Today we took the train to Uppsala to meet Niklas, who saw his first concert at the Globe arena, June 17th 1992. The weather was lovely, spring is in the air and the sun was warm.

Niklas told us about the adrenaline kick when the gates open and you rush to get a good spot as close to the stage as possible. “I want to be in the front row to feel the fellowship of the other fans. Those in front are the most dedicated, those who have spent a lot of time in line to get there. I want to share my experience of the concert with the same people I’ve been talking to outside the arena. Of course it’s fun to get eye contact with Bruce or the band, but being there with other fans is more important to me.”

Niklas is the man behind the swedish fanforum Springsteen.se that started in June 2003. Niklas was lucky to register the domain and then he started developing the site. He knew he wanted to make a site where people could talk about Springsteen. Prior to Springsteen.se there had only been a few mailinglists in swedish and Niklas wanted to make an alternative to the english fanforums.

Today the site have about 600 members aged from 12 years up to almost 70. “First we got a lot of people from the mailinglist Born to Run, but now we have a lot of young people who register. Those who are most active are in their twenties or early thirties”, Niklas said.

There are a lot of work with the site, but Niklas has help from a couple of moderators. And he is planning on developing the site so people could add more to their personal profiles. Even though the discussions are not so intense when Bruce is not on tour, Niklas think the forum will live on. And as soon Springsteen and the E Streeters will go on tour again he thinks that will add new members to the forum.

We thank Niklas for the interview. We will now take a break until April 24th when we will go to Jönköping to film the performance of Hungry Heart – a tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen. We will join a lot of fans from Springsteen.se for a night with good music. Then we will go back to Stockholm for the last interviews before we start the editing of our documentary.

First we aim to produce a 10-minute showtrailer that will help us promote our idea for SVT, the swedish national television, and we hope they will buy our film.