In 2022 I received an invite from TV producer Jeremy Freeston to join him and his team on a shoot for his new series ‘Vikings – The True Story’.

I did not know what to expect when I arrived in the early morning to meet the crew – little did I know I was in for a very weird and wonderful day…

It turns out there are folk that live as Vikings full time. They dress, eat, and party in Viking fashion and they even tattoo each other in traditional Viking ways.

It was quite a shock – I was expecting extras in poorly fitting costumes, not this.

Unlike real Vikings of old, everyone I met was incredibly welcoming and plied me with as much mead, stewed meat and photo opportunities as I could take.

I had thought that I’d lost these files when my old hard drive crashed, but in the festive break of 2024 I decided to do a “big sort” of my photo files and came across these in a random backup folder on an old memory stick.

Unfortunately, these were the already edited JPGs and not RAW files, but I am thankful to have anything to commemorate this experience at all.