Å reenacte fortiden for å formidle historien

Abstract

In this thesis, I will explore reenactment as an arena for education and teaching History. It is based on a hypothesis: That, generally speaking, reenactors are occupied with teaching the history they are reenacting, and that this is an arena that could be used in the educational systems, as a resource for varying the ways in which history is being taught.

To test this hypothesis, I have made a research question, consisting of four questions below a main question. They go as follows: To which extent do reenactors view themselves as teachers of history, and how consciously do they use their knowledge about the Viking Age, and/or Medieval ages, and teaching that to their audience?

The four underlying questions for this main question are: 1. What motivates people to begin with, and continue doing, reenactment? 2. How preoccupied are reenactors of their role as historyteachers/educators, and how occupied are they with teaching the most correct facts they can find, to their audience? 3. How reflected are their historical consciousness 4. How can reenacting the past, me a part of something that can motivate pupils and others to learn more about history?

For me to get an answer to these questions, I have used a quantitative research project1, mainly to get a good picture of what it might look like in the reenactment community. I have used qualitative interviews, in which I had an interview guide, but followed it loosely, mainly letting my informers lead the conversation as long as we got through the interview guide by the end2. In addition to the interviews, I also created and sent out a semi-structured questionnaire3, which was sent around on Facebook, to get as many possible responses as I could. I also participated in a few markets myself, and in my fieldnotes, I mainly wrote down what my interviewees said. But I did also write an intro into the field of reenactment, which is found in my first chapter.

In my analysis, I focused mainly on my research questions, and what the responses I had gotten could tell me about that. I put in a few figures, showing the responses I got to the questionnaire, and excerpts from my interviews. My findings were very interesting to this thesis. In my first chapter, I begun by looking at what types of people are reenactors. I found that the reenactors who replied to my questionnaire were almost equal amounts men and equal amounts women. I also found that there was a higher number of people between the ages of 20-40, than any other age, but that it otherwise was somewhat evenly spread out.

In addition to this, it seems a majority of the respondents to my questionnaire were people who have been doing reenactment for 10+ years, with the rest of the respondents spreading pretty eveny out on the other lengths of time.

The reenactment arena seems to be getting new members in a pretty random order. Very few of the respondents to the questionnaire said that they had been recruited by reading about reenactment in any systemativ way. An overwhelming number of respondents said that they had been introduced to reenactment through people they knew from beforehand, telling them about it. Another big group were the people who said they had been introduced to it by showing up as a part of the audience, themselves, and then being invited in. A few found it by hearing people talk about it in public places, and a few saw articles, or things like that, in the media. This was also proven to be seemingly right, in my interviews, as they, for the most part, said exactly what the respondents to my questionnaire had said.

In my fifth chapter, I looked at reenactment, specifically angled towards educating and teaching their knowledge and passing it on to their audience. The responses I got on the questionnaire showed a trend towards most people being very conscious about the way they taught the history they were reenacting. Most of the respondents were focused in on open and honest communication if they were asked questions they did not know the answer to, and would either simply tell the audience member that they did not know the answer, and/or they would send them to someone who might know more than them. A slightly smaller group would tell an answer they thought might be right, and an even smaller group said they’d come up with an answer.

These results were also showcased in the interviews, where a few of the interviewees said they’d tell the audience member they didn’t know the answer. One of them said he’d send them to a person he knew would know more, and a few said they’d even start discussions about what might have been the answer.

In another question on the questionnaire, when asked what it meant, for them, to be a Viking or Medieval person, many said that it had to do with teaching history when they could write in their own words. Many of the interviewees agreed with this, and a few of them talked about why it was so important, with a few mentioning how it was important to portray the history the way it was, so that they could crush myths or tell stories in a way that’s more relatable and more «hands on» than in many other arenas.

All in all, this makes me conclude that reenactment is indeed an arena in which the participants seem to be reflected individuals who, for the most part, are preoccupied with teaching history the way it was. They do enjoy discussing what may have been, some saying that it has to do with the lack of physical evidence to tell what actually took place, and how things actually were.