Folk costumes from Telemark, Norway. These people are professionals. Do not try this at home.

Just to give you fair warning, so you may steel yourself for the ordeal, I’ll tell you now I’m going to be out of town and posting only as possible next week. Once again I’m off to Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota. This year, you may be relieved to learn, I’m not going to drive out on my own in Mrs. Hermanson (who’s been kind of a drama queen lately), but riding along with another Viking in his big van. We both travel alone, so we might as well keep each other company on that long, long trek into the sunset. And back, one hopes.

I’d invite you to stop in if you’re in the neighborhood (that’s a joke. Nothing’s in Minot’s neighborhood), but Høstfest is not an event to visit on a whim. You need to book your room at least a year in advance if you want to spend the night, and you pretty much need to spend the night. It will be interesting to see what the turnout is this year. It was down last year, not because of the recession (there is no recession in North Dakota), but because of the previous spring’s flooding, which wiped out a lot of hotel rooms and private homes. One assumes that situation will be better this year.

Headliners on the main stage this year include Jeff Foxworthy, Olivia Newton-John, and Vince Gill. I don’t imagine any of them will drop in on our camp. One of our members (the guy I’ll be riding out with, as a matter of fact) loves to tell of the day he was holding down the fort all alone, making chain mail, when Victor Borge dropped in and asked him what he was doing. He explained the process and Borge joined in for a while.

But that was long ago, and the big talent seems to have grown more distant. I’m not all that keen on meeting any of these people anyway, I guess. Jeff Foxworthy, maybe. I’d love to meet Olivia Newton-John… forty years ago.

And, as before, here’s fair warning to burglars—my renter will be resident in my house during my absence, training his new pet wolverine.