The Michigan Nordic Fire Festival is a captivating celebration that merges winter festivities with Viking culture, taking place from February 27th to March 1st at the Eaton County Fairgrounds in Charlotte. A'me McGill-Austin and Cassidy Brown join us on The Convo to give us the inside story behind the annual festival's array of activities, such as live entertainment, engaging children's events, and even a ceremonial ship burning, which promises to ignite excitement among attendees.

Website: Michigan Nordic Fire Festival

Facebook: Michigan Nordic Fire Festival

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Welcome to Community Convos, a podcast and radio program from lcc. Connect with conversations about what's happening in Lansing and around mid Michigan. It's Daedalian back on the convo once again.

And joining me in the studio today is A'me McGill-Austin and Cassidy Brown, two folks that help keep a whole lot of moving parts running behind the scenes for the annual Michigan Nordic Fire Festival. It's a celebration of winter fire, family and fun. Welcome.

Thank you.

Please take a moment to introduce yourselves, explain what it is you do as a part of the Nordic Fire Festival and tell us how long you've been doing it.

So I'm A'me. I've been on the board for seven years, but I've been involved for eight years.

I started out as a volunteer and then I got sucked into a meeting with some ideas and I have been there ever since. I work with the kids events initially, but then went to volunteer coordinating.

I now also do all of our merchandise ordering, planning, and I took over doing sponsorships for the first time this year and so I do a little bit of marketing and then for all our meetings, I kind of the secretary for everything too.

Cassidy.

I have been with the festival. Now this will be my third year, second year on the board. I am our head of the Mead hall.

So I do all of our back end mead hall ordering and flavor profiling, make sure we have a good mix. I book and run all of the outdoor entertainment as well as MCU festival weekend flavor profiling.

So does that mean you taste test?

Yes.

You do research and development.

I'm head of research and development for the Mead Hall.

Fair enough. Sometimes when I get into these interviews, I forget to talk immediately about the when and where. So let's get that right off the bat.

Tell us when and where is this year's Nordic Fire Festival.

So every year, the final Friday in February, we start for that weekend. So this year it is the 27th through March 1st.

2015. They started up and they were trying to get an idea if and when they wanted to do this festival.

The origin story, which I find very interesting, is a gentleman that worked for the city was asked, hey, do you have something that's family friendly in the middle of winter? So he hires a research company who does some research. They find that there's this fire Festival and maybe we would want to look into it.

So someone had mentioned there's this big Viking guy at the Frontier Days. You should get with him. A couple of weeks later, the big Viking guy shows up at the city manager's office saying, I hear you looking for me.

And that's where it started. Those three got together and they created that very first event. It was free because we weren't sure how it was going to go.

And it brought in probably about a thousand people, I believe they said. And then each year we've grown probably 10 to 14% every year. And last year was almost around 20, 20,000 people for the weekend.

That is huge.

It's gotten very large.

And when you said big Viking guy, I will say that when I first heard about this, the very first thing that came to my brain was a big Viking guy.

So you get to be a Viking for the weekend.

So is that what I should expect? Like. Like, if you were to describe it to somebody who's never been to it, how would you describe it to them?

Fascinating. The people watching was amazing. I am not part of the Ren Fest or Viking world until I started doing this.

But I think shows like Game of Thrones became popular, Vikings became popular. And you could definitely see that influence. Or I could when I was joining, because the people that dress up in costumes.

Yeah.

Go all out and it's fantastic to see, but it's a very neutral atmosphere. You can dress up. You don't have to dress up. There's a lot of people that don't. I don't. And you get to walk around. We have over 80 vendors.

You have the live music, you have the entertainment, you have the mead. There's something for everyone to do.

Okay. Would it be fair to say that the Renaissance Festival is similar to the vibe?

Similar vibe, but we are very Viking and Norse related, I guess.

More specific, I guess. Yeah. So when you say Game of Thrones, I don't think family friendly. What are we talking here Now?

I will admit I've never actually watched Game of Thrones, but the.

Not family friendly.

That's what I have heard. But just the way people dress up. So I have watched Vikings.

I had watched that and seeing the characters and how they dress up, the face paint, the furs, definitely more Vikings.

Coded than Game of Thrones. The dragons aspect, we see a lot of dragons and we've got everyone who is very traditional, handmade, true Viking style outfits too.

We had a gentleman last year who, he had my favorite outfit of the day. He was in pink chainmail Bright pink chainmail.

So we've got people who come from historically accurate side as well as the fantasy Dungeons and Dragons role playing side. And everyone gets to come together and meld and it's kind of putting their.

