Welcome readers and all-round wonderful people to the amazing and fun hobby that is being a Viking reenactor. Thank you for returning to read the next instalment of A Year in the Life of a Viking Reenactor for our group Vikings of Middle England. In case you have forgotten since February’s Edition, we are a… The post A year in the Life of a Viking Reenactor: March appeared first on Vikings of Middle England Blog ..read more

Our experiments and a guide to make an early medieval/viking-style soft cheese or skyr based on our best guess from the evidence. The post Making Early Medieval Soft Cheese (Skyr) appeared first on Vikings of Middle England Blog ..read more

Welcome readers and all-round wonderful people to the amazing and fun hobby that is being a reenactor. Thank you for returning to read the next instalment of A Year in the Life of a Viking Reenactor for our group Vikings of Middle England. In case you have forgotten since January’s edition, we are a Viking… The post A Year in the Life of a Viking Reenactor: February appeared first on Vikings of Middle England Blog ..read more

This is a quick start guide on how to make Viking clothes. The guide covers the basic patterns and hand-sewing techniques needed to make clothing for most people who lived in north-western Europe in the Viking-age. This is a starting point for simple first impressions in Viking reenactment, or accurate costume for TV and film,… The post How to Make Viking Clothes appeared first on Vikings of Middle England Blog ..read more

Welcome readers and all-round wonderful people to the amazing and fun hobby that is being a reenactor. I’d like to share with you tales from a year in the life of a Viking reenactor. The group I am part of, as you probably gathered if you have navigated to this webpage, is Vikings of Middle England (VME). A Viking period living history and combat group. I invite you to join me on a journey through a year of re-enactment with our group. Along the way I’ll share our highs and lows, we’ll encounter some of the group’s characters, and feel like part of the kindred. So with a high energy introducti ..read more

It’s almost Christmas, the only time of year it’s socially acceptable to hibernate under a pile of blankets with a stack of books and mountains of mince pies. And there’s been some amazing books about Vikings and Saxons this year. So, in what has become a yearly tradition, here’s 10 books about Vikings to put on your Christmas list for 2023. So wrap yourself in a blanket, pour yourself a festive tipple, and enjoy! “The Bone Chests” by Cat Jarman The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons by Cat Jarman. Jarman’s book River Kings was our first recommendation back in 2021, and thi ..read more

A little reel of our living history activity at Repton Festival last weekend! We presented a load of crafts at the weekend and made use of the fantastic clear skies! Our carpenters Beigan and Bjarni made planks and wood-nails for clinker-construction, while our blacksmith Yngvar made ships nails and roves to rivet them together. Solveig the Viking (aka Lucy the Tudor), Hrefna and Ðorunn spun and weaved, and did nalbinding. Throst made a “Traveller’s Porridge” based on “An Early Meal” by Daniel Serra, while Loðinn talked brewing. Members of the public worked hard grinding barley into flour. St ..read more

Nothing says Christmas like being given a glut of books to keep you occupied during the long nights of winter. Taking a lovely, pristine book, gently curling back the first page while sitting in front of the warm glow of a wood fire, snow pitter-pattering outside… Ah bliss. Ok, not many people actually get to curl up in front of a roaring fire in their houses these days, and we barely have snow in England, but we get points for trying right? Luckily, there are many great books about Vikings and Saxons to keep us occupied, many which only came out in the last couple of years. So even without th ..read more

One of the most exciting things about ‘Living History’ is exploring the methods of making something using the tools and materials of the people we’re trying to represent. One of the most fulfilling things to do – mainly because it’s yummy – is cooking. While there’s no surviving written recipes from the early medieval period, we do get information from remains of things like bread, and the cereal that was used to make it. Coupled with the finds of domestic ware like pots and pans, mill stones and threshing tools, we can build a picture, and make our own experiments. For example, cereal husks h ..read more

Part of the fun of belonging to a community of Viking Reenactors is bringing the family along! That means making our 5-year old Viking kids clothes. In fact, we’re up to his third Viking costume. We know precious little about children’s’ clothing in the Viking Age, so really we are just scaling down the little we really know about adult viking clothing! Excavated remains of textile fragments belonging to garments are staggeringly rare, so it’s hard to drawn solid conclusions about the tailoring. But, we do have significant hints from places like Skjoldeham, Guddal, and Hedeby, where pieced fra ..read more