Last of the Summer LARPs!

Summer holidays come to a close with a Viking Day event.

It's always a sad felling to get to the end of the summer holidays, just as it was when I was a school kid I now get that 'summers over blues' now I'm retired on health reasons. Funny how life seems to come full circle!

I'd already covered the Medieval Tournament event at the start of the summer holidays and - sadly - I forgot to record our visit to Scarborough Castle for the 'Pirates Day' event last week ('Yarrrr!'). But I did remember to take a few snaps when we drove to Whitby Abbey yesterday to see the Viking re-enactors doing their thing.

This was my daughter  Kayleigh's idea as she is very taken by Viking culture, but I have always had a soft spot for 'Dark Age' history (yes, I know historians no longer like that term, but everyone understands generally what it means) so I was interested to see the event and I was glad we went.

Obviously there was the usual LARP style 'shield bashing' skirmish re-enactment, though full marks to the numbers involved compared to the Medieval and Pirate event. I do wonder, however, what effect media has on the popularity of such activities as when 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was at it's height I seem to remember that Pirate themed events got larger participants. 

Above: The amazing backdrop of Whitby Abbey was a fantastic location for the
Viking encampment. 

Anyway, the Whitby event was an very well attended get together by the Viking re-enactment community, not only in the number waving swords and shields but also by the number of families who set up more 'mundane' displays representing Viking life and artisan activities.

I was actually more impressed with these 'side-shows' more than I was with the faux-battles!

There were cobblers, blacksmiths, potters, fletchers and other crafters as well as home hearth displays with lots of cooking. It really was incredibly interesting and I was most intrigued to see the arrow making display and the manually driven lathe!

Again, I do think it's such a shame that some of these historic re-enactments as somewhat influenced by the popularity of TV shows as when I first took my kids to a Knights Tourney event many years ago that also had a great many side activity displays, but these were missing in the latest Medieval re-enactment that I attended this summer.

This is such a shame as this sort of living history festival is a great way to introduce kids to the fact that history isn't just a static thing that they see in books, but real life that was lived. It's a great way to introduce youngsters to their heritage.

Above: The shield-maker's tent - I think this and the arrow-maker's tent were
my personal favourite displays, these are both things I could actually see
myself trying out if I had a proper workshop!

We rounded off the day with a quick visit to Whitby itself and I enjoyed a fantastic curry pasty! Once again, everyone was absolutely pooped by the end of the day but we really felt like we had done something interesting to cap off our holiday aside from sitting on our bums binge watching TV!