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Have you met Lars Lunde?

Whether sculpting, designing, painting, building, or capturing on film, he’s been involved in some aspect of faire since the mid-80s. Known throughout the world as the founder of several groups, he worked with friends to organize the first in response to a local issue for specific reasons. Preferring to make it happen rather than be well known, few recognize him unless introduced, so let me introduce you to Lars Lunde of Lundegaard Armoury.

Background

Creating seems to be the primary force behind everything Lars does. Whether casting a custom hilt for a customer; designing and building a gypsy wagon for a merchant; or preparing a site for opening cannon, he gets great satisfaction in helping generate the ambiance of the place we all call our home away from home. With a background in theatrical design and production, including a BFA from The School for Visual Arts in New York, he’s got all the skills needed for a variety of jobs both at faire and in the “real” world.

The northeast Tri-State region (comprised of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) is home to 44-year-old Lars and Snipe, his fiancé. Living in the area gives him access to the New York City commercial production environment. He worked in the film industry through 1994 when Lundegaard Armoury began to consume all his time.

Faire History

In 1977, Lars attended his first faire with his parents, a trip to New York Renaissance Faire, as a family outing “before we couldn’t stand being around each other,” he quipped. Having always enjoyed fantasy and science fiction stories, he enjoyed it immensely, even convincing his Mom to make him a cloak to wear. He continued going every year and, in 1986 after graduating college, he went right to work for the faire in a technical role. He started in the paint shop, doing backstage technical theatre tasks. Through the years with the Faire, he worked most of the backstage jobs, including set designing, videography, production photography, sign painting, and graphic painting.

Always fascinated by physical conflict resolution, Lars enjoyed the fight scenes and became friends with a number of the actors. When combat stage classes were scheduled, he attended with his friends, learning from instructors with the Society of American Fight Directors. The classes used theatrical swords, which tend to be very plain, and Lars felt there was something missing. Always an artist at heart, he began sculpting hilts to come up with something both functional and beautiful. He took the resulting design, had it cast in bronze, and then added the blade to create a sword he was proud to use.

Others saw what he had created and asked for their own. He made several custom pieces and decided to set up a booth at the NYRF in 1989. He continued to use a commercial foundry to cast the pieces until 1992 when he used funds from multiple sources to purchase the foundry equipment needed to make Lundegaard Armoury self-sufficient. The work was easy, he told me, in a “very time consuming, laborious, expensive, eat-up-your-time kind of way.” The Armoury took on a life of its own, with mail order, catalogs, road shows, open houses, booths at New York Renaissance Faire, Carolina Renaissance Festival, New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom, and some of the Florida faires. At one point, he was producing forty-five different kinds of weapons—12 daggers, 13 rapiers, and 14 broadswords—in a variety of interesting designs and all of those items were available with customization via the website.

It was sword sales at Faire that prompted the creation of the Renaissance Mercenaries Guild. Faire management was considering cancelling the contracts of merchants who sold weapons because patrons were purchasing blades and acting irresponsibly. To combat the problem, Lars and fellow sword makers Zak of Starfire Swords and Dan Watson of Angel Swords decided they needed to begin educating people about “the proper etiquette of carrying a weapon and deporting yourself with decorum.” They come up with a plan to create a Guild that would consist of a group of lifetime members who knew how to behave and who’s goal was to help others learn the same things. Lars created the pin, card, and an affidavit each new member is required to sign agreeing to behave in a manner in accord with the faires’ guidelines, uphold the laws, and generally behave in a responsible manner. It is the only Guild Lars is a member of and has the lowest membership and least management issues. Lars feels that the strict guidelines for membership have led to those statistics. The role of the RenMercs’ Guild has grown at faires since that time, becoming almost a service agency on the faire circuit and, depending on the faires’ wishes, has helped with crowd control, assisted in finding lost children, and acted as escorts for people who are lost or sick.

Different groups have approached Lars through the years, looking for a way to share the camaraderie that exists in the RenMercs’ Guild. They saw the group having fun and doing something more than just walking around at faire. Out of those discussions, eight additional Guilds were founded, one for practically every faire persona out there. Membership to the appropriate Guild is open to everyone and quite a few people are members of multiple Guilds. Information about the various Guilds and membership requirements are available on the Lundegaard Armoury website. Like the RenMercs, many of the other Guilds go out of their way to assist at faire and in private charity work. Fundraisers for breast cancer research are common activities of the members of the International Wenches Guild.

In addition to the Armoury and the Guilds, Lars runs MidKnight Construction Company, a sub-division of Lundegaard Productions. He and his crew build post and beam structures for merchants at Renaissance faires. The evening I spoke with him, they were working steadily to finish constructing and/or repairing eighteen buildings at the New York Renaissance Festival. He was on his way home where he would resume construction on a gypsy vardo (wagon) for another merchant. That wagon, designed to be street legal, will be the merchant’s booth at venues throughout the northeast.

Current

Lars found, a couple of years ago, that working the foundry had become a job based around someone else’s schedule. No longer having fun with it, he decided to take a break from the Armoury for a time, removing all weaponry from the website and leaving only the Guild pins. He has been doing some film work, mainly production design and writing. He and Snipe bought a home, one with plenty of room for his armoury and her blacksmith stuff. They’re still in the process of getting it all set up and hope, in the future, to invite people to come over and be creative. He likes being in a creative environment and bouncing ideas off other people. “I want to create a barbaric, Andy Warhol type environment where people can drink lots of coffee, play lots of loud music, and make things that amuse us.”

Balance is the main thing Lars is seeking these days. Returning to doing the foundry work when it’s fun and he has time to be creative, limiting the number of offerings to one of a kind items, and collaborating with friends who enjoy blade work, are all steps toward that goal. He thinks by Fall, he’ll be ready to offer some of his interesting “weird” things. He still has the booth at the New York Renaissance Faire and is ready for the season to begin.

Faire is a job for him, one that he loves, but it is not recreation. Lars told me that he prefers being involved in making it happen rather than watching all day. Just sitting while his friends and family bring the show to the people just makes him feel like he is not doing his part. He finds great satisfaction in the overall production and misses running his own show, the Stockwood Renaissance Faire. “Management positions at Renaissance faires are hard to come by,” Lars told me, “but I’d like to get back in to managing a show.”

Final Thoughts

The Renaissance world is a huge industry brought to us by a community of hard working individuals making their livelihood by creating something that is truly unique. The heart and soul of the faire is the people who put on their costumes and come out to welcome us to the kinder gentler world they strive to create. Lars felt strongly that no one who helps create the safe havens we call “home away from home” should ever feel embarrassed about what they do for a living. “We’re out there giving people an alternative to the real world. These days, we need something less sharp than the real world, even if it’s just for the weekend.” The comfort zones that he, his friends, and family help build in the shires allow us to relax our minds, see a show, and maybe reach out to someone. It’s hard to meet real people these days and faires are a safe haven of like-minded friends waiting to be met.

Websites of Lars Lunde

Lars on MySpace
Lundegaard Armoury
Lars’ photos on Picasa

MidKnight Construction

July 29th, 2008 Posted by Escarlata | Have You Met? | 3 comments