Last year, when I wrote my “report” from the Skærbæk Fan Weekend 2021, I basically wrote that we were back to normal, or almost there. Well, I was wrong. This year we were, and the difference was huge. I should have known, last year I was able to have relaxed lunches, in my cabin, with the friends I shared the cabin with, while this year, like every normal Skærbæk, I never even had lunch, too many things to do!

But let’s start from the beginning. As usual, the weekend begins on Thursday with the AFOL Day in LEGO House. (Skærbæk Fan Weekend is more like “Fan Week.”) 600 AFOLs descended in Billund to participate (someone started queuing - for unknown reasons - a couple of hours before the opening!) We got to meet the new managing director of LEGO House, Kathrine Kirk Muff (Jesper Vilstrup stepped down a few months ago) and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen was also there to welcome us. It was the 5th anniversary of LEGO House, and the icing on the cake was that… we had cake (well, I didn’t because I was busy elsewhere) and we got to see the fantastic zoetrope cake built with 94,128 pieces for the 90th anniversary! Yes, zoetrope, I’m not sure who came up with that idea, but it’s genius.

The zoetrope cake!

New MOCs had just been added to the Masterpiece Gallery and will stay there for a whole year. Including something by our own Gwyneth Kozbial (whom I thank for the following images)! Here’s a selection of the MOCs, to see them all you’ll have to visit LEGO House in the next 12 months!

A Treasure Hunt quiz was also part of the day—participants had to go around the House and search for small details to be able to answer all the questions. I think I got them all right, but many of us did, so there was a draw later in the day (and I didn’t win anything).

Senior designer Olav Krøigaard as a young kid!

The presentations in the forum were great, as usual. One was about sustainability, with Tim Brooks (VP of Sustainability) who gave us an update on the current situation and the plan for the next few years. The other was about the 90th anniversary with legendary designers Niels Milan Pedersen, Henrik Andersen, and Olav Krøigaard. I’ll just add a fun detail about Olav that I didn’t know… you may have seen an old photo of a kid with a brick-built functioning robot from the early 80s (it was in the 50 Years of Play book, from 1982)... well, that was him!

The only problem of AFOL day was the line for the store. It took about an hour and a half (but some people took even more) to get in and out… in my case just to buy the printed minifig to be able to get the fabled 3D printed duck! Which is awesome, to be honest, so I’m not complaining. (Nor selling it, sorry.)

The next day, Friday was only for setup at the event venue… but I can’t tell you anything about that because I had to go back to Billund, this time to set up my MOCs at the Campus, just like Are wrote about earlier this year (so I won’t repeat that—the main difference is that now the Campus is fully functional, and so, so, so cool!). But nothing ever really happens during setup on Friday, so I don’t think I missed a lot.

Saturday was the first real day for the event. At the open ceremony, we were told there were 1,101(!) of us AFOLs from 35 different countries and you could definitely feel it. Even the public felt more numerous than ever. Last year I said that was crazy, but that was lockdown-me speaking, not used to crowds anymore. THIS YEAR it was crazy. That’s what I meant when I said we were back to normal. And while it was certainly nice to have a “cozy” (so to speak) event last year, I think this makes more sense.

As usual it’s impossible to showcase only some of the models, I chose some (some!) of my favorites, shown here:

SW Fabuland Tantive IV, by Mikael Sjöstedt (aka Copmike). Definite my favorite MOC of the year!
Chopper, by Anna Opsahl
Hotel Hilton, Faroe Islands, by Helgi Toftegaard
Cambodia (1200 - 1900 - 2022), by Lasse Vestergaard
Tower of Terror, by Péter Eliás
The Guarded Inn, by Saskia Van Doesburg
You Have Died of Dysentery, by Kitty Elsmore
My Workspace, by Eric Steenstra
LEGO Duck, by Ed Diment (this was built live during the event)
1:1 Audi R18, by Caspar Bennedsen

You can also watch these two extremely exaustive videos by Kim Ellekjær Thomsen who went through both halls and looked at every single MOC!

One very cool thing we had this year was the historical exhibition by Fabian Berget Lindblad. We had been talking about doing something for the 90th anniversary this year, but it never materialized… it turns out it wasn’t really necessary because Fabian has a lot of cool old stuff and he was more than capable to fill the space himself (he did get some help, though). His table also became a meeting point for us LEGO history buffs, something that we’ve always needed in the past. Corvin Simhcsa’s wonderful retro LEGO van was also parked outside of the center, and it’s always amazing to see it.

There were many presentations at the event too, but on Saturday I was only able to attend the Q&A with J&J (Jordan and Jamie) session. Jordan being Jordan Paxton from the AFOL Engagement Team and Jamie being Jamie Berard. There were many interesting questions but especially one stuck, for me… someone asked Jamie what are the reasons for TLG’s current insane success and Jamie, besides the obvious pandemic, mentioned LEGO Masters. Not living in a country with a LEGO Masters local show I probably don’t feel it, but I believe he might be right, I’d never thought of that before.

Other Saturday presentations included LEGO Nostalgia (with Ollie Gregory, James May and Ashwin Visser), The Office (with Diego Lopez Sancho, Laura Perron and Chris Perron), LEGO Masters (with Ant Carr, Katrine Talks and Sidse Deviantier Sommerlund) and Woman Brick Initiative (with Megan Lum).

After the dark hour (lots of MOCs had lights) I had to skip dinner in the tent (I had a different dinner… so many things to do!), but got back there in time to see the crazy auction start. And then I had to leave again (not that I could afford anything) because we had our monthly Nerd Out with BrickNerd call with contributors and patrons at 10 pm. Many of us were there and we met in Kitty’s cabin. It was great to meet up (most of us) physically instead of being at home as usual.

Sunday morning started in a very busy way for me, also being on the New Elementary staff. I was busy setting up, running and then taking down the New Elementary Parts Festival workshop, that occupied all of the morning for me (even though Tim Johnson and I briefly ran away during taking down to go to Miguel Reizinho’s presentation about the Paredes de Coura Fan Weekend where we had been asked to talk about why that event is awesome… (You already know! Registration for 2023 is open!) and then we sneaked out again and went back to finish taking down our workshop. We skipped lunch because it was too late and at 2 pm I wanted to attend Richard Jones’ presentation “The Legacy of Classic Castle”. And I was right, it was awesome. (Follow The Rambling Brick, because he’ll be publishing about it soon.)

The other Sunday presentations were: LEGO Masters (again), LEGO Technic 45 Years of Play (with Milan Reindl) and Brick Talks (hosted by Kim Ellekjær Thomsen).

At 4 pm the event closed to the public and once more, that was it—see you next year.

It wasn’t really over, though, because as usual, there were Monday activities too. I did not participate in any of those because some of us had Fan Media Days (I was there for New Elementary, Gwyneth and Are were there for BrickNerd) back at the Campus (did I mention it’s an exhausting week? Awesome, though), but I’ve done all of the available activities in the past (employee store visit, LEGO Idea House tour, LEGOLAND backstage tour, Campus tour, factory tour) and I can say they’re all fantastic. I’ll suggest, once more, the LEGO Idea House tour for people who never took it. It is life-changing.

Hopefully this frenetic report didn’t scare you off. If you’ve attended Skærbæk this year or in the past, you know exactly what I was talking about. And if you haven’t… you should come! Don’t let yourself be scared by what might look, from the outside, a little bit too much. It’s not, it’s great and you should come. You can always ask for help if you need it… there are more than a thousand people ready to give it! Registration for 2023 (September 23/24) will open on April 1!

The official video summary of the weekend!

Did you go to Skærbæk Fan Weekend this year? What were your favorite parts? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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