Touring can be boring, so we’re not surprised when bands find interesting ways to entertain themselves. For some, this manifests itself in the form of “phone pinching“, meanwhile others prefer to make really stupid drunken bets.
It’s the latter that has Joakim Brodén, the singer of Swedish power metal group Sabaton, embarking on a 520km trek to the band’s next gig. As Nine News reports, Brodén says he has agreed to “walk or run” the distance from the band’s hometown of Falun to Trondheim, Norway.
Joakim Brodén began his journey last week, documenting his trek via a video diary. According to the frontman, he’s not having the best time covering the 502km on foot but that fans had reached out to him on Facebook, offering food and shelter.
“I got drunk as hell at a party last night and I got a hangover…and we did some stupid stuff. I did a bet with my bandmates that I would walk, or run to our next show,” Brodén recounts in the clip, which readers can check out below.
“I have a long way to walk until then, since it’s a long fuckingg way up to Trondheim! So if you see a homeless Swede walking along the E16, or the E6, it would be great if you can offer me a beer, or I don’t know, maybe some food too?”
When asked by Norway’s TRD.by what the details of the bet were, Brodén replied, “I will not go into details on exactly what happened, but I can say that it was fun and a bit silly. It started out almost as a joke, but it evolved to be quite serious.”
Brodén told the site that he’d managed to make his way to the Norwegian town of Vormsund without a hitch. “The first day was the hardest,” he said. “That’s when I walked for ten hours without proper shoes. It wasn’t exactly ideal.”
However, the frontman has since donned a proper pair of running shoes, making the trip a lot more comfortable. “And I do not walk such long stretches of time now. I walk between four and eight hours a day,” he said.
