This was the weekend of the annual Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul. And so I was there, but with an abbreviated schedule. I’ve noticed in the past that I’ve always come down sick shortly after this worldly debauch, and I’ve started to suspect that it’s not good for me to spend four long days in a basement. I’ll see if this works better.

Business-wise, it was pretty good. On Saturday I sold a whole lot of books. Sunday was slower, but OK. Things were probably slowed some by the fact that there was a hockey game in the same facility that day, and parking prices got hiked.

I often ponder during those long, long days whether “multicultural” events like this actually do anything to promote their advertised purposes. Certainly I encountered nice people of many colors and tongues, and a wide variety of costumes. But to be honest, most of the costumes made me grateful I’d come as a Viking. They tended to inflate my low, reflexive feelings of cultural superiority.

Lots of people wanted to know what we thought of the History Channel TV series, and I suspect most of them were a little disappointed to hear our opinion.

The most memorable visitor, I suppose, was a fellow we knew from previous years, a black gentleman who likes to come over to talk lutefisk. And not to taunt us. Apparently he loves the stuff, and was disappointed that they didn’t serve it at the Norwegian booth in the food court.

For lunch on Saturday I had a hot dog wrapped in lefse, from that same Norwegian booth (an actual Norwegian food; I bought one once on the streets of Oslo). It was the most exotic thing I ate this year.

To crown your cultural experience, below is a video of Norwegian folk dancing at the festival yesterday. The youngest couple here (he’s wearing a black hat and white knee stockings) are actually members of our Viking group. In fact they’re the couple I introduced last year. Why they’d want to waste time on such a display of lasciviousness as this (that’s what my Haugean ancestors would have said, anyway) when they could be playing Viking, I cannot fathom.