I wonder if the event visible in one of the photos is etymological source of the word festival?

The word can be deconstructed in Swedish as fest i val which translates to "party in whale"

It's definitively not the source of the word, but it might very well be the reason the decided to have a "fest i val". Gothenburg is famous for their puns, and even today they open up the mouth of the whale for visitors on two occasions - valdagen (election day) and Valborgsmässoafton (Walpurgis eve).

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tdeck 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wiktionary says

> From Middle English festival (adjective), from Old French festival (“festive”), from Late Latin fēstīvālis, from Latin fēstīvus (“festive”). By surface analysis, festive +‎ -al. Displaced native Old English frēols. The noun is shortened from festival day, from Middle English festival dai, festiuall day (“feast day, festival”).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/festival

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thomassmith65 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It surely is; 'fest' is the Swedish word for 'party'. I actually think Swedish or Norwegian (which are practically the same language) are closer to English than even Dutch. Many of the most common, short English words are the same.

	▲	rob74 38 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"Fest" is also German for celebration - but just because several Germanic languages have the same word doesn't mean that it's a Germanic word. Actually all of them got it from Latin...
	▲	Hemospectrum 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Anglo-Saxon migrations made England English, and then the waves of Viking invasions littered North Germanic vocabulary all over it. You can see it in doublets like skirt/shirt that aren't in other West Germanic languages.