I should have brought a camera on Sunday. Sunday was the annual Norway Day festival in Minnehaha Park. The Viking Age Club & Society does it every year, and aside from some rotation in personnel there isn’t usually much to distinguish one year from another.

But this year we’d added a new young man, so that we had four in all, plus another who’s young enough to play with them. Some of them had attended a reenactors’ event in Moorhead last month, and they’d learned some new Viking games. So in our quiet times, we had young guys playing silly, semi-violent, and sometimes rather crude games in our camp, to the amusement of all. This is exactly what a Viking camp should be like.

Except that we still have a shortage of thralls. Haven’t worked out a way to get forced labor out of the Irish yet. Still, boys make a reasonable substitute when it comes to the heavy set-up and take-down work.

The weather threatened in the morning, but it turned into quite a lovely summer day. I had a good time, but only sold three books. Lost all my fights except for the last one, against a young spearman who’d killed me a couple times previously. Before Samuel Colt, the spear made all men equal.