Reenactment societies

Viking reenactment is a popular pastime now, and is a valuable way of engaging with the Viking past. Activities include combat techniques, handicrafts, and social activities. These activities can constitute experimental archaeology, and it is useful to see how those that have grown up in reenacting families engage with the handicrafts in particular. Skills and techniques that their parents or grandparents had to learn are more natural to them, and thus observation shows how the Vikings could have undertaken these tasks.

Viking Markets

Viking markets are especially popular in Norway and Denmark. In those countries, Viking reenactment societies (vikinglag) stage a lot of Viking markets where reenactors get together to meet up, sell their handicrafts and mediate Viking Age activities for the public. These markets give participants a chance to bond over a horn of ale while demonstrating aspects of their country's history for the spectators, but the reasons why people join reenactment groups are many and varied, and the range of activities is broad.