Raw States

Washington Island Scandinavian Festival

Washington Island, WI · Arts & Culture

When

June 12–13, 2027

Where

Island-wide · Washington Island · WI

Cost

Not confirmed

Status

Approximate: based on past editions, not announced yet

An island-wide celebration of Washington Island's Icelandic and Scandinavian settler heritage, with folk music, artisan crafts, and traditional food at sites across the island. It draws visitors willing to make the ferry crossing specifically for the festival, typically the second weekend of June.

The history within reach

• Washington Island Scandinavian Festivalsame spot

  An island-wide celebration of Washington Island's Icelandic and Scandinavian settler heritage, with folk music, artisan crafts, and traditional food at sites across the island.

• Icelanders settle Washington Island1.9 mi

  Four young Icelanders came here in 1870 for the fishing and wrote home, and it became the oldest Icelandic settlement in the United States.

• Rock Island and Thordarson's boathouse6.3 mi

  Chester Thordarson, an Icelandic immigrant who left school at fourteen and patented the million-volt transformer, bought an island and built a great hall and boathouse of local limestone with furniture carved with figures from the Icelandic sagas.

• Death's Door7.3 mi

  The strait between the peninsula and Washington Island has shoals, cross-currents and no shelter, and the French named it Porte des Morts after a Potawatomi tradition of warriors lost crossing it.

• Peninsula Century Fall Challenge15 mi

  A road cycling gran fondo through the rustic roads of the Door Peninsula, with route options from 25 to 100 miles.