18 January 2023
- Festival
Viking Festival theme 2023: Food and drink
On 2-6 August 2023, the Viking Festival will be held at Lofotr Viking Museum! This year’s theme is food and drink, and there will be vivid storytelling through games and activities for young and old. Find out what you ate a thousand years ago, see crafts and culture, meet Viking warriors and watch them fight, and maybe you dare to send your children to battle school to become real Vikings?
Edita Nurmi cooks food inspired by archaeological finds and tradition. You can make flatbread and try butter ironing. Edita will not only cook with traditional ingredients such as skrei, but she also brings us unusual delicacies. Both deer and beavers should be roasted!
A festival for the whole family
Ole and Magnus share their storytelling joy in interactive theatre. They will be found high and low on the festival grounds all day!
Vikverir is one of the country’s oldest army combat teams and exhibits male and female strength to have battle shows where they show different fighting techniques and strategies.
Lofotr Viking Festival is a festival for the whole family, and we focus especially on children’s activities. This year there will be Viking Boot Camp! Olaf Skjegglaus returns to Lofoten after many years of expeditions and a trading trip in England.
Viking artist Kjell Braaten
Kjell Braaten composes tones from a bygone era. Kjell is an engaging storyteller specialized in historical instruments and has made music for films and TV series.He comes to Lofoten with concerts and an educational performance about Viking music.
Workshops, courses and lectures
There will be a variety of activities, talks, demonstrations and workshops throughout the festival. Try your hand at chip weaving, spinning, leather embossing, ceramics and more!
There will be lectures every day! Thom Kelly, who has been a woodcarver at the museum for several seasons, tells about Viking Age wood carving and art. Alf Ragnar Nielssen, retired senior curator at Museum Nord and professor of history at Nord University, lectures on stockfish’s ways out in Europe and how trade in marine products helped to incorporate Northern Norway into the European cultural community.
The museum’s curator Elisabeth Rosa Brusin has written a master’s thesis on beer brewing in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, and will lecture about the history of beer while we brew beer. Lofoten Ville Kitchen shares its knowledge of gathering local edible crops. It’s surprising how much edible there is on your doorstep!