Own spin on it a little bit. Yeah. So definitely family friendly though. You can take the kids. Definitely take the kids there.

Saturday and Sunday for sure. For kids. Friday we open at 5, we're open to 11. At 7 o' clock we have a ship burning ceremony, which is fantastic to see.

For the kids though, Saturday and Sunday is your day. We have a kids quest that's inside the Cardell hall, so it is inside a heated building. So if you want to warm up, there's that too.

Then there is the Voyage of the Nine Realms, which is a D and D style quest that groups of four can do on Saturday as well. For kids events, we have princesses, so we have Elsa and Anna from Frozen. We have Merida, Merida from Brave.

And then we have a balloon guy that does dragon balloons or anything they want. We have birds of prey from the Eaton Rapids Rehab. They'll bring them in on Saturday. We also have face painting on Sunday for kids.

We have what we call the Serpent Slither. And we also have a pinata for them on Sunday.

Serpent slither. You're gonna have to like, you're gonna have to elaborate on that. What is that?

So a couple years ago, the theme was Sleipnir, the eight legged horse of Thor.

Okay.

We really wanted horses. We were not able to get horses. We had built a horse paddock just in case we could, but it never happened.

So it's like, what do we do with this paddock? So Jason, our grounds guy at the time, who also owns the Whistle Pig, which will be a food vendor there, he got 150 stick ponies.

150 stick ponies that we let the kids decorate. They could paint them and then they let them race them. Well, we had a lot of extra stick ponies and not enough kids. So the adults did.

Became hilarious. It was fantastic. It went over very well.

That's awesome.

And so we brought it back. Last year was Berserker Bear. So it was the bear scare. This year is the year of the Serpent. I can't pronounce his name. Jorgender. That one.

I was actually going to ask you about that. So I'm glad you elaborated on that. Yeah.

Yep. So the Serpent Slither is this year's theme version of the Stick Pony race.

Oh, very good, very good. You know, I think it's great that you guys are doing it the time of the year that you're doing it, because there's not as many festivals.

I always joke about the fact that, like, come summertime, especially in mid Michigan, I feel like I can't throw a microphone without hitting a festival. But I want to know, like, kind of what feels different about this festival.

Compared to most, other than the Michigan winter and the fun that it brings because the weather is always unpredictable. But it is the only fire festival that I'm aware of in mid Michigan. And that Viking theme, it's just, it's a lot of entertainment and all inclusive.

Everybody is welcome. And those that do come, I have not heard them say, oh, I'm never coming back again. They're like, oh, I can't wait till next year.

The first comments we get on our surveys is, when is next year? What is next year's theme? When can we do this?

So varying weather has got to be an issue some years. Have you guys had any years where like, there's just like mud all over the place or what?

We've had mud. I believe one of the nicknames in the early years at our initial location was, you know, we should rename it to Mudfest.

A few years ago we were able to go to the fairgrounds because we have grown so much and it's got a lot more space for us. We do everything possible known to man to try to prevent any mud and whatnot.

We put wood chips down, we have sand down and we try to keep up on it, but it's a never ending process.

We do our best to make sure that it's handled and taken care of.

We've got extra hands on deck this year after last year to make sure that we keep our grounds as clean and neat as possible and as safe as possible for everybody. Because that's our biggest concern is safety.

And that was definitely one of the things I was thinking about is safety. And of course, playing into that, really, volunteers become a part of kind of keeping that safety happening.

And any festival like this, you need a lot of volunteers to make it work, don't you?

Very much so.

So what do you think draws people to come out and help? Because I imagine you've got those repeat volunteers, right?

Most definitely.

Okay.

They will sign up and we try to get the word out.

I try to get it out between my workplace and then, you know, you follow us on Facebook and then I will tag everybody known to man on mine so I can grow my circle and then that he reaches everybody else's. Circle trying to get as many volunteers in. Most of my volunteers do come from over two hours away or out of state and love it.

But once they get to it, they'll sign up for a shift and then they end up having so much fun. They'll ask like, hey, what else do you need me to do? I can be back tomorrow.

I've had people just walk by the event and wanted to know what was going on and walk up and ask, is there something I can do to help? Which I love seeing that. But most of the volunteers are repeat. This year we did something new. I called them campus posters.

And one of our new committee, former volunteers, also joined the board, teaches at lcc and we put up campus posters and then I just put volunteers wanted with the QR code. So I have seen a lot of new volunteer signups come through and I'm very excited about that and hopefully they'll become regulars. Great.

