The less glamorous, but no less fun side of living history groups (NOT LARP!)

Before I begin can I just say that what you see in these photos is not LARP (Live Action Role Play), it’s SCA which stands for The Society for Creative Anachronism. The difference is where LARP is more playful, going out with your mates wearing costumes and wearing padding and bashing each other on the head, SCA is actually recreating aspects of primarily Medieval history down to the smallest detail in trams of craftsmanship. A bit like a theatrical production, but with jousting.

You may not understand the LARP/SCA scene, and heck you may not even ever give it a go – but you can’t deny how fun it looks. Getting out and about on the weekend, having a huge social network of like-minded friends, and getting pissed on mead and having fights. As with everything, there are less glamorous and potentially less fun aspects of this worldwide activity. I’m talking blisters, admin, drizzle and spear-sharpening. Photographer Euan Forrester went backstage at some of these events with his camera, and these photos you see here are the results.

“I started the project when my friend Nick, who appears a bunch of times in various photos, invited me to come along to an event and take pictures,” Euan told us. “We’d talked about the SCA before, and I was really curious because I was into Medieval stuff when I was younger, and it seemed cool to get to explore the same thing again except as an adult. And I was really excited to come into something initially as an outsider and to try to understand it and then express that visually.”

That’s totally the vibe you get off Euan’s work – you understand his polite voyeurism, and you get that he respects what everyone around him is doing. Also, you can imagine what a nightmare it is to shoot with armoured people running everywhere. “At events it felt like going to see a friend’s soccer game mixed with camping: the fighting was the centre of attention, but people would chat to each other and drift in and out, and maybe go and hang out at their tents for a while. Being out in the battlefield felt like playing paintball: I had to wear a helmet, so I couldn’t see very well and there were people everywhere. I was pretty nervous and tried to be hyper-aware of what was going on around me: if I got in someone’s way (who also probably couldn’t see very well) I could easily get pretty hurt. The marshals did a great job of keeping me safe even though I kept trying to push the boundaries.”

For Euan, this was more than just another project, it was a learning curve. “Along the way, I met a lot of people but first and foremost I got to know my friend Nick better. Getting to see the SCA through his eyes and to learn more about him was a real treat. He introduced me to Knights, present and former (and probably future) Kings and Queens, Barons and Baronesses, and a world-famous Armourer, but mostly his friends: a bunch of regular people who enjoy dressing up, going camping, and hitting each other on the weekends.”