Viking life at Foteviken in 2002

The year 2002 had been very happy and successful for us at The Museum of Foteviken and our Viking Reserve. The weather during the summer was almost too good. If it gets too warm and there is too much sun, the tourists tend to go to the beach at Skanoer and Falsterbo, instead of the Viking Reserve. However, many of us had wished that the storm from the west on the pre market day had not arrived. The result was a lot of flying tents and revealed interiors. Afterwards this Friday might be remembered as a fascinating day and perhaps some tales about it will be told. This is sometimes the way tales are created.

The Viking market week was preceded by the training camp for Viking fighters, two weeks earlier. Many Vikings congregated and the training and the line fighting competition went well. A couple of Vikings also congregated here at Foteviken and celebrated Midsummer together with The Village Community in the Viking Reserve. Many Vikings came and participated in The Viking market week and The Viking market. There were also two other fine feasts worth to remember, the wedding of Morph and Susanne and the adoption of Per The Jarl and Paula's first-born son.

More Vikings, than ever before congregated at our Viking Market, no less than 668. Many new and interesting Vikings and Viking re-enactment groups had come, especially from Eastern Europe. We had been very worried about how to accommodate so many people. But fortunately everybody was helpful and everything went rather well. If anybody was disappointed, we can only say that we did our best. We all felt a very positive atmosphere during those busy market days.

However, we have to endure a lot of hard work, when organizing this market and we do have problems. We are not that many people working at The Museum of Foteviken and the preparations, the carrying through and the supplementary work take quite a lot of time. We are wondering if we can house even more visiting Vikings in the future and still maintain a market that is known for its high quality. Will we also be able in future, to arrange such a big Viking market? The long, never ending queues for food are not very good either.

The problem is that the quality of the market will decline, when the markets tends to get bigger and bigger and especially when an annual tradition of congregation has been established and the same conception is used at the same place annually. There is however no doubt about the high quality of all of you visiting Vikings. The quality of your equipment and costumes is very good. But sometimes there tend to be quality problems. This is not good for our mutual reputation as Vikings.

When you make your reservation for the activities of 2003, please also send photographs of you, your Viking re-enactment group and your equipment, tents and merchandise, joint with the application forms. Even if we know you and your re-enactment group well, we would like to have photographs from all participating Vikings, in order to treat everybody equally. You can send the photographs to me via e-mail, mail or joint with the application forms.