Foteviken Museum

• 1. Introduction

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  The Foteviken Museum marks its entrance with a sign the staff call a border gate. It sits on the museum map as the line where Sweden ends and a reconstructed Viking Age settlement begins. Visitors who cross it step into what the museum bills as a reservation. Anyone staying overnight there lives without modern clothing or modern equipment. This documentary asks how a stretch of the Höllviken peninsula in southern Skåne came to stage its own border crossing. It also asks how an archaeological project grew into a reservation with its own festivals, its own market, and its own share of controversy. Both stories belong to the Fotevikens Kulturcenter, the wider group of cultural facilities that share this peninsula.

• 2. A Foundation From Sunken Ships

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  Foteviken Bay held sunken viking ships long before any museum existed on its shore, and their discovery through archaeological investigation drew researchers to the site. That interest sat alongside local memory of the Battle of Fotevik, fought in the bay on the 4th of June 1134. A group led by Björn M. Buttler Jakobsen turned that combined interest into an organization, founding SVEG, the Scandinavian Viking Explorer Group, in 1987.

  In 1993, the foundation began planning a maritime museum, a project still centered on the sunken ships. Two years later, in 1995, the group changed direction toward Viking Age living history and opened Foteviken Museum itself, with Jakobsen serving as director.

  In Malmö, the same group built two replica viking cogs, floating ships tied to the earlier maritime ambitions. The city of Malmö sold both vessels in 2014, and the harbour site where they had sat became a medieval-themed tourist area called Medeltidsriket Malmöya.

• 3. Life Inside The Reserve

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  Höllviken Bay borders roughly 70,000 square meters of museum ground, most of it given over to the reconstructed Viking Reserve. Research and handicraft buildings sit alongside three large halls, one a restaurant that seats up to 200 people, another a feast hall.

  About 22 buildings now stand inside the reserve, among them a tapestry-lined chieftain's house and a hof. Staff and volunteers rebuild or add to these structures almost every season, mixing traditional methods with modern technology once winter sets in.

  May Day marks the reserve's opening for the summer season each year. Its buildings recreate a large settlement late in the Viking Age, during the shift toward the Scandinavian Middle Ages and the North's exposure to Christianity. That broad setting is wide enough to fold in the Battle of Fotevik. The battle belongs to the medieval period, not the Viking Age proper. Just how far those visitors travel becomes clear once the market season begins.

• 4. Guests From Beyond Scandinavia

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  "All Vikings" is how the museum markets its reservation, an invitation that draws large numbers of Viking Age reenactors each year. Many of them travel from outside Scandinavia, particularly from Germany.

  Inside the Tinghöll building, an international viking thing convenes every year, a gathering the museum treats as a fixture of its calendar. In 2001, according to the museum, 66 representatives from 22 countries attended.

  Since Foteviken also serves as the municipal museum of Vellinge, its educational programmes, including overnight stays, are offered free to local schools. A library on site supports research and makes heavy use of electronic media. Still, the reserve itself has no electricity, and signage stays minimal. Reenactors who accept those terms each summer are the same crowd who return every winter for something quieter.

• 5. Fire, Bonfire And A King

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  Midwinter at the museum brings a fire festival, the reserve's marker for the dark half of the Scandinavian year. A May Eve bonfire follows in spring, reproducing a traditional viking celebration of spring's return.

  At these and other events, the museum's director takes on the persona of King Björn.

  Summer activities climax in Viking Week, held in late June and packed with craft days for visitors. Since 1997, the week has also hosted a viking market, the same event that would later draw an unwanted kind of attention.

• 6. The 2016 Market Incident

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  In the summer of 2016, five performers worked that year's viking market under the name the Nordic International Slave Trade Company. The troupe travels between different Viking Age reenactment sites. According to reports, they threw a bag over a tourist's head and auctioned her off as a thrall in front of the crowd.

  The 2016 incident drew a direct response from local police. They said they would speak with people at the museum about how members of the public were treated. Wherever the Nordic International Slave Trade Company performs next, the same conversation with local authorities may well follow it there.