In The New York Times there was once an article about how contemporary decay is often much less romantic than our view of historic destruction. Decay in 2022 does not mean that you flee a burning Rome with your loved ones in your arms, narrowly escaping a murderous horde of barbarians. No, it means staring at a screen 16 hours a day and enjoying fewer and fewer things than before while slowly adopting your parents’ worst traits while noticing that your kids are also adopting your worst traits.
‘You must indeed see our longing for the past as an escape from everyday life’, says Jan Hakkers, a man with puffer trousers, a sword and the talent to stray with almost every sentence to the horrors of the Duke of Alva or the battle van Groenlo in 1627.
‘This is a weekend without a mobile, without a watch, without a laptop. There are no beeps to tell you to do anything. You sleep in a tent, wake up at five o’clock to the light. Authenticity is our top priority. I personally think that’s a very nice term, because we also work a lot with banners here.’
Here, that is the second edition of the Historical Festival at Museum Huis Doorn, one of the largest multi-period events in the Netherlands, where the muskets are continuously blasting and the campfires are crackling. It is a place where an ever-growing group of Dutch people – the number of associations that are members of the overarching National Platform for Living History has increased by almost 50 percent since 2015 – can freely dress up as 18th-century pirate, Roman legionary, Viking, American pioneer or soldier from the Napoleonic era.
Or in the case of Jan Hakkers: as a proud commander during the Eighty Years’ War. What he especially likes about these kinds of events is that background is irrelevant. In daily life he is an application manager who does not often lead the way, but as soon as he tightens his 17th-century doublet, there is no room for social prestige, social ladders, bullies or stress. No one makes any comments about the fact that most soldiers are a little more generous in the flesh than their historical equivalents. Here you are not only accepted for who you are, but more importantly: for who you want to be.
‘The members of our association are farmers, administrative assistants, retired teachers, healthcare workers; everyone is welcome’, he says. ‘And you know what the funny thing is: someone with a simple profession is often better able to fulfill a captain’s position than, for example, a professor.’
The re-enactment of illustrious historical events, often battles, is central during these weekends, but the reconstruction of the way of life at the time is also important. This means that the assembled Romans eat spicy pulses in a taberna, while in the medieval camp mainly bowls of vegetables that would have been on the menu a thousand years ago, such as parsnips and leeks.
What helps, of course, is that almost everything that used to be annoying – the diseases, the stench, the mouths full of tooth decay, the enemies and death – are missing in Doorn. Strangely enough, only the serving role of women is honored, because where the men are allowed to play with weapons, the wives of those men have to make do with peeling coal and knitting.
The only place where that cursed present regularly seeps through is at the tent camp of the 39th Red Army Guards Rifle Division, a group of Soviet infantrymen who fought the Nazis during World War II. ‘Due to possible sensitivities’, the members of the Het Bolwerk association decided to make agreements in advance about their expressions, says Laurens, a man who also regularly dresses up as a Frankish warrior from the ninth century, but this weekend this Russian unit nevertheless decided to to do, ‘despite everything’.
‘We just want to add nuance’, he says. After all, knowledge of the past can contribute to an understanding of the present, and it is especially necessary now. ‘We try to explain to the children who walk by that certain peoples are not by definition good or bad, but can sometimes behave well and sometimes bad over time.’
That’s right, 22-year-old Amber nods, who is also equipped as a Soviet soldier, but immediately admits that her personal reason is also more practical: ‘The Red Army was one of the few armies that women were allowed to fight with,’ she says. “And I didn’t feel like cooking all weekend.”
