Midwest Viking Festival Returns to UW-Green Bay Oct. 2-3

The sights, sounds and traditions of the Viking Age will return to UW-Green Bay Oct. 2 and 3 during the fifth annual Midwest Viking Festival. Featuring more than 50 reenactors, the free event will immerse visitors in the daily life of Scandinavia more than 1,000 years ago through crafts, music, games, foodways and battle demonstrations. The festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days at the UW-Green Bay Viking House grounds and in the Wood Hall parking lot.

Throughout the two-day festival, attendees can explore Viking-era history and culture through battle demonstrations, traditional crafts and presentations on the foodways of the era. Reenactors will create an immersive educational experience designed to help visitors better understand how people lived, worked and gathered in Scandinavia more than a millennium ago. New this year, the festival will offer a guided touch tour for visitors seeking greater access to the demonstrations and other festival experiences.

This year’s special guests include Sámi-American weaver Anita Burbeck of Fargo, N.D., as well as Norse MN Entertainment, a group that will bring Viking-era games, stories and humor to the festival. Returning presenter Kari Tauring will offer programs featuring nature instruments of the Iron Age. Local musician Eric Bestul will also return to perform music of the era.

Viking festivals are celebrations of Scandinavian history and culture. The educational emphasis of the Midwest Viking Festival is vital for the region and sets this festival apart from other festivals around the country. Thousands of people in the Upper Midwest have ancestry from Scandinavian countries, attributed to the large influx of Scandinavian immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Midwest Viking Festival is free and open to the public due to the support of Viking Fest Minnesota, a grant from The Sons of Norway and UW-Green Bay’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.