How did Renaissance fairs begin?
history.com
history.com
I went in star trek blue. My favourite response a lady tells me that I'm violating the temporal prime directive for being in uniform. That was hilarious!
Note, I was literally the only person dressed in star trek lol.
...As opposed to the actual medieval period, which was famously chaste, calm, and sober?
There are more historically-oriented "entertainments", but they tend to be both non-profit and not audience-based (everyone attending is in costume).
https://www.amazon.com/Well-Met-Renaissance-American-Counter...
1500s samurais popularized a pasttime of reenacting 1300s samurais. Except, being Japan, they had actual relics of the period in pristine condition.
I know someone in the SCA who portrays a 1500s samurai who portrays a 1300s samurai - giving him two periods of costume to play with, without "changing persona" at all. Kinda.
I don’t know about antiquity - did people dress up as mythological figures? The first plays were in Greece. Were there unscripted or ad hoc performances? I know what I’m going to ask AI next.
The 1839 Eglinton Tournament, was, in a way, a Renaissance Fair. It was a massive spectacle at the time, became enduringly famous (or infamous), and helped to kick-off the Romantic 19th century fascination with the medieval:
Fun personal fact: Paramount Ranch was also the site of my high school's home cross country course (Westlake High School). During my high school days, the ranch's center was set up as a western town for filming Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. As a kid, you just accept all of that as normal, everyday things. "Doesn't everyone have Renaissance fairs and TV and movie sets in their town?" It took going to college thousands of miles away to realize and appreciate how delightfully weird Southern California can be.
So it's native to the new world, but not native to North America?
Anyway, 1500s is when they came to Europe, so maybe they did enjoy a good turkey leg...
How come Turkeys are called Indians (Hindi) in Turkish then?
My understanding is that the wild turkey was common throughout North America, but was domesticated in Mexico, and modern turkey farming uses stock descending from that population.
So the bird itself is native, but most Turkey farms in the US or Canada would have been Mexico->Europe->NA.
/s No I don't - over-localization is one of the banes of my existence.
We have them in Slovenia. In the summer local castles will put on a fair for the tourists and kids. Sometimes multiple!
Typically you get a visiting troupe or two from Italy, they like to do flag twirling shows. There’s always a group of folks from Czech who put on an armored fighting competition. I’ve seen jousting tournaments too. And then you have a slew of local artisans selling wares roughly inspired by the time period. There’s often an outdoor play or two, maybe belly dancing.
It’s all great fun.
I went to all of them because I have young kids and they love that stuff. It's a fun day out. Also gives us an excuse to wear all of the arms and armor we've collected, lol.
There are lots of these in Austria, too, BTW. There was a two-week-long joust fair/festival by Millstätter See in early August!
In truth, these festivals are all over Europe. They're just not well advertised, so you have to look for them.
The next one in the region, by the way, is the medieval-themed Advent festival at the castle in Friesach. (Austria.) I'll be there for sure.
Considering how crowded they feel, I’d say the advertising is plenty sufficient. They’re local events with limited space.
Ah, anyway, it's nice that there's always something to do on a Summer's weekend...
Castle Fest is centered around music (I think it was originally organized by the folk band Omnia), but has tons of combat and archery demonstrations, a market with clothes and weapons (blunt steel and boffer), esoteric stuff and anything else that vaguely fits in there.
Elfia, formerly known as the Elf Fantasy Fair is a fantasy-themed cosplay festival held twice a year.
Keltfest (10,000 visitors, apparently) is about ancient crafts, music, archery, with workshops and demonstrations.
I've also been to a few smaller ones I forgot the names of, but these are all pretty big, I think.
Not sure how much they resemble American ren fairs, but they tend to have falconry exhibitions, smiths forging stuff, sellers of wooden toys and artisan jewelry..
Based on the OP, it sounds like it's nothing special about the time period. It sounds like someone put one on as a one time event then it became regular event. People think they're fun, and it spread.
> It’s old enough to be different than now but not old enough to be like caveman times?
Ancient Greece/Rome would also fit that bill, but I haven't heard of an "Ancient Rome Fair."
Also a British city that does an annual Saturnalia festival: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-67680824
In Florida, there is a permanent year round dinner entertainment show that includes horseback stunts called Medieval Times. In my local Ren Faire, it's really all meshed together, if someone wanted to have a viking event or attraction it would fit right in and no one would bat an eye.
