The Scandinavian Festival in Moorhead is over, and I am safely home. I am tired and sore but intact, as is my car – thanks be to the Lord.

The picture above shows my little bookselling booth, with Viking tent attached, set up right at the southwest corner of the stave church, a replica of the Hopperstad stave church in Norway (I met the guy who built it once, but that’s another story).

Here’s the rest of our camp, or most of the rest. I didn’t photograph everything.

There was an odd symmetry between the two days of the festival, at least for me. History did not repeat itself, but it rhymed, sort of, in very different existential modes.

Our big concern on Friday was the weather. The day was forecast to be mostly cloudy, with rain showers in the early afternoon. Our hope was that the showers would be light and quick to pass. The rain turned out to be fairly heavy, and at one point it actually started hailing on us. As it happened, the hail began just as I was in the middle of working a credit card transaction on my cell phone – fortunately, my customer was a good sport, and was not deterred. I should have asked her to come in under my awning, but my awning is not that waterproof anymore. When it rains heavily, the rain drips down in a straight line across the lowest point in the canvas. I had my books out in front of that line, while I myself stood in back of it, the Veil of Drip separating us in the fashion made popular by the veil of the temple in Jerusalem.

I sold exactly three books on Friday. We all hoped things would be better on Saturday, because the weather was supposed to be nice and, well, it would be Saturday.

My sales on Saturday, as I hinted earlier, sort of paralleled Friday’s weather. I sat for hours without a single sale, worried that the whole thing would be a bust. Then, around early afternoon, customers started streaming in (like a storm, get it?). Fully four of those customers took advantage of my Festival Discount to buy the entire Erling saga all at once. Then business passed away like the hailstorm, but I’d sold enough to satisfy me.

Everybody else seemed to enjoy the festival too. I was delighted to be stationed so close to the stave church.

I took another picture of the church, though it’s incomplete. To get a really good shot, I’d have had to stand in the blacksmith’s booth. He probably would have let me – he’s a genial fellow – but I didn’t like to ask.

I also got a picture of the Hjemkomst ship inside the museum, or at least of its prow. One of my book customers had known Bob Asp, the ship’s builder, when he was a guidance counselor in Moorhead and he himself was a teenager.

Thanks to the Clay County Historical Society for letting us participate. I hope we can do it again.