Recreating the middle ages on the Russian frontier (Vyborg)

It is hard to warm up to fierce looking Russian ladies whose first bit of conver- sation is yelling "Nyet" at you. Sandy and I were wandering around the castle in Vyborg (now western Russia, NW of St. Petersburg, but built by Swedes and Finns), along with the UT/UMN grad seminar group. There were several small museums inside and we had not fully figured out that you paid separately for each one.

I poked my head in one that had all sorts of interesting costumes and armor, but whose lady guard started yelling Nyet. Very loud. A lot.

While with- drawing I noticed a bucket on her desk which seemed to have a ticket price attached, so I went back in holding money out (usually a good negotiating tactic). Plus our Finnish - Russian friend Svetlana negotiated for us. The museum lady condescended to let us look at the place.


It quickly became clear that almost everything in the museum was recreated costumes, armor, shields, and weapons made by local people who were medieval recreationists and were focused on the Viking and Swedish medieval past of Vyborg.

Things like fur lined hats, as well as seemingly practical shields and padded under-armor clothes, like those above, that seemed designed to be used in recreating the fighting as well.

(Truth in blogging moment here -- Sandy and I have been members of the Society for Creative Anachronism for a long time -- and we have seen, made and used things that looked an awful lot like this stuff -- but that also let us realize that the Vyborg things were pretty well made and reasonably decent-looking recreations. Even making a statement like that is a tricky business for many people who have really researched the era, like Sandy, for whom this kind of thing dove-tails with her regular academic interests. Still there is an evolving practical sense of what people think things were likely to have looked like.) Things like these get made with modern tools and materials, so, so much for real authenticity, but one tries to make it look reasonably good, decent movie level authenticity, if not exactly normal museum quality. Above, for example, is a cross-bow that the re-enactors in Vyborg had made or bought.

Here, by contrast, is a real historical cross-bow preserved from the castle, in a more conventional museum setting (and well protected behind glass).

In the museum put together with the things created by the re-enactors, you could get much closer to the stuff. Apparently we got too close to the cross-bow because another wave of Nyet was rolling our way (although the Russian guy in front of us had handled it for several minutes without such nattering negativity).

So this was not exactly a standard museum we had found, with original artifacts preserved from the past, but rather an exhibit run by a local re-enactors club. There were pictures of them wearing their stuff and even doing recreated battles within the castle walls, which made us a tiny bit envious. It looked like fun.