The Cortège

The Cortège (Swedish: Cortègen), or The Chalmers Cortège (Swedish: Chalmerscortègen) is an annual carnival parade held on Walpurgis Night (30 April) by students of the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg.

In 1909, the students decided to gather all the horse carriages in the city to travel the distance they usually walked.

In the year 1911 a committee, Chalmers Cortège Committé (CCC), was created to organize the whole procession.

On 7 April this year, a group of road and water engineers decided to celebrate their final exams by hiring carriages and taking a trip to Slottsskogen.

In those days there was already a tradition of Valborg - the Chalmerists marched every year on 30 April in a long line along Vasagatan with one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter in connection with the so-called springtime "mösspåtagning" (i.e. the day they put on - and still put on - the white tophat).

Students of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg , Sweden , riding a penny-farthing and a quadruplet tandem bicycle (in the background) with student caps , during the Chalmers Cortège of 2006.