Tag Archives: Viking reenactment

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Memoir of decline: My strenuous weekend

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Old Man In an Armchair, by Rembrandt, 1652.

I just received a postcard. It was mailed to me from Spring Grove, Minnesota (in the southeastern corner of the state) on May 17 last, and it arrived here in Robbinsdale today. That’s nearly three weeks to travel 161 miles. I could wax indignant about the way the mail service has deteriorated, harkening back to the gilded days of my youth when such a missive would have arrived the following day, or at most in two days.

But at this point, I just sympathize with the postal service. It must be feeling pretty much like I was feeling after this weekend.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a good weekend. Met a number of nice people, and sold a reasonable amount of my books.

But it was hard on me. This was one of those watershed moments in a man’s life (if it’s a man; sometimes it’s a woman but I know nothing about that. I only assume their experience is similar) when he’s forced to face the fact that he’s gotten bloody old. I drove home Sunday afternoon, left all my Viking junk in my car, and collapsed on the sofa. I spent Monday recovering; I accomplished nothing except for posting a book review. I had “run out of sand,” to employ a metaphor from my green years.

Having rested up now and thought it over, I realize the situation may not be as bad as I thought. This weekend was unusual in that it involved two consecutive Viking events on two consecutive days. That meant two setups and two teardowns, plus packing and unpacking my car. That’s a lot of barges toted and bales lifted. Thank God for the young people in our group – we’ve had a gratifying influx of promising youngsters recently, and they are generous in helping me lift and carry and strap things down. I couldn’t manage without them.

But I think I probably need to cut back a little. I’m considering selling my Viking tent. I can get by with a sun shade/awning, as I used to, which is a lot lighter. I said goodbye to steel combat a few years ago, and now I think I may need to say goodbye to the care and feeding of my tent. I stand before the crowd like Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” and say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Lugging my Viking chest in and out of my house (it involves steps) is the single hardest part of managing my reenactment impedimenta, though. I think I’m going to experiment with just leaving the blasted thing in my car all summer. Heat may be an issue in the sunshine, but the only thing I can think of inside the chest that’s likely to melt is a little lump of beeswax in my leather sewing kit. And that’s in a plastic container, so I think it’ll be all right.

I’ll be thinking more about efficiency and downsizing. That’s part of the aging process generally. I must resign myself, I think, to being prized for my wisdom rather than my strong back.

Come to think of it, I was never much prized for my strong back. If I was considered wiser than I was strong, that was mostly because I wasn’t very strong.

What, you ask, were these two exhausting events? Saturday was the annual Nordic Music Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s held at Buck Hill, a commercial ski hill that’s been around forever, right next to the highway. In the non-snow months, they host other events, of which this was one. The day started rainy (not predicted by the weather man), then turned sunny and humid. The featured music was an ABBA cover band, and our young Vikings did a couple combat shows. I had several interesting conversations with people who came by my sales table, and I sold a fair number of books. It was comparable to last year.

Sunday was Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, something our group participates in every year. The weather was nice, though it was starting to spit rain by the time we tore the camp down. Attendance was better than it’s been in a while – I had to wait in line a long time to buy my food. (I got aebelskivers – a spherical Danish pancake served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar, a Danish hot dog, and layer cake.) My book sales were small, but they always are at Danish Day – I sold three books, which is actually good for that event. I don’t know why the Danes seem to be less interested in books than Norwegians – possibly it has to do with the fact that my books are Norway-oriented.

One of our new members has a pair of Norwegian Elk Hounds, named Odin and Freya, which he brought. They are astonishingly mellow and easygoing – I joked with the owner that the dog treats he fed them must be CBD gummies. (This breed is not usually known for its placidity. They’re strong dogs, and generally they like to romp.)

It was a good weekend.

But it seemed to me it was no country for old men. Or so I felt Sunday evening.

I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry.

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On to Brainerd

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I may or may not be posting here tomorrow night, contingent on circumstances. I’ll again be in beautiful, scenic Brainerd, Minnesota for the Crow Wing County Viking Festival. Last year’s local news report on the festival is posted about — though reluctantly, as their cameraman completely blew the opportunity to capture the excitement of my presence.

If you’re in the area, here’s the web site. The festival is held at the Crow Wing County fairgrounds and begins 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

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After-inaction report

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[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.”

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Breakout week

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A past Viking event. My tent is in the background. This madness is about to resume.

Mystery solved. Dentally speaking.