Then there is a separate tradition around idealized peasant life in the 18th and 19th centuries. But that's not really reenactment, as the tradition started with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.
Halloween pirates are as different from real pirates as Star Wars Stormtroopers are from real-life stormtroopers.
Also, lots of fantasy stuff is written in medieval-style settings, which means lots of fiction meshes well with the environment of a medieval renfest.
But most RenFests seem to cover a period of about 500 years, plus a fair bit of outright fantasy.
At least at my local one, there is a Court playing out a fictional version of a real event early in the reign of Henry VIII, a period right on the cusp which I would call medieval rather than Renaissance. The people involved in that project actually have a good understanding of the history and are trying for some sort of period accuracy. Everyone else...
Why is that period so fascinating? Pretty clothes, and just enough superstitious belief in magic to let you play fantasy stories. Plus the actual history really is cool, even if it's only obliquely referenced.
My guess is the invention of the printing press. Thanks to that, tons of stories and myths have been preserved and proliferated with origins in the Renaissance.
We also tend to group a lot of Medieval and Victorian era stuff in with the Renaissance, meaning it effectively spans a huge era of recorded human history.
The earliest equivalents of modern mass market paperbacks were fueled by existing legends like King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable which invented the whole medieval romanticism genre. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the cosplay gear at renfaires reflects that 12-13th century era rather than the changes that amassed versus gun powder (although that might just be the ones I've been to).
Sadly not much of that literature survived because it was bottom of the market and it's hard for scholars to really study.
And I have never once been aware of the Court. I know about it only because I have friends in it. They put a lot of effort into that story line.
Henry VIII was in the early-mid 16th century. Thats's pretty darn late to consider medevial. Dates vary considerably but most historians consider the medevial era to have ended sometimes in the 15th century. Conquest of Constantinpole (1453) is a pretty common, albeit arbitrary date.
The Renaissance era, was considered to have begun in Italy sometime in the mid 15th century. Of course it took some time to spread throughout Europe. But by ~1500 Europe was mostly considered to be in the Renaissance. Certainly by 1521 when Martin Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms which kicked off the Reformation
And it's particularly romantic in terms of castles, knights, and clothing.
Of course it's not exactly historically accurate. E.g. firearms were definitely a thing at the time, but the fairs focus on swords, shields, and bows.
It's definitely about the pre-industrial courtly romanticism of it, not the reality of an average person at the time.
I suspect tournaments were heavily attended by any peasants who could get there. Their money, however hard-scramble, was just as useful to merchants selling meat pies, fried sweetened breads, and beer/wine.
Second, I think it's an interesting question to ask if people craved this particular past or if they just craved a space where everything is vastly different and settled on this period because it's pretty firmly embedded in our cultural mythology and everyone has an idea, however historically inaccurate, of what this time period was like. I think it's less that we built it because this is specifically what we want and more that this was waiting for us to materialize it. The majority of what people get from the ren fest isn't renaissance specific, it's just about going to a place that's different enough to be novel and exciting but familiar enough to be comfortable. I think that if we did a Flintstone Fest where we all dressed as cave folk that would be similar enough that you have people who go to both. In fact I may be a little biased because I actually like to bring a caveman character to our local fest's time traveller's weekend. It's fun to turn the conceit on its head by walking around acting amazed at how advanced everything is. I could also foresee a successful Old West Fest. All time periods that are vastly different than now, but with a familiarity from being studied, stereotyped and riffed on in the common culture. A comfortable elsewhere and elsewhen.
For sure, there are things like Cheyenne Frontier Days though not sure that it really goes as far as the cosplaying that is seen in ren faires. People do dress in western clothes, although they're not necessarily acting out a part. Rodeos and western wear though are still fairly common in modern day America though.
I think it's mostly a case of the printing press solidifying all that cultural mythology right around the tail end of the Renaissance. King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable was an especially popular theme among early printed fiction (think mass market paperbacks of today) which is where I think most of this began. The motifs introduced in those books have been pervasive since the common people started learning how to read and evolved into a lot of different cultural features like renfairs.
There are also folk life festivals with traditional art forms from before mass production, frontier festivals, colonial festivals, Civil War reenactments, Revolutionary War reenactments, the Vintage Computer Festivals, conventions for antique radio and TV equipment, and all sorts of periods people commemorate. This is the one that has been around a few decades, caught on in a big way, and spread nationwide.
