Birthdaytroop at Bari in Trondheim

We were asked to appear at a childrens birthdayparty.
The birthdayboy was nine and a huge Star Wars fan, and the whole birthday was Star Wars themed, with all the kids being dressed in jedi robes, with lightsabers, posters and cardboard standees, Clone Wars on a big-screen and Star Wars music on the speakers.

As I live only a few hundred metres away from the venue, I put on my suit at home and walked through the streets, with only a few people stopping to take pictures, this nice sunny sunday morning.

Our job was to enter the room, deliver a blaster as a gift to the birthdayboy, mingle a little bit, then go outside for a groupshot with all the kids and us four attending troopers, The weather was nice, the kids behaved as well as kids their age should and it was a sweet troop all in all.
The father of the boy was a chef and made burgers for the troopers afterwards.
A nice and short troop!

Troop at Toys'R'Us

Hasbro wanted  the presence of the Nordic Garrison at all (most) of the Toys'R'Us stores in the Nordic countries for the release of new toys to coincide with the release of The Phantom Menace 3D at the movies, and we were only happy to oblige!

So february 20. I took the buss with Aiwei up to the Toys'R'Us in Trondheim where we met up with the other troopers and entered the storage room which became our makeshift changingroom.

We trooped around the store for FOUR hours, with small breaks in between, both to eat and just take a breather.

We had a nice time and did some shenanigans, both amongst ourselves and the kids that were there.

This is what a trooperlunch looks like:

And here we see the rare occurrence of a trooper that has cast his shell, straight from behind the scenes in the seventies (or so it might seem):

Groupphotos!

Premiere of The Phantom Menace in 3D at Nova kino

Trondheim kino contacted us to do a troop for the release of Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 3D.

Me and Aiwei stood inside the theatre with a picture of the Death Star corridors on the screen and a soundloop of Death Star hum and trooperchatter playing in the background. The rest of the troopers were in the entrance hall welcoming people and taking pics.

A short and sweet troop, and at the end the employees thanked us for our service and some swag was given out by drawing ticket stubs out of a helmet and the winner being picked at random.

Pictures courtesy of Trondheim Kino

Release of Street-magazine Natt & Dag at BrukBar

Natt & Dag had done an article on Mads Eriksen and Nordic Garrison, and had him on the cover.
We were asked to troop at a pre-release at my workplace february 2., so I arranged a small troop.
Here is a link to the article itself (in Norwegian): http://nattogdag.no/artikler/5423/stormflo

We ended up being 10 troopers, well over what the manager initially had envisioned when he first asked me if we might get a few troopers to maybe stand guard. We swamped the place!
Around 20:00 we took a freight-elevator from downstairs to up, and got a photographer to take a group-photo of us before entering BrukBar, the same photographer was there on other official business but followed us most of the time, taking lots of photos, which will be made available to us.

The troop went great, and we had two Sandtroopers awaiting approval having their first troop, both of which looked great, and had a good time. :D

The only "major" task we had was to hand out editions of the paper Natt & Dag, but the paper was late, and didn't arrive until 21:50 (or thereabouts), so we ended up waiting around for it and when it eventually came, we got a few editions each and handed them out to other guest, then we slowly retreated back to our chamber of solitude.

Another thing to note was that there was a great deal of people that are very active on twitter that attended the event, and twitter went wild the couple of hours we were there, official 501st even re-tweeted a video that was filmed at the beginning of the troop when we were outside taking photos with guests: "501st Legion in Trondheim looking for some droids": http://youtu.be/S3XUgvcplcU

All in all a great troop with a lot of exposure!

Star Wars in Concert

In january I travelled to Oslo to attend Star Wars in Concert, where Oslo Philharmonic were visited by conductor Lucas Richman and performed music from all six Star Wars films.
I had my first troop outside Trondheim, and got to meet a lot of new people and had an awesome time.

The troop took place over the course of two days, and day one we met up early to rehearse a few things, mainly entering the theatre to the end of the imperial march, and escorting Vader up to the podium to deliver flowers to Richman at the end of the performance, both of which went great and were well recieved by the audience!

We mingled with the audience before and after the show, there was also a pause in the middle of the performace where we mingled with the audience, and on day one we caused the concert to get delayed because people couldn't get enough of us. :D

I found a random picture of me with a person I don't remember taking a picture with (there were a lot of pictures taken at the venue!), and I had a hard time recognizing it was me, as me and another trooper look almost identical, with the same armormaker and Centurion-grade build, but thanks to a small blob of glue on the coverstrip on the left thigh I managed to see it was me.
Edit: The person in the picture turns out to be Sara, who has later become a member of Nordic Garrison herself!

After the concert on the second and last day we went to a party at a long-time member and Star Wars-afficionado deluxe, I have never seen such a collection with my own eyes.
All in all a great troop, and fun to meet new people!

More patches and swag

During the filming of The Empire Strikes Back in Norway in 1979, the cast & crew were given winterclothing by the norwegian brand Ski-Peer, and on the jackets were embroidered patches.

I became very enamoured with these jackets and searched high and low, but they are nowhere to be found, except the actual jackets worn by cast & crew being auctioned off sporadically, for a large amount of money.
(There is actually a company making replicas, but they don't look close enough to the originals that I'd even consider it.)

Well, I did the next best thing and found the patches online, and they look great! I might eventually sew them on a jacket myself, but that'll have to wait.

And on new years eve I recieved a nice envelope in the mail from FISD founder Paul Hoeffer, containing another FISD-patch and two Centurion rocker tabs, so now I have two of each plus an Expert Infantry rocker tab:

This is what the small patch collection looks like now:

I also recieved a helmet bag to carry my prized Troopermaster-helmet in when travelling to events.
A Centurion tab and FISD patch will have to go on the helmet bag as well. Swag-o-rama.

And a bonus at the end, a picture of the troopers and main man, Mads at his booksigning at Outland in december: