In bid to relive Belgian glory, 9-to-5 workers go medieval on weekends
AARSCHOT, Belgium -- During the week, Ivonne Janssens, 57, is a hospital cleaner. But come the weekend, she climbs the narrow steps of a three-story medieval tower and turns into a 14th-century duchess with a faux-emerald necklace, a linen headdress, a leather satchel full of fake gold coins, and a retinue of mercenaries to fend off invading French knights.
Her husband, Daniel Grandjean, a 50-year-old furniture maker with a pot belly and bushy beard, becomes an ax-wielding soldier for hire. It was he who persuaded the council in this quiet Flemish town to let the couple live part time in the 700-year-old Sint-Rochus tower, where guards once stood watch to prevent Aarschot, then built of wood and straw, from catching fire. When not inhabiting the tower, the spouses sleep in a medieval-replica bed at home.
They avoid eating tomatoes or drinking coffee because Columbus had yet to discover America in the Middle Ages and such foods were not available in what was to become Belgium.
"I feel proud to be a duchess," Janssens says from the top of the tower, which is decorated with animal-skin rugs and swords. "If I had the money, I would pretend to live in those times all day long. This was a glorious period in the history of Belgium."
Across this country of 10 million, a growing number of Belgians are trading in their jeans for suits of armor. They are rubbing stones together to make fire, eating their dinners out of cauldrons, reenacting heroic battles, and participating in mock hangings.
Janssens, leader of a group of medieval enthusiasts that calls itself the Order of the Hagelanders, says dozens of similar groups have sprouted up in the last two years. "We have doctors and lawyers, people from all walks of life," she says. "It has become a national passion."
Although the dates are disputed, many medieval scholars say the Middle Ages began in 476, with the fall of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustus, and ended in 1453, with the taking of Constantinople by the Turkish sultan Mahomet II. Such is the devotion to the period that, in recent years, juvenile delinquents in Flanders have been freed and allowed to atone for their misdeeds by making a 2,000-mile pilgrimage on foot to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, carrying backpacks, and accompanied by a guard.
Herman Konings, a Belgian behavioral psychologist who studies national trends, attributes the medieval craze to excessive nostalgia for a more glorious past. The fad has emerged at a time when the country, divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, is experiencing deep anxiety about its identity. Konings argues that little Belgium, better known for its beer than its heroic past, is fed up with being the laughingstock of Europe.
This, he says, is prompting Belgians to hark back to a period when Bruges and Antwerp were trading centers that surpassed Paris and London, and Flemish "primitive" painters like Jan Van Eyck were the envy of the world.
"Throughout our history, we have been attacked by everyone, from the Romans to the Vikings to the Dutch," he said, explaining that Belgians are tired of being picked on. "The late Middle Ages was a time when we were mastering the world. So at a time of national doubt, they provide a great escape as well as a sense of security."
For Pol Malfait, an affable 53-year-old postal clerk from Ghent, the Middle Ages is not just a historical era but a state of mind. Each weekend he becomes De Nevelaar, a 14th-century Flemish soldier who fought for the king of England against the French during the Hundred Years War and then became a full-time plunderer. His wife, Jeanne, a secretary, becomes a peasant woman.
"When I am a medieval plunderer, I can do what I want and I love the freedom," he says, showing off the chain-metal outfit he puts on before setting out on fictional rampages. "You can be in big trouble if both you and your partner aren't into being medieval," he adds. "My wife doesn't mind if I dress up in medieval clothes at home."
Not everyone here has embraced the medieval trend.
Eduard Van Ermen, a professor of medieval history at the University of Leuven -- who confesses he once pretended to be Emperor Maximilian I -- argues that Belgians who idealize the medieval period are underestimating its challenges. These, he says, include an average life span of 40 years, the Black Plague, potato famines, torture for minor transgressions, and the constant threat of wars.
Walter Luyten, 72, a retired senator and Flemish nationalist, says it is high time Belgians moved on from the past and looked toward the future.
"There is a certain insecurity in Flanders and we need to get over it," he says. "Belgians can dress up if they like -- they can dress up as medieval people or as Elvis or cowboys. But I, for one, would rather live in the here and now."
