Tag Archives: Hostfest

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Farvel, Høstfest

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A Hostfest breakfast crowd in the glory days. This was just one of the halls.
Me with 4 Lagerthas, the year they did TV promotion.

It’s not as if I hadn’t seen it coming, but still it’s shock: Norsk Høstfest of Minot, North Dakota, long the largest Scandinavian festival in the US, announced today that it had closed its doors for the last time.

Since 1978, except for the Covid hiatus, people streamed to Minot (one of the remotest cities in America) every fall for an astonishing combination of Scandinavian crafts, food, and culture, along with stadium shows featuring big-name entertainment (largely, but not exclusively, country and western music). The crowds were huge in its heyday, with every room in town booked. Thousands of folks rolled in to camp in RVs, and day tour buses arrived in convoys. If you had a hankering to see people in cowboy hats and Norwegian sweaters, Høstfest was the place to go.

Our Viking Age Club & Society was part of it from very early on (I myself only started attending around the turn of the millennium, but I guess I was involved in about half the festival’s history). Ron, one of our old members, attended for 25 straight years and had all kinds of stories to tell about the celebrities he’d met, back when the entertainers used to mingle more freely with the public. He taught Victor Borge to make butted mail. He slung one of the Mandrell sisters over his shoulder and carried her into his tent (for a photo op). He had beers (nothing more, he insisted) with Willie Nelson in his trailer.

My chief memories are of the years we spent in what they called “Copenhagen Hall,” where the Oak Ridge Boys did three concerts a day right around the corner. We Vikings used to do three combat shows a day (four on Saturday). Just getting in and out of my armor got to be exhausting, after a while, as I got older.

They put us up in homes with local families, and we all made long-lasting friendships. I’ll miss those people.

I’ll even kind of miss the 9-hour drive to northern North Dakota. Other group members mostly took the dogleg route through Bismarck, which added an hour, but I followed my GPS on a diagonal path that took me through towns most people have never heard of.

It was a good place sell my books. I’ve lost three festivals in the last couple years. That will hurt. Fortunately, a new one started last year, and another is coming this spring.

But there’ll never be another Høstfest. Quirky, very American, fueled by community pride and voluntarism, two commodities in increasingly short supply these days.

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Minot Post-Mortem

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I am back from Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota. The nation rejoices.

I have a couple mediocre pictures to share, taken with my Kindle, but Photo Bucket is moving very slowly tonight, so I’ll have to upload them later.

As you know, it’s been two years since I did Høstfest. Things tend to change when you neglect them for 24 months, and there were many changes for the Vikings.

One major change was that they moved us to a different building. That move had benefits and drawbacks, as I see it. The main benefit was increased space. We now share that space with other Viking groups and individuals, but that’s a benefit too (though it might be hard on our pride). There were several vendors, and several craftspeople showing off their skills. So it’s a much more educational event than it used to be. Also the music played in the building (Nordic and Sami) was more evocative than the Country and Western we generally had in our old venue.

The drawback was a certain separation from the mainstream of the festival. People had to pass through two temporary covered walkways to reach us, and there were a lot of people (or so we heard) who gave up on finding us, or never realized we were there at all.

Still, business wasn’t bad, and was quite good on Saturday, the final day. My own book sales were a little disappointing, though. I think I about broke even on the trip.

My most memorable moment came after I realized I had misplaced my cell phone. I went to the lost and found area the following morning and described it to the ladies there. After that they went all Jack Webb on me: “Do you have any idea where you might have lost it, sir?”

I said it might have been in the hallways somewhere. Then one of them went into a closet and came back with my phone. A note had been taped to it saying, “Porta-Potty.”

Then they broke up in laughter. “You’re just having fun with me, aren’t you?” I said. “I’m your morning’s entertainment.” They admitted that it was true. Theirs was a weary job, and they needed to wring from it whatever amusement they could.

I pointed to my security identification badge, which gave my name and (as was the case for all the Vikings) the designation, “Entertainer.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” I said. “Entertainment.”