I'm glad that technique worked for you.

Yes.

Do you feel like you've got like your fill of volunteers this year? Do you need.

Oh, no. We always. It's yeah. And you get a lot of people that will sign up, maybe not show up. You get some people that realize, wow, that's a lot of work.

They'll sign up for multiple shifts, but after that first one they're like, eh, I don't think I can keep doing that one. So there's a lot of time in the cold too. Yeah, it is. And all our tents are heated. We have fire stations everywhere.

The ship burning on Friday, you know, you set that long ship on fire and we keep that bonfire going all weekend.

Okay.

And so there is warming stations and the shifts are smaller. We have a volunteer kitchen, so we feed our volunteers very well. All those local businesses have donated all the food.

So they side street deli, Acapulco eat in place are three of the main ones. And they feed us and they do it at no charge, which is awesome because we are a nonprofit. We're not out to make money.

We just want to build an event, make it better. We take all the comments that people give back and we try to adhere to it, make it safer.

Each year ada accessible as much as we possibly can for Michigan.

Right. I want to put a pin on ship on fire. So we'll get right back to that.

But first I want to ask, since we're on the topic of volunteers, how can people get involved if they wanted to, like at this point?

At this point, you can go directly to our website, which is Michigan nordicfirefestival.com the homepage will have a button on the right. You can get your tickets on the left, and there's a button on the right to volunteer, and that will take you to a signup page.

There's several different opportunities and skill sets and levels that you can volunteer for. As a volunteer, not only did you get to work with the coolest people, but you get free tickets.

So last year, my marketing ploy was sign up for something before the event starts.

You get four free tickets for volunteering, plus some other swag items, and then you can enjoy the event all weekend for free because you earned your tickets.

I would say marketing incentive. Let's put a good spin on that, because that is. That's a great incentive setup.

The last two years has been stacked. Now I need to get all those other ones filled up. We have ticket handling. We have Axwell assistance. We have a range where we need volunteers.

We have what I call runners, essentially, is whatever needs to be done. Helping vendors, helping other people set up. There's lots of areas.

All right, what ship are you putting on fire? What's happening here?

So every year we have a long ship that is built, and part of the opening ceremony is they would bring it in and they set it on where the fire pit will be, and they have their ceremony. And we set that ship on fire Friday at 7pm so how big is this ship? This year is our longest ship ever, and it is almost 18ft.

Oh, wow.

Goodness. Before, it was always been between 12 to 14ft.

So that kind of just burns throughout the weekend, is what you're saying. Like it burns throughout the week. Is that how it works, or just that night?

But we have a bonfire going, so.

You managed to get rid of it in one night.

That's pretty much gone by the end.

Of the night for sure.

Fair enough.

This year, it will be a little bit different with the size of the ship being increased. Instead of actually carrying the ship through, it will be built up and displayed already in the fire pit.

We're still going to have our big processional, and we're going to have all of our Vikings out there to help light it and do this ceremony. But it'll just look a little different this year, and I'm very excited for these changes that are that are coming.

All right.

And I'm going to throw this one your way, Cassidy, because you've only been with it for what, three years now? Is that what you said? So was there a moment for you, maybe even a small one, where you did think that.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is why I do this. This is fun.

It was actually my very first shift that I ever volunteered is where I earned my nickname. Pyro Princess Pyro.

You like Sunfire?

It's.

No.

Who doesn't?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well.

And I come from a background where I was a cheerleading coach, and I'm very good at crowd control.

Okay.

So being able to be in the pit and have that feeling of being legitimately in the center of all of the chaos and all of the excitement and enjoyment of that large of a group of people, there's nothing like that feeling. Absolutely nothing. So that very first day, I was hooked.

Came back the next day for my shift that I had signed up through my employer at the time, at the ticket booth, met a couple more of the board members, got talking with A'me after festival, when I was completely done volunteering, and now I'm on the board for my second year.

Very cool.

There's just something about the atmosphere at the event. Everyone feels like they're allowed to just be themselves.

All right, so you've mentioned a couple of things here and there. So we've got axe throwing. We've got the ship burning. We've got the. What'd you call it?

The serpent Sliding serpent slither on Sunday.

So there's some of the events, things that take place, but I've seen quite a bit more. Can you give us a rundown of just, like, what somebody else might see? Like, for instance, I know. I also saw reenactments.

We have reenactments. We have encampments. So there's Viking culture, and you can learn about the history of them. They have battles, scheduled battles.

We have a large raid on Saturday, early afternoon, where our Viking groups, our reenactors, go against each other right there, just outside the fire pit ring. And that's amazing to watch, to see that there's nothing like that war cry that you hear from those groups.

