A colorful noise sounds with the ears of Guillaume the Conqueror, which rests in the abbey to men, in downtown Caen (Calvados). Tributes, too, rendered by some of the 36,000 participants in the student carnival, the biggest event of its kind in Europe, for a record edition this Thursday, April 3. “We saw the show of the inauguration of the millennium of Caen”, on March 20, at the castle, smile Flavien, Mathieu and Johan, dressed as a knight. “This millennium, it must be celebrated. We prepared for it in a hurry but on the theme Guillaume the Conqueror. »»
Many visitors to the castle on March 20, had cited carnival as the next major upcoming event. However, the latter, however, has only partially returned the elevator. The promise of tanks on the theme of 1,000 years of Caen was held. But the linked costumes were a little rarer. In the midst of the essential superheroes, pirates, video game characters, sharks and other scooby-doo, some were still keen to celebrate the medieval identity of their city. “We are from here, this is the story of our city, its culture,” support Flavien and his friends, second year students in college.
In a street parallel to our preux knights in armor, students in history vary the statutes of the time. “A partner of pieces, a deer in the service of his lord, and the king”, respectively embodied by Moses, Malo and Raphaël. A “coordinated” inspiration that echoes their presence at the spectacle of the castle, 15 days ago: “When you think of Caen, you think of the castle. Our costumes are linked to our studies and the millennium. All the outfits immerse a little in the millennial atmosphere! »»
In tribute to Rollon
The Norman origins (in the Scandinavian sense) of Caen are not forgotten. Two years after the celebration of another millennium where they had worked in summer work, that of the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, friends in third year at the university took an assumed party: all in Vikings and more particularly “in tribute to Rollon, the first Viking leader to have been accepted on French soil and baptized”, in 912. Graving Normandy in Rollon, with the end of the Vikings incursions.
In the eyes of the students, “the medieval side of Caen was a little forgotten. We have been interested in it and we had planned this costume for a while, and the millennium has still inspired us. ” One of them even slips to have drawn a possible vocation from becoming “historical cultural mediator”.
The organizers of the millennium, who want to make the link between the past of the city and its future, will have in any case been heard this Thursday: the knights and the Vikings communicated with the superheroes, the Smurfs and other penguins in a record atmosphere in the open air.