Just to put the record straight, I feel that sitting in a tent, something I am happy to do when I am camping with my with my family is as valid a learning experience as wild camping with a couple of Dutch blankets, a knife, a tarp and a tin (SS) pot, which I do when I am on my own. Neither is more authentic then the other. Why?, I have the option to end my ‘learning experience’ whenever I chose.
@Dogwood My ancestors came across to England long long ago, and within 800 years owned about 33,000 hectares, three forests, a couple of cities, a few towns and controlled most of Lancashire, along with Buckinghamshire and Yorkshire, in their time they have sent Owen Glendower, packing with a bloody nose, fought alongside Henry V at Agincourt. Does that make me any more an authority, on well, anything. My family have also been dirt poor, and were shipped both to the colonies of the new world and to Australia.
I studied history, both of king and queens, and the poor of the industrial revolution and it has left me in no doubt that apart from a few people who were driven, few people wanted to suffer the privations of life you seem to worship, they may have found it necessary, or just accepted it as part of their lot, but few, if any, would choose to live full time the life you appear to seek.
Viking like the druids is a re-visionist word, coming back into use mid 18th century. It’s root is the Old Norse word vikingr, "person who came from the fjords” from the old English word ‘wizin’ or temporary camp. The person who came a raiding were called Deniscan “the Danes”