As I told you yesterday, I went to the dentist, pleading emergency, because I was having intermittent tooth pains. The dentist, finding nothing amiss, asked if I was experiencing stress. Might be grinding my teeth at night, for instance.

Last night, after midnight, I was on the couch finishing up the translation of a script, due today (Oslo time). And I noticed that my teeth were clenched like an alligator’s. (Did you ever read the tip I saw somewhere when I was a kid? About how if you find yourself wrestling an alligator – which would generally be an involuntary arrangement, I’d imagine – you should grab his jaws while his mouth is closed, and just hold them closed. Because an alligator has tremendous power to bite down, but his mouth-opening muscles are relatively weak. This, of course, still leaves you with the problem of the alligator’s tail, which is also very powerful (according to what I’ve read. I have no personal experience in the area). And I don’t think there are any tricks to restrain an alligator’s tail. (Personally, I wouldn’t chance it. One of the reasons I moved out of Florida.)

So it was the stress of the deadline and the late hours that had me wound up. I hope I didn’t convey the wrong idea yesterday. I’m happy about all the things I’ve had to do this week. It’s just their coming all at once that keyed me up. I really liked the script I was working on, and I enjoyed being interviewed on the radio. And I’m looking forward to stretching my Viking muscles again (probably pulling some while I’m at it) in the two events I’ll be doing this weekend.

Part of the pressure, I just realized, comes from the end of the lockdown. Going out in public and interacting with genuine human beings has been a challenge for me ever since I was a kid. I do the Viking events because a) it’s fun to dress up and play, and pretend to be an expert, and b) it’s a good way to sell books. But it’s also a challenge. Essentially, I see people as dangerous animals. Going to a public event is equivalent to visiting one of those wildlife safari parks. If you don’t stay in the jeep, the management cannot be responsible for your safety.

This past year has been a guilty pleasure for me. I began to suspect some time ago that I’ve got some agoraphobic tendencies, and those tendencies got coddled like an egg all through 2020. I grew a whole new shell. Now I’ve got to break out of that shell again, and it’s got me a little nervy.

But being a Viking is all about courage. Even if you’re only battling yourself.

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The Draw of Historical Re-enacting

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We have many historical re-enactors or living historians where I live. Our neighboring battlefields and monuments need context to understand what happened on this land 150 years ago and more. Just to the north of where I live is a park dedicated to the Cherokee nation and the beginning of the Trail of Tears. A few miles down the road is a national battlefield where the Confederate army won a major battle just before losing a bigger one.

What is the draw and the danger of re-enacting portions of history?

It isn’t only recreational. Craftspeople specialize in creating historical replicas, like the armour that was used in the Marathon re-enactment. Experimental archaeologists test specific hypotheses about aspects of history as a form of academic inquiry. Inevitably, some guesswork is involved; recreating the past means you have to fill in a lot of little gaps in the historical record. . . .

Even within specific groups of re-enactors, people hold a range of views about how closely clothing, items, and activities should mimic the originals. “Some people are button and stitch counters, and they’re not much fun,” says one re-enactor, dressed in wool clothes and standing in a field outside Hamilton, Ontario. (He was taking part in an annual living-history recreation of late medieval Italy, in the spring of 2016.) “They’re so historically correct it becomes ridiculous.”

(via Prufrock News)

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We’re mass-communicatin’ here!

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The cable access TV interview I participated in, about my Viking reenactment group, is now accessible on YouTube:

Bookselling

I am the one percent

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I learned by way of our own Phil Wade that Bethany House has made J. Mark Bertrand’s novel Back on Murder (which we both reviewed very favorably, here and here) free in Kindle form for a limited time. We’re Bertrand boosters around here, and this book has the coveted Brandywine Books imprimatur.
Another vacation day for me. Today I took on a project I’d been dreading on general principles, replacing one of the leather handles on my Viking chest. You can see this chest in the right background in this old photo, from a Boy Scout event back in 2010:

When I built the chest, I made the decision to use leather handles, for two reasons. One, it’s cheaper than getting period iron ones, and I cheated on all the hardware on that project. But also I’ve seen an old immigrant trunk from one of our ancestors that came over from Norway with leather handles, and I always thought that was kind of cool. Easy on the hands. (Except not really. The flexible handles tend to squeeze your fingers when the chest is heavy, which this one is).
The very handle you behold in that photograph broke on me a little while back, and I dreaded the process of replacing it. But I took it on today, replacing it with a sturdy piece of belt blank I acquired a while back for tooling and never got around to using. It came out well.
Also I mowed the lawn, which was as exciting as you imagine.
But the big deal was that I got my official score for the Miller Analogies Test in the mail. After having to take it twice and beating myself up at getting a score of 475 out of a possible 600, I learn now that 475 puts me in the 99th percentile, which even I can’t find a way to disparage. Why anyone would design a test with a 200 to 600 scoring range, where the top 100 points are almost never used, I can’t imagine. No doubt they have their reasons, just as I insist on putting leather handles on chests.

