The Mink Viking Portrait studio works wonders with photo subjects more used to wielding the pen than the sword
PHOTOGRAPHS: PAUL BLAKEMORE, JUSTIN FOULKES/4CORNERS, GUÐMANN ÞÓR BJARGMUNDSSON
A Norse day in Iceland
Summer was a season beloved of Vikings, when longships cast off on calm seas, and warriors celebrated the solstice by glugging mead round the bonfre until such time as night fell (which, during much of Icelandic summer, is never). Head to Iceland this midsummer to party and pillage in the company of 21st-century Vikings, as Hafnarfjörður town hosts its annual Viking festival. Here, members of the Rimmugýgur reenactment group hold staged battles featuring clashing swords and mighty beards, putting aside their weapons and their grievances for traditional Viking music and storytelling by the shores of the Atlantic. If this spectacle inspires you to become a Viking yourself, take a short hop to Reykjavík and book an appointment at Mink Viking Portrait studio, hidden up a fight of stairs close to the statue of Leifur Eiriksson, the Viking who reached the Americas. Inside, even the wimpiest of Anglo-Saxons can be transformed into Valhalla-worthy warriors. Participants pose with an assortment of armour, swords, axes and shields and practise their best battle cry in the company of Guðmann, a sometime crew member on Game of Thrones whose mission is to help his subjects ‘unleash their inner Viking’.
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June 2016
 
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