About Henrik Olsgaard

Living History From the Saddle…

I credit the ball being started to roll, as it were, by the Adventures of “ Crusader Rabbit“ and his faithful sidekick “Raggs the Tiger”, followed closely and definitively by the 1955 film “Prince Valiant “ ! Further enhanced by the film “Ivanhoe“ and its greatly intoxicating star, the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, and some magnificent jousting scenes, that lead directly to this jousting photo. :)


Once that ball got rolling, it, combined with my strong interest in understanding how and why people in the past did things and my love of working with my hands to make things, got me “here” where I am today!


In 1965 I was an engineering student at College of Marin in Larkspur. I read Science fiction books, and studied foil fencing and took a sculpture course where I made a replica of a medieval broadsword, but wanted more!


After College of Marin, I transferred to San Francisco State, where I met like minded friends who invited me to a medieval themed costume party, to be held on May Day, in Berkeley, where medieval style combat was the main activity of the day. I was able to wear my sword and put my fencing experience to practical use, much to my great pleasure. A combat winner was chosen and was given a token to present to his Lady and she was proclaimed Queen of Love and Beauty for the day. This party became recorded as the “First Tournament” of a group (called “The Society for Creative Anachronism” or “SCA”) which grew out of the fun everyone had at the party. At the second event (Tournament), held around the following midsummer, besides more combat, they held a costume competition in which I won a prize for my costume which included a steel helmet ( See picture ) and a steel round shield, which I had made after being inspired from seeing a couple of steel heater shields being used by their makers at the first Tournament. By the third Tournament, in the Fall (See picture ) , I had made more weapons and had made a corselet of mail, made of rings fashioned from wire coat hangers, to cover my chest. I won that Tournament wearing it and was given a scroll proclaiming me King and my Lady received one proclaiming her Queen.


In the following months, through the winter, I added to the corselet and finished a full hauberk of mail by early Spring. I was able to borrow a horse to ride wearing it at the fourth Tournament in March 1967. (See picture)


During the past 50+ years the SCA has grown from a small local (Northern California) group of fans to an international organization with branches throughout the world, based mostly in English speaking locations associated with US Military bases and a few countries where English is commonly spoken by the natives as a second language, if not the national language.


In the mid ‘70s, I was finally able to arrange a jousting experiment, inspired by both films and a recent (1972) demonstration of jousting that a group of we SCA members had assisted in the week long series of performances, by a British Jousting Troup, playing at The Cow Palace in San Francisco, (lead by Nosher Powell, of the Powell family of Film stunt performers).


I arranged for us to gather at a field in Briones Park to set up for the joust experiment. My opponent in this experiment was Andrew Smith, who had a horse stabled nearby in a stable located in the community now called Briones, some 5 or less miles away. I had the horse Sugarfoot ( Sugar) brought there from her home in Petaluma. I wore the first great helm I had made – it had narrow eye openings on a removable face plate. I was carrying a sheetmetal shield with a cloth cover tied in place on the front. We had two movie cameras set up in two locations with John Edgerton running one of them and Brian Duggan on the other one. We got to our places at the opposite ends of the field, the cameras rolled and when all were ready, charged!


In a full speed charge, perhaps at 15 miles per hour in our case, closing the distance between us, say 150 to 200 feet, takes but a few strides and seconds, so remembering the single experience is but a fraction of a lifetime in over 44 years. What I remember is the thrill of the success of the experiment, as the 8 foot long styrofoam tip of my 12 foot long lance connected with the center of Andrew’s upper chest, covered by mail, and then sheering off piece by piece, into a virtual cloud of shards, as can be seen in the photo at top – and Andrew wasn’t physically injured at all! My impression was he hadn’t felt the impact of my lance to any significant degree, which was the goal of the lance design, causing NO INJURY !


After 30 plus years of the SCA I began to find it less satisfying and dreamed of doing something more “real”. I told my long time friend ( whom I met in the SCA in the late ‘60’s) Mike Cady about my desire to ride in Armor at the 2000 reenactment of the Battle of Hastings. Mike, Rick Mantegani and I all went in October 2000 to Battle Abby. Mike and I participated in the reenactment and Rick took video of us there.


There we met English and other European reenactors and learned about reenactment in Europe and other countries where history originally occurred or was still alive in the hearts of the people.


Subsequently we began to introduce that form of reenactment to some of the SCA and got more SCA members to go to England in October 2006 for the next big reenactment of the Battle of Hastings, held then. Ed Berland and Brian Agron went with us that year and joined Bjornstad around then.


The 2006 Hastings event drew about 3500 reenactors, from groups around the world. It was the largest such event ever.


The Northern California Renaisance Pleasure Faire began in 1967 and many of we SCAers went and participated as much as we were able and desired, in various capacities as demonstrators of combat, among other activities. I managed to get involved in equestrian demonstrations of ring spearing and tilting at the quintain ( a heavy target used to develop jousting accuracy, power and timing), as well as combat from horseback against warriors on foot.


Many of us were not really RennFaire people in the sense that we were performers, rather we simply went to the Faire to do things we liked, that the Faire permitted us to do and/or the SCA didn’t either allow or didn't have resources available for us to do, at the time. I liked to fight in armor and ride doing knightly things on horseback, years before they began hiring jousting troups to put on staged jousts, I rode there demonstrating knightly training activities – but not jousting. Real jousting is dangerous and I don’t like falling off horses and I am not a performer. I will demonstrate historical stuff, but I dislike putting on a show or performing. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, access to Eastern Europe and its peoples, has permitted new social interactions as well as provided new resources of historical crafts and historical locations (such as the Polish Viking site of Wolin) and other Baltic culture. The appearance of The Battle Of the Nations seems to be a blending of WMA, MMA and Historical reenactment. How this plays out remains to be seen.



  © For information contact Jack Garrett at info@vikingsofbjornstad.com/a>pan>