FESTIVAL REPORT: Hämeen Keskiaikafestivaali (Friday)
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Hämeenlinna’s Keskiaikafestivaali [medieval festival] over the years, which takes place in mid-late August near Häme Castle, though I’ve never had the time or opportunity to visit before now, as I’ve usually been at other events. However, since I had a friend visiting from the US this summer who was interested in going, we decided to drive up to Hämeenlinna on Friday, August 16th, 2024, to check it out.
The weather promised light rain, which meant that we had to dress in layers and be prepared for anything, especially considering that our 1-day passes were single entrance only (bummer, especially on a rainy day). With fingers crossed that we wouldn’t get much more than a drizzle (especially considering that my friend had been ill for a few days), we headed to the festival area around 14.00-15.00 to try to get the best of the weather.
The festival area’s parking space is more or less nonexistent, so our first battle was trying to find somewhere to park, especially considering the event is nowhere near the train station. We found a fortunate last available spot on a side road and went to pick up our tickets from lippunmyynti [ticket sales]. It’s worth saying that the festival could afford to put up some directions in the parking areas because we went the wrong way a few times because there was no label telling us where the festival’s entrance was.
The front gates are nicely decorated, as you can see in the event photo above, and there was no fuss upon arrival. In fact, we were quite impressed that one of the people working at the event heard us trying to decide what to do and where to go, came to offer my friend an event pamphlet in English.
The first day is generally recommended as the day for shopping (with Saturday being a day of celebration and Sunday focusing on family activities), so the first thing we noticed on entry was the sheer number of shops set up hosting all sorts of wares. After passing through places with lätty [Finnish pancakes] and some rahkamunkki [quark donuts], we found what we thought was a market square, at least per my experience with music festivals in Finland. It turns out that this was far from all of the stalls—it wouldn’t surprise me if 70% of the entire festival grounds was made up of merchant booths. Bumping into some local Hämeenlinna friends, it was interesting to hear that they felt that the festival has gotten too commercial these days, with consumerism seeming to be the main thing they’re offering (they lamented the loss of free family hours in the past, for example); we had been wondering if the festival had always been like this and apparently that’s not the case.
If you were so inclined as to really get in the spirit of the festival, it was cool that you could rent or buy outfits right as you came inside; even more impressive was how many people were dressed up, as it was definitely a solid majority. Finns do seem to enjoy opportunities to wear costumes, but I was also impressed by the number of foreigners present, many of whom were also decked out in style.
Amongst the common items and services that could be found were tattoo and henna shops, tarot readings, stickers and postcards, stones and crystals, jewelry, modern witcheries, pagan shops (I recognized some folks from Pakanametsä, for example), blacksmiths and potteries, and the like, while there were fewer places with more unique items, like one stall that made orbs with dried forest flora, or a smith who had a Viking ship sauna tray, elaborately painted shaman drums, or a woodcrafter who had the most stunning bowls made from unique pieces of old wood. There were also a lot of bones and one shop even had a fully taxidermized crow in flight.
We browsed the first corner of the market before realizing that we were both hungry, so we split away from the shopping stalls and headed to the pleasantly wood-chipped food court, where we tried to pick between some dishes from Lapland and the grilled meat plate. We ended up taking the meat plate with extra salmon, but were a bit disappointed to find that, aside from the salmon, the meat was essentially all pork, which meant that we got very full, very quickly. While the ham was nice and juicy, the roast was very dry and the two sausages were nice but really a bit bland and fatty. For two people, the plate was still very hefty and we couldn’t quite eat it all. The loimulohi [open-fire grilled salmon] was spectacular, however, and I felt very justified in eating it despite knowing that salmon almost always makes me very ill (it only made me a little ill and it was worth it).
A bit later, we stopped by the place selling candy apples to get some chocolate-drizzled berries and as we left, we tried the quark donuts, which were amazing (though the bigger ones could have had a bit more jam filling).
Aside from shopping, there were a few other events of note. Inside Taverna (the ‘tavern’ area, of course), there was almost always music playing and around 17.00 we heard some familiar notes from the German neo-medieval folk band, Corvus Corax, who put on an amusing show with a lot of bag pipes and general tomfoolery. We also watched some of the Viking battles and the jousting, and were pleased that the rain only drizzled on us for a minute or two the entire time we were there. There was also procession after procession… the first one had a man strung up in a pillory as people jeered and ‘whipped’ him as he was marched through the streets; a few others looked like pagan marches or elven processions.
There was also a large area dedicated to a ‘Viking campground,’ where people in full costume seemed to be able to camp for the weekend; this was not to be confused with the regular campground outside the festival area. Some folks were playing music, had shops, or were cooking food out in the open in big cast-iron grills. There were also other ‘stages,’ aside from the main stage in the bar area, that had more acoustic music playing throughout the day.
After we felt that we had seen and eaten everything that we wanted to, we did a final wander of the market stalls to do our shopping, getting some souvenirs like carved antler or copper pendants, organic honey, and decorative mushroom jars, and then decided that we were going to call it a day. On the whole, we really enjoyed our time there, though it was a bit sad to feel that low-budget folks like ourselves didn’t have that much to do because a lot of the festival did seem to be market-centric. Beyond that, however, we really enjoyed the experience, seeing all of the people dressed up, all of the wonderful smells from both the food court and campsite, and the general atmosphere with the music and medieval events. While I’m not sure I’d have the stamina to go for a full weekend, I would certainly recommend the festival (especially since it’s more affordable than music festivals) if you find yourself in Finland in August and I’d definitely come again in the future!
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