Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Crusaders n., pl. of "crusader"

1. Name of a group of geeks who specialized in making music and animated demos on the Commodore Amiga computer in the late twentieth century, and also spawned the Great Computer Gathering commonly known as The Gathering which is a yearly event in The Great Hall Of The Viking Ship in Hamar, Norway, every Easter.

2. Bunch of guys who launched an intifada to reclaim The Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th to 13th century, yet even at their early time were surprisingly enough not the inventors of religious warfare.

I think he must be one of the latter. Great costume though :)

All in all, I was impressed with the amount of effort and spirit that the participants had put into this festival. Walking around there I wished I'd had something more suitable to wear for the occasion. I felt like a tourist in time, dressed catastrophically wrong. But they didn't seem to mind ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

My colleague in Internet Support, mr. Green, at the moment hired as Professional Shouter*, or Herald if you like, at the Jousting Tournament. For some reason he rarely shows up at work dressed like that, but he did manage to get the crowds going, and thumped the beat of We Will We Will Rock You! with his staff on a wooden box which had the poor luck of standing nearby ;)

* Not to be confused with Senior Shouting Officer, which is a special Vogon** military rank, but on the other hand that's not altogether too far off the mark either in fact.

** Reading "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" would probably be the best way to figure out what I'm talking about.

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

The sound of splintering lances! The cheering of the crowd! That's atmosphere!

Although the splintering of balsa wood lances must make a lot less noise than the ones they originally used. Still, these guys need to be able to go to work on Monday. And a Norwegian crowd is not an easy one to get cheering. We did away with most of that in the Viking era, along with plundering foreign coasts and wearing horned helmets. Things tend to go out of fashion, sort of. And senseless cheering seemed to be part of all that old stuff, unless of course you add beer ;)

But there were the sound of splintering lances and the cheering of the crowd. Jolly good show, folks.

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Need For Speed™ anno 1400 AD. This was before the invention of computers and video games, meaning you took whatever you had at hand and had fun with it. Horses were in plentiful supply at the time, and so were, apparently, guys willing to dress in the predecessor to Aluminium and make fools of themselves before a cheering crowd. Which in my opinion is very brave and requires great skill. I frequently make a fool of myself, quite unintentionally, and there's hardly anyone cheering. Not a lot anyway ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Head to head at the point of impact.

Jousting, or tilting, was the game where you poked your opponent with a wooden stick. And just to make it difficult you had to do it at speed while seated on a big animal that moved around a lot, messing up your otherwise perfectly good aim.

Of course, in the real Middle Ages they used bigger sticks, which tended to hurt a lot more. Unless it killed you, in which case you didn't feel a thing. You know the drill: Everything was better in the good old days ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Every tournament has to have a Black Knight, and I guess this is the guy.

Just to add to the dramatic atmosphere, he is even riding a one-eyed horse. For real, folks. The left eye was, like, just totally gone, man. Scary. Which is probably why he won the tournament. With the left eye unaccounted for, the horse would barely even see the opponent, and be less likely to chicken out at the last moment. Far out, dude ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Fellow in shining armour on a horse sadly lacking in the white department, greeting the audience as he rides to take his place before the next run. I totally failed to catch the names of the contestants, but do say hello to Sir Knight ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

The contestants, mere milliseconds before impact. This is the once upon a time manner of playing chicken, some five hundred years before the invention of the automobile which allowed for playing chicken properly, seeing as one no longer needed a horse which might conceivably elect to chicken out before its rider, owing to the horse's superior and often annoying supply of common sense ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Guy in tin can suit on horse in pursuit of other guy in tin can suit on horse. With a stick.

This is actually a real international jousting tournament, with participants from all over the world. Norway, Sweden, France and even Canada are represented. There was even a winner, and although I can't quite remember who, he was probably the one that didn't lose ;)

Saturday, September 3rd, visiting the Medieval Festival in Oslo.

Ever watch A Knight's Tale? Tilting time, guys!

We will we will rock you!

(Yep, we sang and shouted, for real. It was great!)