At the movies with Vikings
As I’ve mentioned before, we have a friend who does Viking living history.
He used to do it at the Higgins museum before it closed, and now does it on
a wider scale and has a group that does it with him: www.hurstwic.com
They’ve had a number of events over the years that we’ve attended and it is
always a good time. (http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/tag/viking )
Last summer they went to Iceland to do a recreation of one of the battles
written about in one of the sagas. They filmed it there in Iceland on the
same spots described in the saga and have made a DVD about it. (They
actually have several DVDs out as well as books. If you are interested in
that sort of thing, I recommend looking them up.)
Last night they rented a movie theater one town over from where we live and
had a showing of the new DVD. We were invited and very happy to go and see
it.
I think that going to Iceland and doing a sword fight on the spot where
around 1000 years ago a person did so in the sagas is one of the coolest
things ever. So, just seeing the video of them doing that was awesome by
itself.
But on top of that they have all sorts of historical background, interviews
with experts on the sagas, weapons, clothing, technology of the time and
other information.
My wife called it a “big historical sandwich with something for everyone in
it”.
It was very nice to be invited to the viewing and a very cool video to see.
They’re going back to Iceland this summer to do another one. I can’t deny
that’s tempting to me…
We did do our own sword practice Sunday. Some day I’ll get around to
posting about that…