Saturday, the final round. There will be no further on-site reports from me, as my ride leaves at oh-dark-bloody-early tomorrow morning.

Another good day for the Vikings yesterday, especially in terms of fighting. I found, to my amazement, that I won most of my fights against much younger, faster opponents. I can only conclude (and Ragnar concurs) that all these years of slogging it out, one on one, with a very good sword fighter have borne fruit in a little actual skill.

I don’t expect it to last. The young fighters will learn quickly, and they’ll learn my weaknesses faster than anything else. I think I can see it happening even now.

My most interesting fight was against a young fellow (coincidentally the Bridegroom I mentioned yesterday) who prefers to fight with a short axe. In that fight I actually succeeded–though not on purpose–in performing a move I’ve often aspired to. That is, catching my opponent’s blade in my shield, and then pulling it out of his hand. In this case he got his axe stuck so firmly in my shield that we had a tug of war over who would get both axe and shield, as they were clearly going to stay together. I got it away, and then he grappled me, so I had a little trouble to finally dispatch him with my short saex.

As for the festival as a whole, today will probably determine how successful it is. Traditionally, Høstfest has had two major sources of visitors–the thousands of RVers who drive in and camp for the week, and package tours that bring people in in buses and put them up at local motels. As I told you before, most of the motels are now booked full with oil drillers, and those that aren’t full have hiked their prices drastically. So, according to the scuttlebutt among the entertainers, about 30 tour companies canceled their visits. Crowds have been less than I had expected.

However, today is the day the air base people and the oil workers will be free to visit, so we’re likely to see a surge.

I’ll tell how that works out Monday.