For the past 50 years, the town of Stiklestad in Norway has hosted the Olsokdagene på Stiklestad festival each summer and its centrepiece is Spelet om Heilag Olav. For this year’s performances, of which there were four over the course of the festival playing to round 11,000 people, production company Stiklestad Lyd invested in a DiGiCo SD10, purchased through DiGiCo’s Norwegian distributor Scandec, which it deployed at the Front of House mix duties.

Stiklestad Lyd bought its first DiGiCo console, a D1 with a DiGiRack in 2005, and DiGiCo consoles have been both a staple of its audio inventory and used on the production ever since. The company has upgraded its DiGiCo stock in the intervening years, but the backbone of the system, including the original DiGiRack, is still in use today.

Spelet om Heilag Olav (The Game of Holy Olav) dramatizes the events of Sul farm in the days before the battle at Stiklestad in 1030, culminating in the deal of King Olaf II of Norway. It is performed at the Stiklestad outdoor theatre, Scandinavia’s oldest and largest open-air theatre. To date, over 800,000 people have seen the play, which was originally written by Olav Gullvåg, with music composed by Paul Okkenhaug. It is reinterpreted each year by a different playwright, with each new iteration giving it a fresh twist that keeps audiences coming back, year after year.

“Our D1 has been an amazing investment and we’ve used it at FOH up until this year,” says Bjørn-Ove Bergsmo, CEO of Stiklestad Lyd. “But our new SD10, which features Waves integration, has now replaced it and acts as the main console for the show, mixing the 40-strong orchestra and choir. For the past couple of years, we have also used an S21 as the monitor console to handle the 24 channels of wireless mics and sub mixes, which are then converted to MADI, as well as distribution and comms, which has also been a great addition to our console inventory.

“The fact that we can still use our DiGiRack and the rest of our existing infrastructure to deliver up-to-date, quality productions gives us a real competitive advantage and has delivered a fantastic return on investment.”

The fact that we can still use our DiGiRack and the rest of our existing infrastructure to deliver up-to-date, quality productions gives us a real competitive advantage and has delivered a fantastic return on investment.