand and the wind attacked everything. Standing there before the crowds arrived, something became very clear. We were all here. Not really as competitors, but as one enormous body of people obsessed with machines. For a few hours nobody needed to explain why. 

What interested me most was not simply the rarity of the machinery, but seeing it used. The cars were not props. The motorcycles were not museum pieces. On Rømø, history was not being protected from the present. It was being allowed to enter it. 

Read the full feature, “Till Next Year, Time Stops”, on The Vintagent