GREEN BAY – The Vikings are coming, and there will be more of them.
The first Viking Festival that set up camp last year at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay returns this weekend with a new name, an expanded schedule from one day to two, and more than double the number of featured artists and performers.
Sorry, no hockey horn helmets yet, and certainly none of those purple-clad Vikings from the Minnesota frontier who ransacked and ransacked the Packers' season opener.
The Midwest Viking Festival, as it is now called, aims to give visitors an authentic look at Norse history and culture by transforming the grounds outside the university's Viking House replica into a Viking camp on Friday and Saturday.
Sixty featured artists from across the country will work as blacksmiths, silversmiths, potters, glass bead makers, carpenters, weavers, archers and cooks. Some will tell stories. Others will do battle. Young children will play medieval games such as kubb and hnefatafl.
MORE: Vocal group Pentatonix brings its 'Christmas Spectacular' to the Resch Center
MORE: The Aaron Rodgers Book Club is back for another season and here's the first title
“I think when people come to a Viking festival they think they're going to see men with swords and armour. We show all aspects of daily life a thousand years ago, so of course that means women and children and how people would have lived,” said Heidi Sherman, associate professor of history at UWGB and director of the Viking House.
“This is really kind of abusing or challenging the stereotype that Vikings are just big, stupid brutes. We show a bit more of a sophisticated angle of Vikings, medieval Scandinavians. I just think it intrigues people. We are not trying to perpetuate any stereotypes or break them. We're just trying to train in a gentle Viking way.”
Last year's event, the first such Viking festival in Wisconsin, featured 25 costumed reenactors and drew about 500 people on a Saturday with limited advance planning. Sherman expects several thousand this year as he makes the jump to the Midwest Viking Festival and draws from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota.
The Historical & Cultural Society of Clay County in Moorhead, Minnesota, has hosted the annual Midwest Viking Festival since 2008. When it decided to move in a different direction, the coordinator, who is a friend of Sherman's, asked if the UWGB would consider becoming the new permanent site of the Midwest's largest Viking festival.
Viking House, located near Wood Hall on campus, anchors the festivities. Viking reenactors Owen and Elspeth Christianson built the structure in 2011 from Wisconsin white pine and designed it based on meticulous research of building traditions in Norway from the time. It was located on their property in Stratford, where they used it for Viking-related events and education, including hosting Viking Camp Weekends each fall with Sherman and her students. When the couple retired and moved, they donated the house to UWGB in 2017.
The Christiansons will be giving tours of the house during the festival.
The Historical & Cultural Society of Clay County is contributing grant money to the free festival for the next three years, and Sherman received a large Wisconsin Humanities grant that will also help pay the performing artists.
“It's a real festival of education. Our focus is not really on representation. It's to teach the public about the origins of traditional craftsmanship in Scandinavia through these demonstrations,” Sherman said.
Some of the Vikings will sell books and things they make. Children will be able to try archery, traditional Viking lawn games and go on a Viking Quest, making their way around the festival finding different performers and asking each one a question about the Viking Age.
Sons of Norway will be selling homemade cookies and treats, and two food trucks (Caribbean Cruiser and Bacon Burger Company) have been added this year.
Sherman is looking forward to more seasonable temperatures in the 60s this weekend. Last festival's weather was on the hot side, especially for the Vikings, who tend to wear a lot of wool.
He hopes people will take the opportunity to learn about Nordic heritage, talk to the artists and take a step back in history.
“Once you're in the festival grounds you can't really see modern buildings. You see the Weidner Center if you really look. Otherwise, it's just a rolling hill in front of the house,” Sherman said. “It's really beautiful for a festival. It just feels like you're in another era.”
Midwest Viking Festival
When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Outside the home of the Vikings at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Take the main UWGB entrance (also the Weidner Center entrance) from Nicolet Drive. Take the first right into Wood Hall car park and you will see the Viking House on the right.
Schedule of special events (same on both days): Sven Tunheim tells stories about the Vikings, 10:15am. and 12:30 p.m. battle demonstrations, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Folk musician and author Kari Tauring presents “Healing Our Kinship to Nature,” 11:30 a.m. Tauring presents “Frith and Grith: Divine Female Boundary Setters,” 1:30 p.m. (with a circular dance at the end).
Permission: Free
Contact Kendra Meinert at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
