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It’s been a couple of weeks since VikingFest, and I wanted to give myself some time to rest and finalize 2024 meetings before I posted this.
Personally, for our first year, I think it went really well. We had over 700 attendees, which probably would have been more if it wasn’t for the rain and mud. This is also the first time I have assisted in planning a Renfaire styled event. I didn’t have “run a RenFaire” on my life bingo card, but here we are. For the most part, the whole event went super well and everyone was so great in dealing with the mud and weather issues.
Sure, some little things weren’t quite right, but we handled them quickly, and now we have a baseline for next years event. This was a lot of new territory for the entire team to navigate. Somehow, this thing really came together and I am really proud of everyone that I got to work with over the last year to make this happen. A lot went into this event and it’s the largest thing I have ever truly taken a huge organizational leadership role in. I’m so proud of us and I’m just so overwhelmed with the joy that our attendees had nothing but wonderful things to say about us.
We had a major storyline with a metagame happening at this years event, with loads of characters/actors throughout the event. Those characters worked towards making attendees (kinfolk) feel like they were a major part of the overall storyline. We had an Althing at Hedeby (the village we based our festival on). Raven (hrafn), Wolf (úlfr), Bear (bjǫrn) and Dragon(dreki) clans have gathered and tensions were high this year with the death of Jarl Ragnar of the Hrafn. Each of the clans had scheduled story events happening, some spread rumors, some fought in a holmgang, some politicked and attendees were the ones who choose the winner of the fest. Dragon clan ended up taking the jarl position in a landslide, they were based in Kidgard and the kids helped them win for sure, they were absolutely the right fit for that area.
We had a huge schedule of events with a Strongman competition, live steel battles (Buhurt), foam battle, vendors, loads of food, the overall storyline, fire spinners, a sword dancer, D&D adventures and a ton of other activities filled our schedule. At the end of the event, we sent Jarl Ragnar on his way with a proper Viking burial and burned a longship effigy before a massive concert with several Norse inspired acts.
Photo by @jolynnemartinez
Thank you all who attended that made this event great, I had fun playing as Runa Bjornmyrkr with all of you. We had an incredible team who took the lead on this, and they were a huge part of the reason why we were able to make this happen.
Due to the fact that it was an extremely long work day, I ended up taking my corgis with me to the festival. They dined on turkey leg, battled in the arena, and got all the pets in Kidgard!
This was Draven’s’ first real outing since he got all his shots, and he did great! He and Mugen went to work with me on a 14-hour day. They had a nice little pen setup under my tent and got to be outside and muddy part of the day. They like to believe that they are outside dogs now.
OmniFeral also had a booth, but in the future, since I am running the event, Ill be a roaming merchant on my in-between time instead because it was just too much to do all of it at once.
VikingFest will be returning for 2025, and the date reveal will be in December.
Follow VikingFest on social media:
Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube
Join the VikingFest community:
Facebook Group
Discord
And check out Bluffwoods Renaissance Faire, which is located in the same place as VikingFest is held. We worked directly with their team to make VikingFest happen and they are wonderful people.
(thank you @live.laugh.larp and @hanahanbi for the photos!)