Knightly Castle international festival in Vyborg

"Knightly Castle. The Reconstruction of the Middle Ages" 7th international festival opens in the town of Vyborg (the Leningrad region) on Thursday.

Participants in the festival from Russia, Belarus and the Baltic states, will set up an encampment by the Vyborg castle (a member of the Baltic Castles Association), Svetlana Abdullina, the director of the Vyborg Museum of Local Lore, told RIA Novosti. They will bring medieval dresses and armour.

The participants will try to recreate both military and peaceful life in the Middle Ages. Young people will compete in mounted and foot tournaments and participate in the siege and storm of the Vyborg castle (the dramatisation of historic events in 1411). After that, knights will turn into craftsmen and arrange medieval arms, shoe and crockery shops in the Vyborg castle.

A scientific seminar on the problems of historic reconstruction will be held as part of the festival. The festival will end with a ceremonial procession of all the participants along Vyborg streets and squares.

The Vyborg castle was built in 1293 on a small island in a narrow strait, linking the western branch of the Vuoksa River and the Vyborg Bay of the Baltic Sea. These lands belonged to Sweden (till 1710, when Russia defeated Sweden in the Northern War), and the castle was considered the most impregnable in Scandinavia. The castle was often reconstructed during 700 years of its existence (for the last time in 1891). Nowadays, this is the only medieval castle in Russia, which hosts the Vyborg Museum of Local Lore and the Museum of Underwater Archaeology.