ERDI AROA Published by DEIA, Sept.

22, 2011 KEPA JUNKERA

Looking back I see some little boys with pans on their heads, and a lid on their backs, some sticks in their hands and the overflowing imagination. Some defend a small hill, others were attacking it and then the shouts, the wooden blows against wood and even one pan hits against another, which aroused the burning sensation of those created illusions for avid warriors to emulate big medieval exploits. In most of the occasions we, the adults do not take the childrens games seriously but a little while ago I discovered an activity that, after careful consideration, is not more than a prolongation of our infantile adventures but taken more to its extreme. It is a festivity, so-called Rusborg that celebrates towards the middle of summer, in which all those fans participate in the historic reconstruction of the IXth to the XI century. All-comers split into two parties, one of them defends a little small fort while the other one has to attack it and, of course, trying to conquer it. The flamboyance of this festivity is than everything, and when I say everything, it is everything, what is used in this sort of complex game itself is constructed and manufactured with the same materials and the same way that in days gone they were made by: dresses, swords, arrows, shields, food, beds, stores etc., they are manufactured as in the Russian Middle Ages. On the other hand, in addition to the battles, in those encounters the craftsmen and all the Russians musicians participate and the people live, breathes and tries to experience the sensations that their forefathers had 11 centuries ago. "Here you can feel the past, touch it and even taste it", says Yakov Vnukov, one of the organizers of the event. I believe that the sensations that the people live there have to be fascinating because there is an inside tendency in every human being to admire the people before them had to face life and their destiny. And

talking about destinies, today that we travel so much physically, for us to rest our mind, flying around 1000 years ago wouldnt it be a way to achieve the same thing? Certainly, there is no scare of trajectory. www.kepajunkera.com