In the beginning

The society was founded in 1971 in London.  The exact details of that have become somewhat murky with age, as the number of people who were involved at the beginning was very small and many of those are no longer with us.  From the few who are, there are a number of competing versions of the story which don't always align, and so the task of presenting a coherent history is not a simple one.  What follows is an amalgam of all of them, trying to stick to the bits on which all (or most) agree.

Our story starts in a militaria shop in London, owned by Chris Farlowe.  Chris had a successful music career, including a number 1 single with 'Out of Time' in 1966 which was originally written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for the Rolling Stones, and produced by Mick Jagger.

Chris collected militaria as a hobby, and set up the shop in Camden Passage under the name Call To Arms.  Clearly Chris still had a lot of commitments in the music business, and so he employed a manager to run the shop for him.  The manager was Pete Seymour.  Both Chris and Pete spent time touring in Germany, which gave ample opportunities to collect original uniforms and other militaria.  One of their regular customers was Alan Jeffrey, who became a founder member of the society with Pete.

In 1964, a film called "It Happened Here" was made which explored what the UK would have looked like had Germany successfully invaded in 1940, and for which Chris provided many of the uniforms and props.  Based on experiences in this, further film work seemed an attractive way to meet like-minded people and earn some money to pay for more collectibles, and so a few years later a club was formed to act out experiences and to train further recruits.  However, further opportunities proved limited, and in an attempt to broaden the potential appeal, a decision was made to also cover the Viking period, and thus the Norse Film and Pageant Society was born.

With numbers initially under 20, public events were small scale or involved working with other newly-formed re-enactment groups covering the medieval period such as the Arkley Knights, and including another Viking group in Durham which had formed independently.  For the first few years, this new society staged 4-6 events per year, including at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in 1973.  A small collection of photos of this event survive in the archives, while a splendid piece of BBC film shows the event at Tonbridge castle in 1975 where Vikings and Knights fought each other for possession of the castle.  Among the early members seen on screen are Pete Seymour, Gerry East, John Ham, and a very young Chris Franklin.

After a parting of the ways in 1975, some of the founder members established the Odin Guard, leaving Gerry East to run the society.  Gerry set about expanding membership considerably, and groups sprang up in several places over the latter years of the 1970s, including Blackpool, Norwich, Troon/Glasgow, Bristol and Birmingham.

The celebrations to mark the Manx Millennium in 1979 provided an opportunity for the society to travel to the island to take part in both the Tynwald ceremonies and a battle on the beach at Peel alongside the locals who had been staging their own Viking displays since 1961.