Embracing their inner-Viking

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/08/2019 (2508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For one weekend every year at Islendingadagurinn — the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba — Lee McFarland lives as a Viking.

Actually, the Brandon resident lives as two Vikings. When she’s spinning wool into yarn, dressed as a woman at the Gimli festival’s Viking Village, McFarland is known as Helga Richardtsdottir. Armoured as a boy for battle, she’s Lief Richardtson.

Either way, McFarland — whose heritage, by her own admission, is “not very Icelandic” — said her 14-year-old hobby as a Viking re-enactor gives her “a really good feeling.”

“You get to help people and educate people,” said McFarland as tourists walked through the village.

“You get people to take a little bit of a look at the things that they’re not familiar with at all, because in our modern society we just don’t have the same association with food and with our clothing. So they get a better appreciation, at least I hope they do.”

Popular conceptions of Vikings portray the culture as warlike, with a penchant for raping and pillaging.

“They totally did those things — that’s just not most of what they did,” McFarland explained.

“Most of them were fishermen and farmers. They may have been called on by the landowner to go fight, but most of them were not professional fighters.”

McFarland’s husband and fellow Viking re-enactor James Wellbourne sat on a camp stool in a nearby tent, wrapping strips of wool around his ankles on a sweltering August day. He was in between Viking battles, in which teams of Viking re-enactors skirmished with blunted weapons in front of a crowd.

“I’m taking a break from the heat today, and I’m only wearing one tunic, and I’m not wearing a cloak,” he said, laughing.

Wellbourne, who goes by the Viking moniker Brokk, was a fan of swords from the time he was young.

“And then my mother-in-law calls me one morning and says, hey, she heard on (the radio) that they’re doing a Viking training in Gimli, do you want to go learn how to fight like a Viking,” he recalled.

“Well, is there another answer to that than, yes?”

Saturday’s Viking fights were emceed by Winnipegger Nathan Beal, who explained Viking military tactics to the crowd as his comrades clashed. Beal grew up in England, and was involved in Anglo-Norman re-enactments before becoming interested in the Viking Age. (From the British perspective, he explained, that era is considered to have lasted from the year 793 to 1066.)

“Of course, most people here in the village today, they’re born and raised in Canada,” said Beal, whose Viking persona is named Beorn.

“They come at this from all sorts of different angles — sometimes it’s the romanticism of the Viking Age gets them interested in it, and then they learn more about the reality of the Viking Age. Other times it’s more the fellowship of an encampment like this one, and the shared passion in either the crafts or history.”

That passion was evident in Wellbourne and McFarland’s tent, where the couple sleeps on a handmade wooden slat bed modelled after an actual Viking bed. The couple brings their two children to the festival’s Viking Village every year.

“Honestly, the biggest draw is the community,” said McFarland.

“The people are awesome! They’re all friendly, they all work together, and that includes when bad stuff happens, we pitch together in a pinch to fix things. Last year we had about seven tents go down in a big storm. We pitched together to share tents, we double-bunked people in other tents so that they still had a place to stay.”

The Icelandic Festival of Manitoba is “sort of like Christmas” for festival president Grant Stefanson, who has attended his entire life and whose father and grandfather were both presidents of the festival.

“For a lot of the people from the Icelandic community, it’s 130 years in a row that we’ve celebrated Icelandic culture in Canada, and so that’s our piece of the cultural fabric here in Canada, and we’re proud of that,” Stefanson said.

“We’re a small community, but obviously very determined because we’ve continued this festival for 130 years.”

New attractions at this year’s Icelandic Festival include an Icelandic fashion show, Icelandic film screenings in conjunction with the Gimli Film Festival and an expanded art show. The festival runs through Monday.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

@sol_israel