Laurens: Introduction and motivation

This blog is on history, living history and reenactment – and everything associated with it. It will be written for people who engage in reenactment/living history, for historians, and for a general interested audience. It will however be filled with jargon from historic research and the hobby/lifestyle of living history.

I am Laurens Feijten (1984), I live in Delft, and have studied History at Leiden University, and Fine Art at ArtEZ Arnhem. I mastered in Ancient History, but my main interest (and period in Living History) has focussed on the High and Late Middle Ages, what you may call the gothic period in art history (1150-1550). As such, this blog will focus on this period also, as I am not acquainted with the practices in Living History of other periods and would not insinuate to lecture those groups that do. It will focus on the Netherlands and in a lesser degree on Northwestern Europe, because I am Dutch.

The group I am a member of, Die Landen van Herwaerts Over, consists of smaller groups which focus on a specific narrow timeframe and place, or a theme (such as cooking or sewing or even prostitution). I engage in two of these groups, the Deventer Burgerscap (citizens of Deventer in 1370) and Huys Baersenbrouc (a fictional noble household from Holland in ca 1410-20). Beside that, I am affiliated to Stichting HEI (Historical Educational Initiative) who rank as probably the best jousting group in the world and travel all over the globe. They mainly portray a group of jousters from Bruges in 1465-75, but since 2015 they also have a show around the knights of the count of Holland, Floris V, in 1290. Lastly, at this point we are setting up a little group around travelling students in 1270, to talk to the public about philosophy, theology and what we now call science in the 13^th century, and to get drunk.

I am sharing this blog and the initiative to write articles on living history with my long-time friend, fellow living history practitioner and collegue historian, Sander Nicolai, who will present himself in another introduction. He has his own motivations and insights, but I will now explain my motivation for this blog.

This blog will look at living history and reenactment to evaluate it's levels of historical accuracy, what it is and what we think it could be and could accomplish. I want to look at what scholarly historical research and living history can do for eachother. In doing so, I will probably be strict on other groups, maybe even be offensive, though not intentionally.

You may say, do I want to be the next reenactment-critic who nags about how crappy other groups are and what they do wrong? Not precisely. I want to look at what reenactors do, what they do differently than it was in the past and whether this could and should be resolved. I want to look at it's educational value, at it's helpfulness for historic research and for a better development and understanding of knowledge of history, the present and our culture. I want to describe why I engage in this hobby, what I think what it could look like and what it could be used for. I do not want to insult other reenactors or tell them what they should do, but merely hand them my view of what I think this hobby is for, for me personally, and maybe inspire them to follow my example. In this, I hope that our blog is unique and valuable.

As a historian, and a living history practitioner since 2001, I have pretty high standars for myself and the groups I hang out with. Luckily, I am not alone, so I can meet with people who think and act alike. I do not shun others for not having my high standards, I can even sit with them and enjoy myself, but I do not agree with their standards, although I will not actively tell them. For everyone their own enjoyment. 

Laurens Feijten
Delft, 6-9-2015