Sonsedska/iStock(LUND, Sweden) — Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the University town of Lund, Sweden has come up with a novel idea to discourage nearly 30,000 residents from gathering there for traditional Walpurgis Night celebrations on Thursday. It plans to dump around a ton of chicken manure in the town’s central park.
“Lund could very well become an epicenter for the spread of the coronavirus on the last night in April, [so] I think it was a good initiative,” the chairman of the local council’s environment committee, Gustav Lundblad, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
The plan has the potential to be a win-win for the town, according to Lundblad, who tells the newspaper, “We get the opportunity to fertilize the lawns, and at the same time it will stink and so it may not be so nice to sit and drink beer in the park.”
However, on the downside, he admits, “It might smell a bit outside the park as well.”
“I cannot guarantee that the rest of the city will be odorless, but the point is to keep people out of the city park,” Lundblad says.
Walpurgis Night, celebrated on 30 April, is widely marked across central and northern Europe with parties and bonfires. The festivities are classed as “spontaneous” and cannot be banned by authorities, but to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19, many towns and cities in Sweden have asked citizens to dispense with the tradition this year.
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