In Galicia there is a town that every summer recreates a Viking landing with ‘drakkars’. And it makes perfect sense

If you want to experience a Viking landing in your flesh, a historical representation that includes longships like those used by Nordic people in the 9th century to sail the seas, warriors with axes and medieval fortresses, you don’t need to travel to Scandinavia. In Catoira, a Galician town of just over 3,000 inhabitants, they celebrate every summer a pilgrimage that for a few hours turns the Ría de Arousa into the scene of an epic battle.

The most interesting thing is its background: it is not a whimsical festival, but rather a tribute to the role that the town played centuries ago in the defense of Galicia.

Vikings in Galicia? When you think of Vikings, the first thing that comes to mind is Scandinavia and the Nordic navigators who centuries ago, between the 8th and 11th AD, dedicated themselves to sailing, trading and plundering across Europe.

However, every summer Catoira, a small town in the province of Pontevedra, celebrates a pilgrimage focused precisely on the Vikings. It has been doing so for more than six decades and with such success that its celebration has achieved the seal of international tourist interest and, in just one week, attracts more than 100,000 people. Not bad if we take into account that in the town they live 3,300.

An old connection. Catoira celebrating a Viking party makes all the sense in the world. The town may be more than 2,000 kilometers from Norway, but centuries ago it played a crucial role in repelling raids by the normative pirates (also Saracens) who came to Galician lands in search of loot and, above all, an easy access route to Santiago de Compostela.

To understand it, you must first understand the strategic geographical role of Catoira, a town located at the inland end of the Arousa estuary, near the mouth of the Ulla. If the pirates wanted to reach Santiago, where the 9th century The tomb of Saint James the Greater was located, it offered them an ideal access door.

“The key and seal of Galicia”. The local rulers soon understood the role that the Catoira area played and that is why they fortified it with the West Towersa medieval defensive system located at the head of the estuary. Today we preserve two of the seven original towers that between the 9th and 10th centuries They allowed the locals to stand up to Norman raids.

“The Vikings who arrived in Galicia in the 9th and 10th centuries with the intention of plundering our lands encountered resistance from the troops of the Castellum Honestiwhich during that time prevented the Norman armies and Saracen pirates from ascending the river, to the point of this fortress being considered the ‘Key and seal of Galicia'”, remember the Catoira Town Hall.

A party… and a tribute. A few decades ago, in 1960the members of the Ateneo do Ullán decided to remember the heroic past of the town with an act that basically commemorated the landings in the lands of Ullá. As the City Council explains, it began as “a meeting of friends with cultural concerns”, a celebration without major pretensions.

Over time, however, the party gained strength. In 1965 a company took over the organization and during the next quarter of a century the pilgrimage continued to grow and increase its impact beyond Catoira, Pontevedra and even Galicia. It grew so much, in fact, that between the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s the City Council decided take charge of the organization. What had started as an improvised act gained the status of international holiday.

There are no Vikings without longships. Proof of how much the pilgrimage expanded (and of its vocation to continue doing so) is that the event incorporated several longshipsthe characteristic warships used by the Norse and Germanic tribes. In 1993, the first one was built, named ‘Torres de Oeste’, and over time two others were added: ‘Frederikssund’ and ‘Ardglass-Catoira’.

These are not more or less approximate copies. To make the first, a group of expert Catoirense craftsmen traveled to Denmark, where they studied Viking boat-building methods and were inspired by the Skuldelev 5a longship found in Denmark. The ‘Frederikssund’ is also an adaptation of an authentic 11th century ship, the Gokstadlocated in Norway.

Ironies of history, today Catoira’s heroic past is celebrated with a pilgrimage in which the protagonists are the Vikings and in which (of course) there is no shortage of medieval markets, shows, seafood and red wine from Ulla.

Images | Council of Catoira, Spain tourism and Xunta de Galicia

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