Viking Festival attracts huge crowd

Many of the Vikings who led the parade on Saturday morning.

Thousands streamed into Norsewood on Saturday, May 14, to attend the Viking Festival, no doubt encouraged by the Breakfast Programme from TV1 broadcasting live from the venue early in the day.

In fact, 3500 customers paid $5 at the gate to add to the many Viking enactors and supporters who had arrived from all over New Zealand and even overseas to participate. One visitor normally resident in the Wairarapa had just returned from her homeland of Sweden where she visited her family. She said she left snow so the conditions in Norsewood on Saturday were very welcome.

Undoubtedly the success of last year's festival played a big part in the turnout and organiser Eva Renbjor was absolutely thrilled with "the amazing day" despite the strong westerly wind off the Ruahines which made the Viking enactors grateful for their strong tents with their unique structures and warm animal skin and woven clothes.

Force on force - battles took barely two minutes to decide.

A whole collection of food venues greeted the visitors as they entered, featuring everything from Scandinavian pancakes to smashed potatoes. Just beyond was a huge range of produce stalls ranging from lavender and candle products to colourful crafted clothes and even New Zealand's only practising tinker selling silver teapot and spoons decorations.

Of course, it would not be a Viking festival without the Viking crafts which included fine woodcraft by Stim Craftmanship from Napier, Wicked Weapons by Dave Stephens of Levin, Jamie Hughes's classic knives and steel, numerous decorated skulls and animal horns like those from Carlos Creations of Levin and The Red Knights of Upper Hutt.

All the stallholders reported very good sales from the interested crowd.

Gabrielle Mathiesen brought her unique New Zealand Fjord horses up from Christchurch, having imported the first two from Norway where they were used as draught horses and released to run with the sheep as protection against wolves. She now has a stud of 60 animals.

Out in the tent village in the centre of Mathews Park there were traditional skills displayed like a wood lathe and steel furnace and on the periphery archery, axe throwing and even spear-throwing were demonstrated and taught.

Twice in the day, 16 medieval re-enactment fighters demonstrated their protocols in combat, with chain mail, helmets, swords, pikes and shields. Three groups - The Red Ravens from Palmerston North, the Taranaki Medieval Society and Nova Zelandia Vikings from Whanganui - took part. They drew a big crowd and were most popular when the children challenged the wall of shields.

The stage was the venue for visiting musicians including Parabola West from Raglan with her lovely original songs and the Ragnarockers from Palmerston North with their tight four-part country harmony.

Peace settled on Mathews Park as the evening approached and the camp enjoyed a pleasant evening but, unfortunately, the forecast rain hit in the middle of the night dousing the residents and causing at least half to pack up and head home on Sunday morning.

The festival, however, opened again for business at 10am at Sunday as the weather turned out fine. A smaller crowd took the opportunity to browse and buy, watch and have a go and were entertained when the Norway Constitution Day celebrants arrived at about 1pm with Morris dancers adding to the children dancing from Country Kids Kindy and Norsewood School.