Convenience Loo and Viking Tux

Last weekend, Schatz and I went to the Kreismuseum in Syke near Bremen for a weekend Viking craftsmarket. A group of about 25 re-enactors had been put together by Lutz from the Hacheschmiede. Crafts shown included smithing, bow- and arrow-making, working with bone and antler, turning wooden bowls on a lathe, filting, card weaving silk braids with silver wire brocading, turnshoe-making, silver smithing, pottery, and last but not least, sewing, needlebinding and spinning.

When Schatz and I arrived on Friday evening during a major downpour, most other people were already there and had put up their tents. Unfortunately, the space allocated to us was not only wet but rather under water and quite muddy - and on top of that we weren't quite sure whether it was big enough. And you don't want to drag your tent about in the mud this way or that in the dark to be absolutely certain you cannot fit it in.

Fortunately, Lutz still has a flat in the same town and so we bedded down in his guestroom for the night, hoping the weather would be better the next morning. Lutz is moving to another city and so his flat is rather empty but fortunately he has not yet dismantled his loo corner.

Convenience Loo with built-in beaker holder and reading table

With a maximum load capacity of 500 kg, the reading table is perfect to hold heavy exhibition catalogues, smith hammers or possibly even anvils. A must for any smith!

Just prior to leaving the museum grounds on Friday night, we had spotted the perfect place for our tent, though: right among a few 18th and 19th century gravestones, underneath some majestic trees with extremely good foliage... had we discovered this place when we arrived, the tent would have been up in no time. On the other hand, we would have missed the Lutz' loo then.

(c) Syke Kreismuseum

Anyway, the next morning we set up our tent in the 'graveyard' (top left, between the children's museum and the vegetable patch) at 8 am, while the space originally reserved for us was taken up by two ladies whose matrasses had already submerged the night before in a little brook that had formed underneath their Viking tent. The joys of roughing it!

Torsten was roughing it, too. We discovered that his second 'good' shoe had somehow not made it to Syke and so he had to wear his worn-out Iron Age shoes with major holes in their soles. Since I had packed the shoes and not discovered the shoe's absence, I did penance by doing all the outdoor walking (and fetching) while he kept his feet dry and warm on a few pieces of wood underneath his workbench.

Even though it was still raining some, we managed rather well under the trees, and the audience quite appreciated the reprieve from the rain and mud there as well. A good 250 people actually did show up despite the cold and the drizzle. Real die-hards, hats off to you!

In the meantime, Birgitt and Michi from the Trutzhavener Feldküche worked hard to prepare the banquet which we were to enjoy on Saturday night.

The banquet was exquisite as always. The food was medieval - with a bit of Roman thrown in for good measure.

Michi is happy when we are

Some excerpts from the menu:

- chicken fillet rolls with apple
- pork carpaccio with dill and chives
- moretum
- hare and rabbit stew with coarsely ground pepper and coriander
- grilled salmon on a bed of red cabbage with ginger and mustard
- leg of moufflon with apples, sauted with tarragon and parsley
- smoked pork roast with Swiss Chard (or Mangold) and gooseberries
- plum compote with a trace of black pepper
- wheat pudding

Leg of Moufflon! Bones! Moufflon leg bone! Schatz' eyes lit up but Susanne was closer. And faster!

Susanne and the Moufflon Bone Whistle

And once she had gotten hold of the bone - under the pretense of helping Timm with carving the meat - there was no way she would let go of it again. The twinkle in her eyes did not leave any space for doubt about who our bone and antler worker was at the market.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next day brought better weather and more than eleven hundred visitors. Schatz' dad and his aunt and uncle also came to visit and he showed them around while I demonstrated needlebinding, silver wire braiding the Vikingestrik, polished brass and bronze wire beads and explained and answered questions until my lips started to fray a little at the edges.

A little later, I was able to briefly visit the museum's permanent exhibition. If you are in the area, and like to be taken back not only to your own childhood but a bit further, do pay the museum a visit, it is most delightful. Their collection focuses on 19th and 20th century crafts, agriculture and household activities but there is also a typical 1930's classroom and a historical exhibition about the history of the area, including finds from as early as the Stone Age and right through to the Middle Ages.

Until the end of August 2008, the Kreismuseum is host to a special exhibition of quilts, under the motto "Man and Sea". Dutch and German quilters have put together an extraordinary collection that left me speechless. And without pictures of my own! Fortunately, some of the quilts can be found on the net...

One of my favourites is called Aquamarine Window by Miriam Pet-Jacobs. "Silence under water. You can open your mouth but no sound emerges. You are cocooned, as it were. Through a window you catch a glimpse of the chaotic world", she describes it. Another quilt that really caught my eye is by the same artist and is called Rhythm I. This two-sided quilt is made as a tripticon and somewhat wasted on a wall...

By 5 pm, when the museum officially closed its gates for the audience, we were worn out. The audience in Syke was just as curious as the last two times, not just asking questions but listening to replies and then asking some more... a big applause to all those who visited!

It was time to pack up and go home. When we took the tent down and lifted the ground sheet, we discovered that the voles in this part of the museum had not lazed about during the weekend: they had tunneled a penthouse addition to their extensive tunnel system right underneath our tent. Unfortunately, the cameras were already packed in our chests. And it was only when we arrived at home that we noticed that neither Schatz nor I had taken a picture of our little tent in the 'graveyard'. Wadda mistaka to maka!

At home, we also found the missing shoe in Torsten's car where it had been hiding between the backseat and the side wall since our return from Ribe a few weeks ago...

While carrying several heavy chests upstairs, we lamented the photographs we hadn't taken, the ones that didn't come out (Birgitt and Michi in their director's chairs supervising the food in the barn cooking itself), and the captions we never got to write about graveyards or voles or cooks. Until we unpacked some of the items we had acquired in Syke, that's when we started grinning broadly:

Tux goes Viking

The egg cozies are made by Anja Stolzmann from Dat Beekfolk. She made Tux from a picture we had given her, and the result is most amazing. The helmet is an egg cozy itself, of course. I'm not supposed to eat a lot of eggs but at least I'll do it in style from now on! The tux, by the way, is for a friend's birthday: kill that lobster, Jan!