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A week and a half ago I visited Askøy Vikingmarket right outside of Bergen for one night, an hour or two from home. Askøy is one of many islands in the North-West of the city, and it is a beautiful place of majestic nature by the sea - which also makes it kind of windy... :D 
The market is held anually at Herdla, which is a place of history, being a large farm in the Viking Age and property of the king Harald Fairhair for many years, and with sources describing visits from important historical persons such as Egill Skallagrímsson. Being a rather small market the tents were arranged in a circle on the field, in the middle of which we had a feast (or a gilde as we call it) in the evening under a full moon, with Askøy viking group treating us to deer cooked underground and delicious root vegetable stew. Thank you Askøy! This handsome fellow made beautiful woodwork... 
He also had this tapestries hanging in his tent, I believe this one is a compilation of various sections of the Bayeux tapestry (the original is about 70 metres long!) 
Sigrid with her plants and herbs :-) 
Sturle making soup ^^ 
Sheepskins from old wild Norwegian sheep with gorgeous handmade prints by Svanefellen. This is something different than those bleached IKEA-skins for you! 
Peter the shoemaker, and some of the ladies at the market :-) 
Below you'll see Paul Rune and Magnar illustrating iron production using a clay furnace. They set a personal record this time, when they dug out a nice iron lump weighing 1.5 kg at the end of the market. Watching this always makes me think of the value of iron in the Viking Age, and how owning swords and chainmail was not for anyone. Did you know that a sword could take a month to forge, and might have been worth about 16 milking cows (give or take), like the one in Laxdælasaga? (If you read my previous blogpost you might have seen that the Icelandic capital Reykjavík was sold for the value of 60 cows, and that was half a milennium later).  
Kennet and Janne while waiting for food (with Claus looking very metal on the left). 
And finally a late night photo of the ever nice and cozy campfire (in a nifty construction that Kenneth made) 🔥 
This was the last viking market of the season for me, and albiet that is sad I have a very adventurous season ahead of me. This fall I am travelling across to Vínland (I've heard some people call it the US), for work. Although being very busy I will always find some time for reading and writing here on my free time, and I do look forward to writing you posts from a house or a garden a few hours from Boston. While the summer is normally filled with posts from markets and events, the fall calls for immersing into the world of sagas and other topics on Norse culture and history. Do you have any wishes about specific topics for blog posts? # Comments
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