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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Renaissance Not Fair

As some of you may already know, a Renaissance fair is a gathering of people celebrating what’s known in England as the Middle Ages (or other historical periods such as the Medieval or Viking era).

Mainly popular in American culture they can include period inspired entertainment, food, costumes and stalls.

Despite being based on English history, oddly enough a quick search shows that we don’t really have them in England and personally I feel like we’re missing out.

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After previous discussions and trawling through old posts on message boards, one common factor is always agreed, England doesn’t tend to have Renaissance fairs because it’s our history, it’s all around us and thus we don’t need to go looking for it.

Ever being the dramatic I completely disagree, if anything I think that there should be more, we already have the castles, the old knights, the coats of arms and the food, part of the work is already done.

As for inspiration; Every year a music festival is held on a spot which has long been associated with the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, but instead Glastonbury Tor goes unnoticed as the festival goes on. In Yorkshire it is believed that Tolkien gained inspiration for parts of Middle Earth and In Shropshire we have one of the biggest (if not the most) famous mythical land mark in the world!

I could go on, but it’s pretty clear that we already have the epic location inspiration down!

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Don’t get me wrong, there are a few yearly events that do stray down the Renaissance Fair path, some castles and stately homes do shows, re-enactments and occasionally crafts fairs and such. York has the Viking festival (the only Renaissance Fair listed for the UK on wiki) and who can forget Camelot (rip). But none of these seem to have the same energy, size and interest perceived by their American counter parts.

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If anyone knows of any such events in Northern England in particular, let me know in the comments so I can Morgana it up and go shopping for swords and poultices.

 

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