NärCon 2019 report

I'm back from NärCon with sore feet and a tired body, but loads of happy memories.

NärCon is easiest described as a cosplay, gaming and creativitiy festival, and it's the biggest cosplay event in northern Europe. It is on the campus of Linköping University, and it being outside and spread out is the reason for my sore feet, I clocked around 30 km of walking on asphalt, cobblestones and stone floors over 2,5 days.

This is just an overview of the most central part of the campus. The weather decided to go with the hottest days of summer, with temperatures reaching 30+ in the middle of the days. There are worse heatwaves out there, but it was.

Anyway this is my day by day report:

Tom picked me up at 8 on Thursday. It felt strange but I had actually been able to pack and be finished early in the evening on Wednesday, no stressing last minute fixes to be done. We got down to Linköping, had lunch, checked in and managed to be at Närcon at around 2 pm, which is a new early record for us.  I left my bags in the Nordic Legions' changing rooms and then went to see Mathias and Ann-Sofie, they had driven down with their caravan the night before. With my excellent skills in orienteering I managed to go to the wrong camping and got an extra km or so in the sun. Then it was time for me and Ann-Sofie to suit up as Asterix and Obelix.

They were a big sucess! We couldn't move many meters until people came up and wanted to take photos with us and it was so much fun. The menhir worked fine, but for some metal thingies in the back of the metal frame. This first time they weren't too bad, but every time I wore it I felt more and or that they pressed into my back. I also had a bit of moustache problem. I had glued it on with mastix, but it fell off when I tried to drink or talk too much. It got better later, I'm guessing that I built up a layer of mastix on the moustache that made it easier and easier to stick. We walked around until about 11 pm and then it was back to the hotel for a shower and some sleep. Thankfully this year we were in an hotel with AC.

On Friday we arrived at NärCon at around 11 again. NärCon is a festival and goes on 24/7, but there isn't much activity before lunchtime.

Tom as Luigi on Thursday and Friday

The Nordic Legions decided that it was too hot to troop in the afternoon, and we were going to concentrate on the evening instead. So I changed into Melisandre and walked around in that costume. Unfortunately I got some blisters  from my sneakers, the same sneakers that had taken me through Medieval Week in Visby and Star Wars Celebration in Chicago without a problem, so now I started to get some sore feet.

Most of the Cosplay Dalarna gang with Harry Potter costumes on Friday

There was a Game of Thrones meet-up on Friday afternoon. There were some official photos taken at the meet up, but I only have one on my own phone.

William and his family had really great costumes.

After that Tom had told me that there was going to be something called "garbage" cosplay, I told some other people and we went there. Basically it was a competition where you made up teams, had 5 minutes to decide what you should do and then 35 minutes to build it out of a pile of rubbish that they had placed on the floor. It was a manic wrestle for the rubbish, but our team (which was basically a Cosplay Dalarna team) managed to grap two big rolls of bubble wrap as our main loot.

The result

Linus as "Deal with it Gandalf the White". The judges were impressed that I had managed to make two functional garments, bascially a classic chiton held together with pins made from cardboard and a square cloak, out of the bubble wrap, and that we had so many details (pipe, staff, brooch, sword, ring and tobacco pouch). Yes our team won the whole competition. Go Cosplay Dalarna (and Sergio)! This was probably my favorite event of the whole convention, also bcause it was so unexpected and spontaneous.

There was a Star Wars meet-up in the evening as well, and the Nordic Legions decided to join. We surprised everybody else, who apparently thought that the 501st and Rebel Legion is just all about being serious. They were so wrong. We showed our totally unstructured way of organizing photos, and then there were a bunch of photos and films done. The photographer has promised to post the photos from that in the coming days and I'm really looking forward to it. After that we led the whole bunch of Star Wars costumers in a parade all over the festival area, and it was really cool to be around 30 people, with me and the other officers first, followed by stormtroopers, our rebels and then all the other costumers which were mostly dark and light jedi. The timing was so right with it being dusk so that the lightsabres really showed, but still light enough that people could take good photos.

Admiral Daala leading her troops

Overall the Friday evening was just perfect, with a lot of pure fun cosplay events.

Saturday I woke with some really aching feet. I had slept with them high over the night but it was obvious that this was going to be a tough day. I did get some time to go around the Artists' Alley and I found two prints of Ola Art that I just had to buy, it was tough to choose though. He basically takes cheap paintings that he finds in fleamarkets and changes them and add some funny texts to them.

In the afternoon I was responsible for a presentation of the Nordic Legions. It was a simply presentation about who we are, and then we showcased our costumes and what they are made of, including stripping down a biker scout and a stormtrooper to their black undersuits. After 30 minutes we asked the audience to come down and talk with us directly and ask questions. There were actually quite a few in the audience so I was really pleased with it. Since this was about showing what we do behind the scenes we broke our own Nordic Legions' rule and had both our buckets off, I'm wearing my glasses and we had two of the same face character. The important thing was to show that we are humans and fans and that it's not an impossible goal to become a member.

In the evening I skipped parading with the legions, I simply wasn't sure how far I was going to be able to walk. Instead me and Ann-Sofie did another round of Asterix and Obelix, with a lot of breaks, but in the end my body simply said no. It was a combination of sore feet, the metal thingies from the menhir into the back and the heat. The Obelix trousers are really comfy, but then I wear a big foam belt and a fur vest over them, and the menhir is made out of isolation material that reflects heat. When I took the belt off I could wringe out the trousers underneath. So I packed up my stuff and went civil. We met up with Tom and then it was a slow walk, due to talking with people not due to pain, until we left the area at around midnight.

On Sunday we simply had breakfast and got into the car and drove home. It was even hotter on Sunday than on Saturday, and the AC in the car can't handle those temperatures, so we had to take a lot of breaks just to get some air into the car. Still I was home at around 4 pm, which is the earliest that I've been home from NärCon, and it is nice to come home early in the evening from a con.

On the way back I also come up with a new project for next year's NärCon, with a focus on comfortable shoes and cool clothes, we will see what happens.

And finally here are some other cosplayers that I met and took photos of