It was a strenuous, exhausting, yet enjoyable weekend. It’s going to be a fairly strenuous week too, by my standards. I have to prepare for my departure for Minot (the Høstfest Scandinavian festival, if you’re a new reader) on Monday. On Thursday I have to help the guys load a van for that event, and on Saturday I help a friend move.

(By the way, Phil will be gone next week too. Both of us will try to post as opportunities present themselves, but frequency will be down.)

Another Viking and I drove down to New Ulm on Saturday evening. The weather was unseasonably warm, and remained that way through the event. We were given a room in an old hotel which is now operating as a sort of arts center. As latecomers, we had to take a room on the third floor, where the air conditioner’s writ did not run, but opening a window helped a little. We slept on army cots, and I actually slept pretty well, since I’d prudently stayed up late the night before in order to give myself a sleep deficit.

There was a shower downstairs, and I (up early) was the first to snag it after the Roman who’d been sleeping in the room got up and went to breakfast. The shower, as it turned out, was cold. I endured it like a Cherusci (that was my tribe).

Afterwards, the Roman informed me (with a smile) that the shower did have hot water—“Just not for the first guy.”

And they wonder why everybody wants to massacre them.

We got a free biscuit and gravy breakfast at a Methodist church (thanks, folks!), and then went down to the park to see what would happen. We knew there was supposed to be at least one battle rehearsal, but nobody was entirely sure when that would be. It was a little like the way real-life war is described—long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of complete terror. Except, of course, for the complete terror part.

When rehearsal finally happened, it turned out that the script had been changed considerably from our first practice. Instead of a bit of marching, and a bit of climbing, followed by a bit of mock battle and the Romans falling down dead, they’d decided to tell the story of the battle a little more clearly. There was narration, and the battle was divided into three sections to represent the three days it took in real life. Also the instructions we’d been given at first, not to do anything like actually fighting but just to bang shields together, had (apparently) been rescinded. People were now fighting to hit (with wooden weapons, of course). I had no objection to that, I think you can guess.

After the rehearsal we used coupons we’d been given to get lunch at the food stands (I had a brat and chips, plus an ice cream bar for dessert). Then some more sitting around followed. About 4:00 I gathered my gear and stationed myself on the hillside next to the battlefield, to watch the people and be ready for the ball to open.

It was during this period that the great influx of barbarians occurred. I’d been concerned at first that we had about thirty Romans, and a smaller number of Germans. It would be strange, I thought, if the Romans were massacred by a smaller force.

However, more barbarians had been there for the rehearsal. And now they were “going into the highways and byways and compelling them to come in.” Old guys who could barely walk. Little kids swinging wooden swords, or just sticks. One old guy in a Wehrmacht helmet with horns attached, plus furry pants that seemed to have been borrowed from a bear costume.

And most of these people had had no training whatever in safe combat.



“I see here,” I said to the guys standing around me as we assembled, “the makings of a real disaster.”

But it wasn’t.

The performance started, and those of us who knew the steps told the others what to do (or just told them to follow us), and it all came out quite well. Nobody was hurt that I knew of, but there was a real thrill in charging with the savage horde and rolling over the Roman formation.

I got killed in the last encounter, and lay under my shield (it’s always safest to fall with your shield on top of you, in case anybody steps on you). That way I didn’t get to see Hermann chop off Gen. Varus’ head, but I thought that maybe if I was dead I could skip the grand culmination, in which all the fighters were to climb up the hill to the Hermann monument. It’s a long and steep climb, and I felt I’d already done my part for Germania.

However, another reenactor tugged me up, saying, “Rise, brother, victory is ours!” So I trudged up the hill (thank God I’d been working out), and then some pictures got taken and it was over. We were fed a picnic by some of the locals (good food, too), and then my friend and I set out for home, arriving very tired but alive around 10:00 p.m.

I slept pretty well that night too, as it happened.