I’m about a half-inch sunken into the mud, my shoes are ruined, I’ve been rained on sporadically throughout the night, and I’ve convinced myself that mosquitoes don’t exist as I take a big swig of something powerful from my cup and dance among the massive flames with another group of horn- and leather-clad friends just arriving. I’m surrounded by people who have come to bear these elements in true viking fashion—damn the rain, and let us conquer the night with fire and decibels.
Ragnarok V: Ragnarok and Awe was a behemoth of a party and unlike any other I’ve ever attended in the Houston area. Held at Texas Crab Hash Campground, this was no club scene or familiar stand-by. Party-goers were greeted by a proper drink tent that touted 12 kegs of beer, 60 gallons of liquor and a massive shot block to kick things off, and later on, catered barbecue. The dance area in front of the DJ stage was spacious enough for all manner of rambunctious dancing, pyrotechnics, costumes and antics, framed by a dazzling show of lasers that danced above and into the crowd, touching the trees that separated the campsite from the lake. At the back of the area was a massive bonfire. And how does a bonfire get started in wet conditions? With a flamethrower, of course. It’s the only appropriate way to introduce an ice-giant battle that gives way to a whoever-wants-to-join battle royale, and then anything-goes viking debauchery.
Ragnarok, the series of Norse mythological tales, details the fates of the gods—many of whom are struck down for good—along with all manner of natural disaster, including flood submersing the world, only for it to awaken renewed and rejuvenated. It’s then that the surviving and returning gods meet, and the world is repopulated by the humans, Lift and Lifthrasir.
It’s my first Ragnarok rager, but in talking to the crowd, I realize that this isn’t just a big ass party. It’s a thing. It’s a real thing that the people who make it happen work really hard for, and that the people who show up look forward to all year.
Though there was thankfully no flood or disaster, the party runs along parallel paths to the Norse Ragnarok. Through the fire, rain, exuberant dancing, hard partying and camping out, those that “survive” each party return to meet again for the next, bringing new friends to repopulate the crowd, making it become more massive each time.
“It started when I was having my 22nd birthday and I didn’t do anything for my 21st; I was on orders with the Army,” said Mike Hateberg, head viking and founder of Ragnarok. “And I’m thinking like … hey, let’s have a big bonfire and drink some beer, and we’ll have a whole roasted pig, too! So we did, and it was just about 20 people outside of an old bombed out, ruined house near Alvin, Texas. It was a shit show and was more like just a regular party than the monstrous production it is now.”
This year, hundreds of people showed up, most in full viking dress. But why vikings in the first place?
“I had gotten a viking beanie for Christmas a couple months prior to the first one. It fit with the drinking, roasted pig and bonfire idea, so why not?” Hateberg said.
“Every year, something gets added and we try to get more aggressive with our advertising. So the second year we kept the pig, tripled the pallet count [for the bonfire] and we actually advertised to all of my friends,” Hateberg continued. “The third year is when we REALLY started to become the production you see now. I was in a position to take LMTVs (big, armored Army trucks) out on road tests, which allowed me to gather pallets from all over Ellington field and just build a stupidly big fire. The flames were nearly 100 feet tall.”
The music, like the bonfire, quickly grew to feed the hunger of hundreds of dancing vikings. “One of my best friends, Joe Ullo [Proto-J], had been working towards becoming a DJ and he played the show, and John Dickson, his friend, brought out the lasers,” said Hateberg. “So we all the sudden had a rave that went along with Ragnarok.”
This year’s lineup under the lasers featured 2t0ne and DJ Ambition getting the energy up before the bonfire lighting; our own DJ Mitch Fu spinning some theatrical drama for the bonfire lighting and then breaking out into a hardstyle and hard electro set to kick off the battles across the field; Proto-J got all the asses clapping with a high-energy, rare trap set; our own DJ Matthew Dunn fueled the energy with a bit of a mystical feel into the night; and Ju$trich finished off the night with a hard DnB set, fitting the mood of full viking drunken rage.
“Last year we added a flamethrower, which has been the most notable addition, the one everyone talks about. That was another in a line of overly ridiculous ways that we’ve lit the bonfire,” Hateberg said. “We’ve done an Olympic torch kind of run through the party, we’ve stuffed the bonfire with Thermite, and we’ve used the flamethrower twice now…because it’s really just that cool.”
“This year, we created the ice giant battle,” Hateberg said. And no shit, it was really someone on stilts battling Hateberg’s giant hammer. “I saw Marvel Universe Live last year and they had a Hulk costume that was huge. I thought, ‘Holy shit, we can do that, bigger and better.’ Actually, we didn’t do it better,” Hateberg admits, “But we definitely did it bigger, which is kind of the more badass version of better.”
So what’s in the future for the growing phenom known as Ragnarok? “We want to eventually turn it into a massive multiday festival,” said Hateberg. “Possibly turn it into Houston’s own Burning Man.”
No, Mike. There are no men here. Only the mighty viking gods.
Ash Cash Dillon is a legit word nerd with a killer bass face and a love of all that is stone cold groovy. You can find her writing all over the interwebs, business world, and take-out menus via sharpie vandalism.