There are also pumpkin festivals, apple festivals, corn festivals, other harvest festivals, May Day festivals, county fairs, state fairs, and more despite most of the things involved in all of these are anachronistic for most of the population. Very few people actually raise prize cattle, sheep, and pigs. Very few farm crops. We still celebrate these as if we’re an agrarian society though.
Ren fair(e): entertainment gathering of the modern age.
Rennaissance fair(e): entertainment gathering, occuring after the start of the Renaissance.
I never asked them why they participated. But from observation they had great joy in hand crafting costume, weapons, and armor, then utilizing their craft to roleplay and battle. Maybe there’s something to be said about ownership.
I’d also hesitate to guess that the medieval time period was a time when most of the technology at the time could be understood and actively participated by the average person while simultaneously supporting a growing! civilization.
Now the average person undesirably participates in a no or low growth job where they have no agency in their day to day.
It is especially interesting the way people tend to portray it drained of all religious overtones and entirely secular in nature, so that it is palatable to all comers, whether pagan, Christian or Jew.
TFA completely fails to mention the utter fandom that has grown alongside RenFaires: The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). People who are involved with the SCA basically have ongoing year-round RenFaires of various magnitudes. They develop entire in-world personas for themselves and they're assigned to Kingdoms and such, regionally. I'm not sure of the relationship between the two, but it's certainly symbiotic and RenFaires give a taste of what people can have, 24/7 in the SCA.
Medieval life is also attractive to traditionalists of a Christian nature, again -- before everything was "ruined" by science and modernism. We all love going back to the 16th century to see how it all went wrong, or the 11th century to see how it also went wrong!
What's more, plenty of other subcultures draw on medieval tropes, such as goths and filkers and whatever con-going fandom is up to these days. Any competent cosplayer can "seamlessly" meld into a medieval princess or wench just by designing the right costumes, and there are plenty of YouTubers and Etsy sellers ready to assist!
The following info is dated to about 2004-2008:
I was fortunate enough to live in the Phoenix area, where the second largest gathering occurs in Feb, called the Estrella War (it since moved south to Florence). There are about 5k people that come out for the event, and a giant camp, marketplace, battlefield are all set up.
I spent my days fighting in giant battles, and the evenings were spent with friends and acquaintances. Nights brought parties, etc., but nothing beats falling asleep in a tent to the near-distant beating of drums and occasional bagpiper.
There are a variety of arts and sciences, crafts for children, and of course royal court proceedings. I had an absolute blast as a college student participating.
One day I hope to participate again and venture to Pennsylvania for Pennsic, the biggest which was about 16k folk when I played.
Who knows how the SCA is now; I've been out for so long with a shoulder injury. But I've considered getting back in for rapier combat which looked like a lot of fun but not nearly at the battle scale of hardsuit.
This kicked into overdrive in the 20th, with the nascent genre of literary fantasy (and, later, video games,) showing people alternate worlds that are potent medicine against the enlightenment and industrial age -- for they contain little or nothing of the more dour aspects of 9th-17th century life.
If anything, it seems to me that most fantasy books and games like Dungeons and Dragons only make sense if you imagine they take place in the distant post-industrial future. They're too cozy; there is far too much healing magic and other tech; their economies are in many cases post-scarcity...
As to why fans of the fantasy genre prefer medieval settings. I know it's a topic of discussion, but I don't know if there is a widely accepted explanation.
I wish there was a way for The Internet to eminent domain this URL from the History Channel, they clearly don't deserve it.
Archive for anyone interested: https://archive.is/2xmAE
And VPN via Sweden, redirects to https://www.historytv.se
I don't think they want international visitors.
What happened is that this county gathering has been happening for centuries. Since 1253 in truth. First it was called a gathering, then a cobble, and finally in 1582, the Franks took it over.
It was highly popularized as a French affair. The whimsical garb, the music, all something the stodgy English would have no part in. In fact, so stodge were they that it was forced outdoors, as none would rent to the Franks for this. Quite rude, in the rainy land of the Brits!
Eventually it became Frank-aire, just as other loan words from French, like concessionaire or millionaire, and then just Faire.
It's really the world's longest running annual gathering, where there's always a redhead in the same maid outfit. 538 years running, this year in fact! You can find it in the Guinness Book of World Records!