A Midsummer Reflection from Artemis Archery

It has become something of a tradition during Medieval Week in Visby to leave one’s modern self behind and don an alter ego for a while. Some become knights, others jesters, a few wander the streets as sleepy monks or cheerful merchants with more tales than coins. And someone – perhaps you – might become an archer from another time.

I, myself, met my medieval persona many years ago among the cobbled alleys of Gotland. He did not arrive with trumpets or banners, but rather like a whisper. His name: Oliver af Nettesheim.

When Oliver first set foot on Gotland’s pale limestone shore in the year 1361, he was in his thirties – which, in medieval terms, placed him perilously close to wisdom. He was no local, nor entirely foreign. A traveller, a seeker, a lifelong apprentice in the great academy of archery. He had wandered from Ottoman heights to Mongolian plains, witnessed the silent ceremony of Japanese yumi, and seen English longbows rain over muddy battlefields.

He did not come to Visby to fight.

He came to understand.

The name Nettesheim is borrowed from the occult philosopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim – a name that carries with it the scent of shadows, books, and the quiet smile of someone who knows more than he lets on. For that is precisely Oliver: an archer who observes more than he triumphs. He does not compete to win. He draws to learn. About the wind, the body, the world – and most of all, himself.

He carries his bow as others carry books. A tool for insight. A way of reading the world, line by line. An arrow is never just an arrow – it is a question asked of reality. And the bowstring replies, if one listens closely.

“But who is he, really?” someone might ask. “We’re not entirely sure,” I reply. “And that’s rather the point.”

Oliver af Nettesheim prefers to shoot in twilight. When the day begins to retreat and the world feels like a half-open eye. There he stands – sometimes in cloak, sometimes bareheaded – with a quiet hand and a sharpened gaze. His arrows are strange; some fletched in red, black, and gold – a symbolism none quite understands, though it is said to speak with the stars.

He is a shadow-walker. An archer not of battle, but of comprehension. An echo from another age. Or perhaps a whisper from the future.

And so, as Midsummer wraps its warm arms around the land – with flower crowns, buzzing mosquitoes, pickled herring, and a sun that never fully sets – we, in the name of Oliver and the spirit of archery, send greetings to all of you out there who hold bows, arrows, visions, or dreams:

Happy Midsummer, fellow archers.
Shoot softly. Learn deeply. Let the wind speak.

/ Artemis Archery
and Oliver af Nettesheim (somewhere in the shade behind a tent in Visby)