Seeking the World’s Soul

Liv­ing his­tory Viking combat

This is my favorite shot from the Gorodets liv­ing his­tory fes­ti­val in 2006. It always makes me think I should title it, “No shit, there I was…” The guys fight­ing are mainly col­lege stu­dents who do this as a hobby. It’s live steel, dull weapons but oth­er­wise real. My hus­band joined the group and got to find out exactly how authen­tic Viking re-enactment com­bat can be when he took an axe direct to his shin bone and had to be car­ried out of the woods on his shield.

The really annoy­ing thing about that… I mean other than the four months fol­low­ing of bring­ing him beer and cof­fee while be propped up his cast… was that we’d just watched “300” before he went out to the event. And I quoted Queen Gorgo to him as he went out the door, “Come back with your shield, or on it!”. Sigh. And now he’ll never, ever let go of the blood­stained thing.

Photo Data