Summer in Europe has its own rhythm. It’s the season of medieval markets, Celtic gatherings and Etruscan festivals — a strange, vibrant collision of history, myth and modern desire. In valleys, along rivers and in small towns, these phenomena return year after year, becoming bigger, louder and more magnetic.
They are a surprise without exaggeration. There’s medieval music and Irish step dancing, a bonfire maze lit in the evening, and evening processions led by bagpipes and drums. You can try archery or ax throwing. You can wander through tented camps where people, dressed in the clothes of another age, display crafts as if time itself has rolled back.
There are tarot readers and rune casters. There is food cooked over an open fire – food that demands patience. People stand in line for thirty minutes, sometimes an hour, waiting for a chicken to slowly burn. It is served on a cardboard plate with lentil and spelled soup, tomato, basil, alongside grilled skewers. Along the river, where the water provides relief from the oppressive heat, stalls sell everything from fantasy-inspired medieval clothing to skirts made from recycled Indian sari silk, handmade jewelry, local wine, beer, honey and mead. And everywhere, the modern druid’s small spiritual markets: incense, rune stones, crystals, books.
It’s not just an event. It is an atmosphere.
The smell of something old
The air itself feels different — thick with smoke, dust, and something hard to name. It fills the entire valley, clings to your clothes, stays with you long after you’re gone. Every year, more people come. Some come as spectators, some participate in costumes.
You see men in kilts – more than you’d expect outside of Scotland. Women in wide, flowing skirts, many freed from the constraints of modern dress, wear flower crowns in loose curls. Face painted for war or ceremony. Bare feet on dry ground. It feels less like a festival and more like a gathering. Almost like a family reunion you don’t know you belong to.
Echoes below the surface
Something profound is being touched upon here. Not nostalgia in the usual sense, but something closer to instinct — something buried beneath the layers of modern life, social media, work schedules and endless discussions of identity. Sometimes even beneath a thick layer of awakening, what we are told to believe or say, blurs the lines of what we deeply consider masculine or feminine. Where every emotion is immediately checked, translated, corrected and neutralized.
These festivals allow people to step into archetypes that feel both theatrical and strangely authentic. Men present themselves as warriors, as if honor and war still define them, as if Valhalla is not just a myth but a destination. Women move through the space in a celebration of femininity that feels elemental, almost ritualistic.
It’s easy to dismiss it as roleplay. But that would miss the point. What emerges here is not historical accuracy—it is emotional truth. An echo of something older than the modern section.
A Longing We Don’t Talk About
What these gatherings evoke is not a desire to return to the past, but a desire to feel absent from the present.
Community, first. The reality of shared space, not the abstract, digital kind. women together men together Groups gather around fires at night, making songs, telling stories, passing myths. Work that has visible results — harvesting, crafting, food.
There is also an urgency to the rhythm. A life is not made up of notices and deadlines, but of seasons, of daylight, of weather We’ve traded some for climate-controlled offices, overheated factories, and artificial light that blurs the boundaries between day and night.
At these festivals, something unusual happens: people talk to each other. Strangers in line for food strike up a conversation. Tables are shared due to insufficient space. Music comes from instruments, not playlists. People are dancing – not carefully, not acting, but wildly, freely.
And perhaps most interesting: very few people are looking at their phones.
A temporary exit
Maybe this is what the event really suggests. Not an escape into the past, but a temporary departure from the present.
A break from the quiet isolation of modern life, where connection is often mediated through screens. A break from the fragmentation that defines so much of contemporary existence. From the constant impact of negative news, self-optimization, political manipulation from every aspect and comparison.
Maybe more of our Middle Ages and less of 2026. We don’t miss the plague, filth or social injustice of the Middle Ages. But we miss the conditions that make people feel connected, necessary, and embedded in something bigger than themselves.
What these festivals reveal, with surprising clarity, is not who we were – but what we’ve lost.
–
This post was Previously published in Notes from the Anthropocene.
***
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
If you believe in the work we’re doing at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member today.
All premium members can watch The Good Men Project without any ads.
Need more information? A full list of benefits is here.
Photo credit: Unsplash
