[Imagine a picture of Saturday’s events here. I neglected to take one. My brain was overheated, I think.]

It is one of the anomalies (I think that’s the word for it) of historical reenactment, that many of us impersonate people from the history of northern Europe, where it’s cool most of the year and most people historically wore wool. But we do it at events in America in the summer, where big wool costumes with cloaks are borderline dangerous if you don’t keep carefully hydrated. (And those who don’t reenact European stuff generally do the Revolutionary or Civil Wars, where wool is also de rigeur.)

Minnesota Military History Days, an annual event held in Dundas Minnesota (where my grandfather was once town constable for a year, as I kept telling people), was originally scheduled for May. But the weather was cold and wet in May, so they rescheduled for the first weekend in June. June is usually real nice in Minnesota.

This year the temperature hovered up just below 100˚. If I can trust my car’s thermometer, it actually hit 100 in the Cities. (Another thing I often tell people, whether they like it or not, is that I spent 11 years on the east coast of Florida, and never saw 100˚, but I’ve been through many such days in the North Star State.) I figured that after the long lockdown, people would want to come out to a public event in spite of the heat – but that was not the case. Attendance was sparse, much below normal levels, according to the old hands.

This was the first year anybody from The Viking Age Club & Society of the Sons of Norway had been to the event. (It was a three-day event, but we only did Saturday.) It’s what’s called a timeline event, where reenactors from various periods all come together to provide a walking (and camping) history lesson. There was a big World War II battle in the afternoon (America won again, I’m proud to report), but our Vikings did a couple combat shows too (I left that to others). And we had a good turnout of members, all of them young people – except, of course, for me.

I brought my tent and awning shade (we did need the shade), and it was good to have a lot of youthful free labor to do the bulk of the putting up and tearing down. Even so, I had occasion to ponder the fact that it had been more than a year since I’d done this stuff, and in the interim I’ve arguably become too old for it. Especially on really hot days.

I comfort myself with the thought that it will be better if I lose some weight. (Though that’s less comfortable when I remember that losing weight requires effort and self-control.) I got a fair amount of exercise in, though, walking back and forth to the water tap.

It was a fun event in spite of the sparse crowds. We (by which I mean mainly the other Vikings) made a lot of contacts. Invitations to other events and possible new group members came up. It was a good time.

In which I didn’t sell a single book, because we weren’t allowed to display any modern stuff.

However, another event was coming Sunday. Danish Day at the Danish-American Center in Minneapolis. Granted, I almost never sell any books at that event, but at least I’d be able to display them, and who knows?

As an added attraction, the temperature would be about the same as Saturday.

However, I was denied the joys of another tropical set-up and tear-down, when I went into my garage to start my car on Sunday morning, and the transmission wouldn’t function. Bummer. I unloaded my car and spent the day rehydrating and recovering from Saturday.

This morning I got AAA to tow my car to my regular transmission place (I have a regular transmission place because – as I have learned to my chagrin – PT Cruisers are prone to those kinds of problems.) If it’s the same thing it was the last time, it’ll be easily fixed. But they haven’t gotten back to me yet. Which leads me to worry.

On the high spiritual plane which I inhabit, we call this “opportunities to increase our faith.”