GUEST BLOG: Robert Low - A Viking we will go.

Author of the Oathsworn series (published by Harper Collins), Robert Low, long time friend of Falcata Times took time out of his busy schedule to explain why he loves getting dressed up as a Norse Raider and trampling up and down the country with other likeminded individuals...

OUT on the training floor, a Doctor of Physics and Astronomy is battering lumps off an unlucky opponent’s shield with a pair of swords, screaming: “Is that Lethal Character enough for ye?”

In the safe zone, a Doctor of Biochemstry is waving a certain well-known red-top tabloid in my face while declaring that she should be wearing a bra. She’s a big girl, so I take her point, while observing that I thought she already did.

Cue hurried explanations – it seems that the tabloid is trumpeting new evidence which reveals that Viking girls discovered the bra (where – did they sell them in Iceland?). It’s one of the big talking points for the women, who are all clucking about the new revelations from some Scandinavian professor that Viking women’s costume is radically different from first thought.

The various illustrations are not meeting with approval, all the same, since it seems that the big, round brooches previously worn on the front of the shoulder are now deemed to be worn ‘to accentuate the breasts’.

The concensus is that it will a) do nipples no good and b) make everyone look like Boadicea’s auntie. It does not help that the woman modelling the newly discovered archaeology in the paper is of a disposition that places her brooches at her waist. Not a good look.

The men, meanwhile, are arguing about the new training regime put out by the RTTs – the Registered Training Thegns – at a recent meeting. Viking Central has decreed that people attempting to pass tests to make sure they are competent to fight en masse in a muddy field, must not only show that they will not hurt themselves or someone else, but display something called Lethal Character.

This is, it seems, a lot of shouting and hitting as if you meant it without actually hitting hard at all. Which, the argument runs, is what we already do.

The Doctor of Physics and Astronomy is indulging in a little practical demonstration of it and his opponent is well aware of the Doctor’s profession, since he is seeing more than a few stars of his own and wondering whether that quantum tree, the one that falls in the unheard forest, has actually fallen unheard on him.

Welcome to my world – the living history re-enactment, brackets Dark Ages, close brackets. In my youth, my idea of Vikings was pretty much the same as everyone else’s idea of Vikings – big hairy men with horned helmets, a bad attitude and the inability to mate unless the woman was running away at the time. Save for the two who were Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas and the big crowd of men who dressed in the Edwardian idea of Vikings at Up-Helly-A in Stornoway and burned stuff.

I had no more interest in dressing up as a wild Norseman and charging about a field with loads of others than I had in removing my leg with a blunt hacksaw blade. I only got into this because I had the idea to write a book and was fascinated by the Norse, a people who, at a time when most did not go more than two miles from home, went to America in one direction and as far as Kazakhstan in the other. Given Bush and Borat as the result, this was arguably a bad move.

What better way to get the feel of the period, thinks I, than to go along to the Glasgow Vikings weekly training and get a bit of hands-on with a sword and shield. Maybe a spear. Hopefully an axe.

Besides, I had just moved to Largs and discovered a few things I had not known before. Like the best café in Scotland, Nardinis, being shut (whit – nae ice cream?) and that it was the scene of the last battle between Vikings and Scots in history. These events are not connected, as far as I know, but the way archaeology is digging stuff up, I would not be surprised to see it in a tabloid near you. Nardinis, incidentally, has re-opened.

So, the Vikings. In and out like a Viking raid, I thought. Get a bit of Norse colour and off to write a bestseller. As the Norse say, the gods love folk who make plans, for it gives them a chance for a right good laugh.

The end result is that I now spend a deal of my time dressed like a dish of finest Finnan haddock in 10th century silk finery, bashing people with lumps of metal and not getting an ASBO for it.

I do this up and down the country and in concert with similar groups from the Midlands, Wales and elsewhere, under the umbrella group simply called The Vikings. It is a regular tour circuit, March to October, which includes places as diverse as Lindisfarne, Burghead and Lanark and, whenever the organisers can get their act together, Bannockburn. There were 1500 of us at Hastings in 2006 – an anniversary year of the 1066 battle – with many of them coming especially for the gig from Italy, Poland and America. You will note, of course, that neither Bannockburn (medieval) or Hastings (early medieval) have anything to do with Vikings. They do, however, have everything to do with massed combat using real steel.

In a move, the irony of which is not lost on me, we are even invited to participate in Norway’s premier Viking festival at Karmoy – where we ARE the Vikings. It’s a bit like being part of a travelling circus on permanent tour in the summer – you all arrive for a weekend gig – or longer – get out, do the show, party like Muppets on mead, then pack up and move on to meet up at the next gig down the line.

