Viking Age demo at Camp Rokilio (Gunderson Viking Bäten), W

[Halvgrimr]

[img]http://www.vikingsna.org/norsa/reports/scoutreportpic.JPG[/img]


Several months ago The Vikings-NA were contacted by a Scout pack in Wisconsin about doing a weekend demo.
I asked around and found a few members that were up to the task so we agreed to do it and starting making preparations to coordinate an entertaining and educational weekend for the boys.

The demo was to be held at Camp Rokilio (I have also heard it called Cub Scout World) near Kiel, Wisconsin.
It was a real cool place and more info can be found at http://www.baylakesbsa.org/camping/rokilio.htm .
There are multiple themed building on the site, a medieval fort, a space station, and the Gunderson Viking Baten being the coolest IMO.
Of course to fit the theme of the weekend the Scouts had reserved the Viking ship.


Though I tried drumming up interest from multiple groups it turned out that only 4 Vikes-NA members were able to make it, two members of Norsa (myself and Michael Straatmann/Mikjal) and two members of TorVik (Michael Bagley/Ragnar and Don Morse/Ogmund), but we made the best of it and IMO it turned into a damn fine weekend.

It was a 9 hour drive for both myself and Mikjal and a 11-13 hour drive for the Canadians but IMO every minute was worth it. Not only did they invite us down but they fed us and put us up in the private bunks in the buildings. They treated us like real Jarls and we appreciated every minute of it.

We all arrived Friday night at different times.
I arrived the earliest and began talking with the Scout leaders and the boys right away.
I took a few minutes and set up a nice little display of various kit items and books on the Viking Age.
The boys were excited but you could tell the grown ups were even more excited;)

We kicked off the night with a movie (and one appropriate for the evening, The Vikings (with Kirk Douglas)) and popcorn.
The boys were very good considering it was really a grown up movie.
They mostly wanted to see the fighting and fled the room each time a girl got kissed;)

The Scout leaders made a very good attempt at putting the boys down that evening but as young boys often do they fought it tooth and nail most of the way;)
Eventually though the boys drifted off and the grownups (and me) got in some good Q&A time covering just about any subject you could think of.
As we had a long day ahead of us, we called it a night at around 11:30PM.

The boys were up and at um at about 6:30AM so we all slowly rousted ourselves out of bed and got ready for the day.
Throughout the day we gave classes/demo's on runes, armour (including a how to make mail session), weapons, fighting and safety (the 'don’t try this at home' speech), casting, and fire building.
I even donated 3 board games, 2 sets of Fox and Geese & 1 set of 9 Men's Morris, that I had made the week before to the troop. Several of the boys seemed to really get into those games.

While all the classes were great, and I appreciate each of the guys chipping in with their prospective talents, by far the coolest class seemed to be the casting class, everyone loved the class and each kid got a commemorative coin at the end. Mikjal have carved a soapstone mold that marked the occasion and the kids played with the pewter castings for hours, its amazing how loud 18 pewter coins spinning an tables can be;).

We also included the much anticipated fighting session where the kids got to watch us fighting in the snow from on top of the ship.
Now I have seen people fight in the snow but I have always thought those people were insane.
I was very apprehensive about it at first (both for safety and sanity reasons) but we found an untainted (i.e. the kids hadn't trampled it much) patch of fairly deep (about 4-6 inches) snow and went at it.

IT WAS A BLAST!

I loved it, it was the best time fighting I think I have ever had.

We only had one wipe out (but Mikjal deserved it as he was going for a backstab on me in a Circle of Treachery!) and no injuries at all, so it was a very successful session.

The kids (and the adults) loved it. They hooted and hollered the whole time. One parent even got most of it on tape and I hope to get a copy soon to share with others.

We ended the day with Michael/Ragnar's fire building class. The Scouts were gonna use this class's end result to cook foil dinners so of course there was no pressure on him of course:)

They finally got the fire started and dinner going so it was a productive endeavor IMO.

As the dinners cooked we ended the day (and weekend) with a final Q&A session for the kids. We let them ask us anything they wanted. It went fairly quickly as the kids were ready to do 'kid things'

So we packed and got ready to start the long return trip.

All in all it was a very successful weekend for the boys and The Viking-NA IMO. Everyone was happy and I was even told by the Scout master that one of the Scout 'Head Honcho's' had shown up to watch the fighting and was very impressed. The Scout master told us to expect to here from the head guy (and other troops) in the future. This sealed the deal for me, I knew then that we had provided what we had promised…..a safe, entertaining and educational experience for the boys. That was what was what was the most important thing as far as I was concerned.

The pics that I took of the weekend can be seen here
http://www.vikingsna.org/gallery/album10

Several of the scouts and parents took pics as well, I hope that they will send us some of them as well, if t hey do I will post the links here.

Until next time

Halvgrimr