"Embracing Your Inner Viking: Exploring Norse Heritage in Today's World"

With a high emphasis on authenticity and skill, the Sons of Ivar are surely one of the most respected reenactment groups in Ireland.

The group is steadily growing and not only participates in the battles at the Boyne Valley Viking Experience, but also at other events in the UK and Europe.

In the blog they give us an insight into how the group was formed and became the history loving, fierce battle group it is today.

 

Inspired by a chance encounter with a video of the main battle at Wolin on YouTube, the idea for the Sons of Ivar was created in 2016.  For the next year the three founding members researched, attended events to get advice from people already in the scene, trained with other groups and prepared kit before attending our first real event, Portadown Viking Experience, in 2017.

 

As time passed, a group initially based on one family, met new people, gained new members and we became a bigger family!  We now have members from Ballyclare through to Sligo because for us it is who you are and not where you are from that is important.

 

As new people joined and we travelled to new places and learned new things the group’s interests also grew.  Initially our primary focus was just on the competitive fighting side of what we do but as time has gone on, making authentic clothing and equipment and learning even more from using it, has become equally important to us.  We use the replicas we have made to go camping, hiking, to make new equipment and more recently to start building.

 

While most of the events we attend are in Ireland, we also go to events in England and Poland to meet, feast and fight with our ever-growing circle of friends from within the scene.  Since 2018 members of the group have attended the Festival of Slavs and Vikings in Wolin, Poland each year where we have been able to make new friends from across Europe and beyond. 

 

Boyne Valley gives us the chance every year to invite our friends from across the UK, Poland, France and the Czech Republic to an event here in Ireland.  You will see us at Boyne Valley when we get the opportunity to show them the same hospitality we get when we go to see them in their homelands and it gives us all the chance to beat each other with iron bars again, because that is how real friendships are made!