See, in this case, I kind of picture more of a Braveheart thing. Of course, there is the TV show Vikings, too, but all sorts of stuff.

A combination of all of those things.

You never know what you're gonna get when you walk around a corner, who you're gonna see, what you're gonna run into, what exciting thing is gonna pop up next.

So has there ever been anything that totally surprised you, like, out of all these different things that you do where you weren't really sure people were gonna gravitate towards it, too, and it ended up working out?

That would be the serpent slither this year where that horse, pony stick, pony race turned into so much fun and excitement and stuck because the other committee members are like, you want to do what? And he's like, I want to get ponies. I want to race them. And he's just a very animated emcee. And it was hilarious.

And the adults really got into it, and it was just a lot of fun. So that wasn't something anybody thought would come, you know, it was just like, hey, a time filler. What should we do?

And now we have that event every year since.

That's awesome. So how does, like, music, performance, food. How does this all turn this into a community experience instead of just another event?

So for the food aspect, I had mentioned that our community, with the sponsorships that I do, I want to have that partnership with our local community.

Once you leave the festival grounds, if you want to go downtown and check out the restaurants and the things that we have to offer, the community helps by sponsoring us. We work together. They feed our volunteers. Like I had mentioned, the entertainment aspect, that's all Ms. Cassidy, over here.

When it comes down to entertainment, I mean, we've got acts from all over.

We have acts coming in from out of state that are musical acts for our Mead hall stage that will bring their own following as well as having the chance to introduce them to people who may not have heard them before. We definitely upped our outdoor entertainment this year. That stage is fully booked from open to close every single day.

Give us a rundown of some of your favorites there.

Oh, some of my favorites. So this year we've got two returning acts for the stage. I actually brought in quite a few new acts this year.

Okay.

And I'm very excited. So we have Drew, a drummer returning. He not only works with us, but he does go to Murph, the Michigan Renaissance Festival.

So he's definitely known in that community. And then we have Velkan Vassar. He's coming back. He's one of our dancers. He's super cool.

We also have a new fire act who does bubbles that are fire and like fire jump rope. Thanks to A'me, she got me in contact with her. I've got a musician named Magpie Swallows.

She is going to bring up some Nordic instruments that you can actually hands on touch. I'm really trying to get the outside entertainment to be more immersive, to have more lane work.

So that way when you're walking around, you feel like you're truly immersed in that era and in just the community that we feel being a part of the festival.

Did I read correctly? Do you have Plethora there, too?

Yes, we do. Yes, we have Plethora.

They're on the indoors stage in the Mead Hall.

All right, so we've actually had an interview with Plethora and the druid drummer on a different podcast now. I'll make sure I have that in the links just in case anybody wants to hear that.

Now, if somebody only had time to see just one of those acts, which one would you tell them to come see?

Oh, goodness gracious. I actually don't get to spend a whole lot of time in the Mead Hall.

That's unfortunate.

I know I'm busy. I'm seeing the drums.

I get it.

I get it.

I gotta emcee the outdoor stage, so I don't get to see those acts. So I can't pick a favorite.

Pictus is a huge draw.

Pictus is a huge draw. And then I believe Hexan is our. Hexan is a new band this year that our other chair for entertainment is very excited about.

My favorite act for my stage, one of my favorites is Ring of Steel. They are big fire act at the end of the night for Friday night and Saturday night.

They do sword fights and fire whips and I'm talking on fire swords during their fights. It's amazing to see the way they choreograph and work together is amazing.

I was lucky last year that they let me kind of emcee some of their fights, so I got to be in on that act with them. So I might be a little biased as being able to be a part of that with them.

It's okay to be biased.

They let me play. They let me play for a couple hours at the end of the night with them, and it's great.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you both for coming in and joining me here on the Combo.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks for having us. Yeah.

I'd like to also say thanks to Sarah Pierce from 517 Living for her assistance with this episode. To find out about Mid Michigan events or list your own event, you can find it at 517living.com.

This Once again, the Michigan Nordic Fire Festival.Taking place February 27th through March 1st. The event's going to be at the Eaton County Fairgrounds in Charlotte. You can find out all the details at Michigan nordic fire festival.com.

Youm've been listening to Community Convos, a program from lcc. Connect with conversations about what's happening in our community.

To listen to this episode on Demand, Visit us@lccconnect.org or find us on your favorite podcast platform. If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on Community combos, email us lcc connectcc.edu and thanks for joining the convo.