JOEL ROSE, HOST:
The Battle of Hastings is as famous for the Brits as the American Revolution is for us. The artwork that depicts that battle of almost a millennium ago this week, the Bayeux Tapestry, has been displayed in the British Museum for the first time. And this weekend, the reenactment of that gruesome conquest is drawing big crowds. NPR's Henry Larson reports.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Look at the speed of these warriors. Give...
HENRY LARSON, BYLINE: Archers, armored infantry and mounted knights charge each other in gallant fashion, much like they did in the 11th century near England's southern coast.
CLIVE HART: I started off in the Saxon shield wall on the front line. I was promoted to the cavalry, as it were, and I've been riding in the Norman cavalry ever since.
LARSON: Clive Hart is a writer and a reenactor in the U.K. He was there this weekend on the fields of East Sussex.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: They gird their loins.
HART: Wearing chainmail or mail armor, riding with a shield and stabbing Saxons with a spear.
LARSON: The Norman Conquest transformed the Western world, replacing the Anglo-Saxon rulers of England with French ones, the Normans. Everything changed.
OLIVIA SWARTHOUT: Language, law, culture, everything.
LARSON: Olivia Swarthout is a medieval enthusiast in London. She runs the social media account Weird Medieval Guys.
SWARTHOUT: The old is completely, I would say, done away with, and the new is - it's very different. It's very French.
LARSON: The victory of Norman King William the Conqueror was memorialized forever in a 230-foot-long embroidery that would come to be known as the Bayeux Tapestry. For almost its entire life, it sat in France. But this year, the French government loaned it to the British Museum.
SWARTHOUT: There's a real sense that this is a once-in-a-lifetime event for people.
LARSON: Tapestry fever is sweeping the U.K., and the Hastings reenactors are reaping the rewards. English Heritage, which puts on the reenactment every year, says they haven't sold this many tickets in a decade.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LARSON: Medieval piping duo Myal Pyper welcome the crowds. But how does the battle go?
MARK GRIFFIN: The Normans come up the hill and start hitting the Saxons.
(BOOING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hey.
LARSON: Mark Griffin has been attending the event since 1985. He recorded the battle sounds you've been hearing.
GRIFFIN: Normans and Saxons look very similar. So as the Saxon line needs to start getting depleted, yes, a few people need to lie down on the ground. But a lot of them just say, right, I'm coming over, and you suddenly turn round and start fighting the person you have just been standing next to on the other side.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: The chief (ph) is down. I repeat, the chief...
LARSON: The battle goes poorly for the Saxons, as you'd expect. English King Harold is shot in the eye with an arrow, William the Conqueror rides away victorious, and a booing crowd starts packing up. But for those who care deeply, desperately about this history, the best moments happen on the outskirts, says horseman Clive Hart.
HART: There can be nothing modern in your field of vision, and all you can see in front of you is mail shirts jingling, shields tapping on wooden saddles, horses swishing their legs and snorting. And in that moment, you're in 1066 country, and you're marching off to battle.
LARSON: Both Hart, the cavalry reenactor, and Swarthout, the Bayeux tapestry enthusiast - they've spent large portions of their lives looking back at the past, willing it to take on some living form.
SWARTHOUT: Knowing that that was placed there almost 1,000 years ago by human hands, the hands of humans who had lived through it and experienced the fallout is - yeah, it's just incredible.
LARSON: And if they focus their gaze just right on the handwoven embroidery of the tapestry, or they listen for the chain mail jingling on the back of a horse, the history's alive. It's right there. You can reach out and touch it. Henry Larson, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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