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Tivoli report, 2010

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Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa this year was good. Exhausting, as always, for an old man like me, but good. I have no complaints.
I didn’t take any pictures. I took my camera, but did nothing with it. There are plenty of pictures, taken by others, on Facebook, but I myself didn’t see much that was different from last year, so the pictures in my report from a year ago ought to serve adequately.
Our first activity was a “Viking wedding.” A couple already married legally (or soon to be married; I didn’t ask) were given a heathen ceremony next to the replica Viking House. I attended out of politeness, and wished them well, and was relieved to learn that the celebration wasn’t going to be so authentic as to require three solid days of drunken feasting.
One of the most important questions in planning any event is “What will I forget to bring this year?” The answer for 2010: my sleeping bag. Once again I was using a borrowed club Viking tent, and I had an inflatable mattress to sleep on. I always keep a waterproof tarp in my car, so I tried using that for warmth. By the middle of the night I found it inadequate, and so I put on the shirt I’d worn the day before. Shortly before I got up, I had the thought, “You idiot. You brought two cloaks. What do you think a cloak is for?”
Saturday was well organized. We had group battles (seven men per side) scheduled for 12:30, 3:00 and 6:00. Lots of fun. I think I was left standing once, but only because I’d been (theoretically) badly wounded in the right arm, and so fell back, out of the fight.
We had the same Scottish cook as last year, and the food was good, plentiful and (relatively) authentic. Once again there was a haggis—a “beef haggis” (somebody said such things are acceptable in a pinch), and I thought it better than last year’s. The evening was given over to conversation, ranging from the scholarly to the scatological. I had the great pleasure of having a conversation with an Englishman (who bought one of my books). His opinions weren’t at all the sort that I expect from Englishmen nowadays, but maybe that explains why he lives in Iowa now. He’d studied history and archaeology, and been a Saxon reenactor, in his homeland, and I like to think I was able to talk to him on something approaching an equal level. He did disappoint me, however, by informing me that my proper Anglo-Saxon pronunciation of the name of the Venerable Bede (Bae-deh) was pretty much a waste of time, because everybody pronounces it “Bead” over there, just like over here (on the rare occasions anyone ever talks about him at all over here).
Afterwards, another delightful fireworks display, marred only by the fact that a couple fires started in the launching area. This engendered considerable mirth among us Vikings, and several guys speculated about the fate of “One-eyed Bob and his crew of four-fingered pyrotechnicians” who (they were certain) were in charge of everything. The volunteer fire department came in to douse the fires, but in fact left one of them smoldering, and it flared up again. But then I went to bed, and apparently no disaster followed.
Sunday we were incited, by bloody-minded festival organizers, to stand along the edges of the street and harass bicyclists participating in the official festival bike ride. There were no casualties. Later I went up to the fire department to enjoy the all-you-can-eat aebelskiver breakfast (an aebelskiver is a sort of Danish pancake, fried in balls rather than flat. Wonderful eating). I did not taunt the firemen on their shoddy performance the night before.
We didn’t do any big battles on Sunday, but the Skjaldborg guys from Omaha gave my group some training in areas in live steel combat where we’d picked up bad habits. It all made sense, and I was grateful for the correction. They also showed us how to fight with an axe, and one of them presented us with our first club fighting (blunt) axe. If anybody from Skjaldborg reads this, much thanks.
Tivoli wouldn’t be Tivoli without rain, but the rain that came on Sunday afternoon was pretty light, so we didn’t have to take wet tents home. I drove down and back with a young member of our group, a new fellow, and having company (especially a C.S. Lewis fan) made the journey a whole lot shorter.
But no less exhausting.
Still, the dream I had Saturday night, of encountering a skidding, out-of-control semi-trailer truck on the highway, did not come true. I am not a prophet, and all things considered, I’m glad of that.