Viking Festival

What to do with an Australian sister and her partner? We certainly cannot match the Australian weather, so we sought to show them things that they might not see back home. What could be better than a Viking Festival at Heysham? Sure enough, dozens of tents containing wool-clad women engaged in needlework and men laboriously carving bits of wood offered interest. And then the real fun began.

The younger and larger men, of which there were a fair number, donned their helmets, chainmail and shields to give displays of arms. As well as demonstrating use of the Carolingian sword, battle axes and spears, we were treated to a shield wall, the ninth-century equivalent of the Challenger 3 Tank. Warriors in a tight line marching towards, or about to receive, enemy contact. To we spectators, who ogled and photographed from behind the essential safety barriers, it was all rather enjoyable, interesting and even amusing. Our ancestors, who faced the real thing, might have begged to differ. Some of us had driven miles to watch the entertainment, and my kinfolk from upstate New South Wales were suitably impressed before moving on to the afternoon's plans. Had we truly believed, however, that actual Danes and Norwegians were sailing over to rob our homes, burn our villages, enslave our children and massacre our old folk, we might have fled in the opposite direction, and sharpish.

The day is coming when the nasty affairs of this world will be but a dim and distant memory, and perhaps more than this: a source of entertainment. How we might look back and smile at the times of difficulty and peril, when the Lord brought us through or when we might have trusted Him better. The problems that vexed us will not be there, and we shall all have finally received sufficient grace to make us more agreeable. The old pains will have gone, the old sorrows removed, the gushing tears gently wiped away. We might feel like we are facing a menacing shield wall -but the age of shield walls, Vikings and spears really came to an end. That which once caused terror is a now a scene upon which children laughed and old men smiled.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19