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Similarly why do people dress up as pirates and Vikings for Halloween? We're talking about gangs of armed robbers who engaged in rape, pillage, murder, and slav
by triceratops 1y ago
Similarly why do people dress up as pirates and Vikings for Halloween? We're talking about gangs of armed robbers who engaged in rape, pillage, murder, and slaving.
- torben-friis 1y agoSounds scary enough. Why are people dressing as non scary things though?
- triceratops 1y agoI didn't think of that, that's fair.
- kragen 1y agoThe humans find narratives about those things very interesting, perhaps because listening to them has been a crucial survival trait since they evolved storytelling. But the question above is why there are Renaissance Faires rather than Middle and High Medieval Faires (Viking times) or Early Modern Faires (Treasure Island times).
- chrisco255 1y agoIn my experience, Ren Faires tend to run the whole range of early medieval to renaissance times. 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.
- 5555624 1y agoMedieval Times has nine locations in the US and one in Canada.
- chrisco255 1y agoDidn't realize, was only aware of the FL one. Good to know!
- kragen 1y agoSo the answer is that people are unclear on the concept of "Renaissance"?
- chrisco255 1y agoIt's just become a stand-in word to describe this class of fairs. In practice, sometimes they are called medieval fairs at the event, but there's not a huge distinction. No one is going to nitpick at a medieval fair that some tech or innovation didn't exist until later and if a ren fair features elements of medieval times, it's just not going to be called out. Most people mean early renaissance anyways, as the fantasy to play up to, when knights and swords still played a big role and before colonial empires and musketeers really took over.
- jltsiren 1y agoThat depends on the country. In Finland, reenactment events tend to be either "ancient" or "medieval". The former focus on the Iron Age until around 1200, or prehistoric times before Swedish rule and the establishment of Christianity. The latter extend until around 1500 or 1600. 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.
- pixl97 1y agoInvention of the printing press caused more late medieval and Renaissance data to be captured?
- burkaman 1y agoThey aren't dressing up as actual pirates and vikings, they're dressing up as fictional archetypes inspired by stuff like Pirates of the Caribbean and How to Train Your Dragon. Halloween pirates are as different from real pirates as Star Wars Stormtroopers are from real-life stormtroopers.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoSometimes people like to think about, and even roleplay, some pretty dark stuff. Especially on the day set aside for exactly this sort of thing.