The 2025 edition of the Viking Experience Festival in North Carolina will take place at a brand-new location.
The Viking Herald speaks to founder Angela Reid about how the new site will serve as a place of inspiring education, living history, and Norse-themed escapism.
A brand-new home
The Viking Experience is an entertainment group inspired by the history and legends of the Viking Age.
Their landmark event is the Viking Experience Festival, which will be held for the first time this year in the town of Oxford, North Carolina.
As Angela informs us, the group purchased a property here last year to serve as the permanent home of the Viking Experience.
"We had outgrown the biggest venue in Granville County, but we didn't want to leave this county – it's been incredibly supportive," Angela tells The Viking Herald. "Instead, we decided to purchase our own land."
The site stretches across some 80 acres in the town of Oxford. "It's very pretty," Angela adds with a smile. "We left a scattering of trees, so it has a nice park-like feeling about it."
As Angela explains, the team plans to build something new every year. "Eventually, we'll have lots of buildings, but this year, we have been working on the stage."
"We have four eight-foot Valkyries that were painted on fabric and are going to go on the wings of the stage – I think they're gorgeous!"
Visitors can learn Viking skills at the festival's new site, meet like-minded people, and step away from the modern world. Photo: The Viking Experience NC
The power of community
Naturally, constructing a whole new venue has been far from easy, but fortunately, the Viking Experience team has found plenty of people willing to help.
"We've been up there every weekend putting the finishing touches on the grounds for the festival," Angela admits.
"Last week, we had 30 volunteers there working all through the day. We're creating a community inside the community. And that's one of the things about this whole project – people need community. It's not a want; it's a need."
As Angela points out, the idea of community is central to the ethos of both the Viking Experience group and the festival itself.
"Look at the world right now – things are kind of messy," Angela continues. "People need a break, be it dressing up as a Viking, a barbarian, or a fantasy character."
The new site will also play host to the events of the Viking Experience Academy, which offers educational classes in Norse-related skills such as blacksmithing and weaving.
"Our academy weekend also functions as a kind of training weekend for our own people," Angela explains.
"If people want to learn more or become more involved, they can come along and expand their education. We also get asked to go to different schools and libraries to do educational programs on-site."
The festival's new home in Oxford includes 80 acres of space and a stage decorated with Valkyrie artwork. Photo: The Viking Experience NC
A year to remember
Right now, however, the attention is very much on the festival, which will be held across two consecutive weekends: March 22–23 and 29–30.
"We weren't sure how far we were going to get with the improvements to the land," Angela admits. "So we decided to do two weekends – we've had to keep the daily numbers slightly lower than before."
Naturally, the team also has a couple of new initiatives up its sleeve for the big event. "We've got dragon hunting this year," Angela tells The Viking Herald.
"We have started working with Ed's Dinosaur Live. Ed has these huge blow-up dragons, and you go around the site with a Nerf gun, shooting them."
"The story is that our Viking trading post has always had a good relationship with dragons, but now we think a new tribe of dragons has moved in. They've been harassing our sheep and need to be dealt with."
Visitors can also look forward to fireside storytelling, rune-writing lessons, belly dancing classes for adults, and fairy dancing for children.
"Our visitors get a mental vacation from all the stress," Angela says.
"The idea is that this weekend, I'm a Viking, and I'm going to sit around this fire and drink some mead out of a horn, and life just becomes a little simpler. I think it gets us back in touch with something primal."
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