As a Member, you’ll be joining a group of people who work at recreating historical portrayals of persons from our time period and cultural groups. We are open to anyone joining who has an interest in the wide range of activities that we do.
To be active with us, it is best to be of reasonably good health, as we do camp a lot, and setting up and breaking down campsites is a regular part of what we do. We have a wide and varied range of folks from all walks of life as part of our Club.
It is a good idea to take your representations with a level of dedication to historical accuracy, but we are well aware that folks have different levels of income and everyone has to start somewhere, so we make accommodations for that, as well as being able to assist with many areas of the re-enactment hobby, so that you can become a part of what we do.
Being part of Orkneyjar, you will need to have a certain level of commitment in terms of both time and/or finances. Due to the nature of the materials we use, costs of clothing can be higher than what you may be used to, but you can mitigate this by learning to sew your own gear, which thus means you only have material costs to consider.
So, if the above sounds fairly reasonable to you, there’s some things that you might consider when first joining in with us.
- What time period are you interested in?
- We range from 453 to 1066, so any era in that range is suitable
- What specific area/culture are you interested in?
- Our emphasis is on the Orkney archipelago, but we have members whose interests are further afield. The Orkney’s were a stopping and trading point on travel east and west, so you can select cultural representations from wider areas. If you are in doubt, please contact us.
This forms the basis of your presentation, your persona if you will. Which can be as specific as a particular grave find, to a general representation of a Viking of the 10th Century say. Often folks start out quite general, and then become more specific. That being said, if you really want to go very specific, then that really does help narrow down what you need to know.
Research is a major part of what we do, and so you might be keen to do your own (and share the results of your searching), or you may rely on what others who have similar interests to yourself have found out in their own research efforts, or what is usually the case, a mix of both.
Putting together your kit, which is what we term your clothing, weapons, eating utensils, and other gear, can be as slow or as quick as you have time and finances to achieve. You could easily kit yourself out in some amazing stuff, if you have the finances to do so, or you could make a lot of your own gear and learn the skills of the people of the era, or any combination.
We hope this brief bit of information has been useful for you. If you have further questions or want to keep in touch with us, send us a message or find us on Facebook. Please also feel free to download our Membership Form if you would like to Join.