We are not only Vikings, we are also Picts. And soldiers of Bruce and Wallace. And Saxons and Normans. We get paid, which just about covers the expense of getting there and sometimes not even that, while the equipment we have is as absolutely authentic as we can make it, based on grave finds and source illustrations.

No machine-stitched hems. Painstaking embroidery, tooled leather and hand-made shoes (which is why you will never see our Vikings leaping boldly off a longship in anything but bare feet, boots round their necks. These are hand-made, about £150-£200 a pop and salt-water rots the leather stitching).

Our weapons are hand-made, too, from the spears and axes to the expensively recreated swords. All real steel, but blunted and the combat we do is not choreographed, like stunt fighters, which means we have to train as real warriors would to avoid ‘dying’ – or hurting someone.

That’s all hard enough, hence the frowning over ‘Lethal Character’, which is just one more thing to have to remember when passing a competency test – a bit like being asked to give a running commentary on what you are doing while sitting your driving test for the first time.

You need that competency to get on a field and fight, all the same and I welcome it, because I like my bones unbroken and need all my fingers for typing. Some of the best warriors are the women. Yes, women can fight on the field but, because no-one has successfully proved that there were women Vikings, they have to dress as male Norse warriors to do it.

The person who organises all the battles for all the shows The Vikings do is a woman. Frania is small, pretty, Polish and fierce. It is one of the lasting visions of my life when I saw a host of muscled, tattooed, hairy-as-bikers Viking warriors shuffle their feet like schoolboys and stare, ashamed, at the floor when Frania the Battle Captain gave them a tongue-lashing in at least two languages for behaving like big girls’ blouses.

In our Glasgow group we have two doctors, a writer, forklift drivers, security guards and people on Benefit. Two of our members make their living as a result of the connection – ArmourClass is a Glasgow-based business making museum-quality swords and armour.

Real life professions are a long second, though, to the persona you have on the field. I am Orm, oldest Viking still travelling, a trader more dodgy than Del Boy. We have Thorgrim the Grim, who looks like Gimli’s big brother and breaks shields. When he isn’t doing that, he is heavily into make-up – he is trained in stage cosmetics and does a brilliant line in scars.

Down south we have Bunny, named after the Energiser Bunny because he won’t be stopped. He is tall, muscled, with long blond hair, every inch the perfect Viking poster-boy and swings an axe as tall as he is. When he puts it away he is a care assistant with little old ladies. Small wonder his Viking name is Od.

Because of our authenticity – we have strict rules and even stricter people to oversee them – The Vikings are in great demand from film and TV companies. You want a bunch of Saxons for a movie? A herd of Vikings for a BBC History Channel documentary? A slew of jousting knights for Time Team? We are the ones you see in the background, making it all look perfect.

For me, who writes historical fiction about the Dark and Medieval ages, this is the best research tool I can imagine – instant, practical archaeology that lets you know how Vikings lived.

For instance – the Norse invented sleeping bags, made of seal and walrus skins and it was always thought this was how they kept dry on long sea voyages. Once you try it, though, you realise that, with the water about a foot below your head and no more, the last place you want to be in a capsizing longship is trapped in a bag.

Or leaping off the said longship in full ringmail, as seen in all the movies. You sink and it rusts.

My colleagues are intrigued by all this authoring – my first book, The Whale Road, was eagerly sought, if only so they could all play ‘spot the re-enactor’ since I unashamedly used real-life characters in one form or another. I was worried about that a little, but needn’t have been - now there is serious competition to get a role in the next books.

Why do we do it? A love of the subject and a desire to pass on a little piece of history as authentically as we can make it. Most people who come to see us in our recreated encampment have lost touch with that old world; we are asked, frequently, if what we are sitting round is a real fire, because they think it must be a hidden gas one.

Women are fascinated to see rabbits on a spit, fish being gutted, or bread made from scratch, because all this has been lost to them.

Children make us tread softly. No skinning and gutting the dead beast in front of wee Britney, who may be traumatised. Wee Britney, of course, is eight, wears as much make-up as her mum and is already traumatised by her namesake, Amy Winehouse and America’s Next Top Model, but we obey the rules It’s either that or a big placard that says: Vikings – There Will Be Blood!

Out on the training floor, the Doctor of Physics has run out of steam. The women are still discussing the costume and I haven’t seen them this animated since a grave-find revealed a Viking woman wearing a belt. This gave the re-enacting girls back their waists – though, for some, it was all too late.

I contemplate taking on the Doctor, seeing as how he is out of breath. I am kicking 60 and, though not the oldest warrior still fighting, I need an edge if I am to even think of winning.

I am not sure, all the same. He looks like he has mastered this Lethal Character bit all too well.

Useful Links:
The Vikings
The Glasgow Vikings