Christianity is an Immersion Closet

This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt book 2025 – Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: a Breathing Corpus. It can be found here.

Photo: Tindra Englund

At the recent re-run of the larp Snapphaneland, I slipped into a very deep, immersive and solitary play on religion. As a fan of historical larps, I have of course played a Christian before, but never before have I had religious play as deeply immersive and moving. It made me get a glimpse of the importance that the Christian worldview had in history, and it made me want to explore and discuss these experiences. My focus in this text is describing my own experiences, and what contributed to finding that religious immersion. To do this, however, I first need to explain both the larp and the historical context, for those unfamiliar with it.

The larp Snapphaneland

Snapphaneland is a larp set during the Scanian War in the 17th century. Specifically, it focuses on the rebellion and guerilla war waged by Scanian resistance fighters (snapphanar) against the Swedish authority, the measures taken by the Swedish government and army to suppress the rebels, and how Scanian civilians were oppressed and punished, regardless if they aided the snapphane rebels or not. The larp is set in a Scanian village, and the characters in play are villagers, snapphane rebels and Swedish soldiers. 

A life of toil

At the larp, I was a kitchen helper with a written character. This meant that I worked long, busy days, but could go out and play scenes now and then, and play while working in the kitchen. The kitchen was a mostly in-game area, and although it had some modern-ish equipment, many of the tasks were quite appropriate for the era – fetching water, keeping fires burning, chopping vegetables, and so on. It was also heavy work, with endless lifting, standing and walking. Although this was of course quite tiring, it also meant that the days were filled with manual labour, in a way that is quite realistic for rural life in the 17th century. 

The character I played was a farm maid (piga). Since she came from a large family, had no hopes of inheriting and slim chances of being married, this was how she would most likely spend her entire life, working very hard at someone else’s farm for food and board. Her days would be endless toil. Of course, everyone in a rural village worked, to the best of their abilities, but the farmhands (dräng) and farm maids got the heavier, dirtier tasks compared to the farmer’s family. 

Most of the players at the larp did not have much work to do. There were some tasks that they could do if they chose – there was wood that could be chopped, sometimes things needed carrying, and they were always welcome to come help in the kitchen. Many of the people playing women brought knitting and similar handicrafts, to keep their hands occupied. But there were very few things that they had to do, and they could spend a lot of time sitting around talking, when not in the middle of Cool Scenes. 

All this to say that while being in the kitchen for most of the larp, and not having much free time to pursue play, the benefit of my role was that the work was deeply realistic and immersive. My body ached from hard work. I was exhausted when going to bed in the evening, and then rose in the morning to do it all again. It was easy to lean into the knowledge that for my character, every day would be like this. 

The Christian worldview

In Sweden in the 17th century, everyone (except minority groups of other faiths, of course) was a Christian Protestant. Belief in God was universal, it was a natural part of how the world was perceived. Not everyone was a good Christian, of course, and it was not uncommon that people did things that were considered sinful. However, everyone knew that sinning was bad, and had to somehow relate to this. Similarly, belief in an afterlife in heaven or hell was a natural part of life, and a very big part of the Christian worldview. Life on Earth was considered to be largely filled with suffering, toil, and hardship: and only those who lived good, pious lives would be rewarded with eternity in heaven. 

This was a deeply important part of my experience. As described above, my character’s life really was full of toil and hardship, with no hope of becoming easier. These hardships were only increased as the oppression escalated, and life seemed almost unbearable. The thought of one day, when her life was over, being able to finally have comfort, rest and happiness in heaven was deeply important. Without it, life would just be a pointless struggle. 

    Photo: Tindra Englund

Loneliness and love

Love is of course one of the great joys in life for a lot of people, something that makes life beautiful and brings meaning and hope to our lives. In the case of my character, there was not much of that to be had, however. She was the kind of person that no one really fell for, the person in the background who was perfectly nice, but just… not the girl anyone dreamed about. She herself fell in love pretty easily, but had never had her feelings answered. On top of this, she had lived most of her life away from her own village, away from parents and siblings. She was a very lonely person.

For a person like this, the thought of God and Christ was deeply comforting. Through God, there was the feeling of an ever-present love. A parent figure that, though stern and forbidding, was also full of grace and forgiveness, and would reward her if she was good enough. And someone who saw her, all of her, and cared about her deeds. 

Suffering – God’s trials

Since the larp took place in a part of the country where the civilian population were tormented by both the Swedish army, and sometimes the rebels, there was a lot of suffering. Some characters (including my own) had in their background the ransacking and sometimes even burning of their homes, and having to look for a new home. There was hunger and poverty, due to soldiers and rebels taking food from civilians. And as the larp progressed and the army cracked down harder to quell the rebellion, there were beatings, rapes, and other kinds of violent cruelty. 

This created a vast wealth of internal play, with struggling with the age-old questions around God and evil. If God is good and all-powerful, why does he permit terrible things to happen? In Christianity, however, the reply is usually that God is testing your faith, and that enduring and remaining firm in your belief is how you succeed. This was beautifully illustrated and brought into play by my co-player and kitchen boss Kim Bjurström. My character had just been subjected to rape and abuse at the hands of the soldiers, and was quite broken. Kindly and gently, his character simply said: “God only gives us the struggles he knows we can bear.” It was all that was needed for my character to feel even more strongly connected to her faith, and to see meaning even in the absolutely terrible things she had endured. In a way, this is of course kind of weird and fucked up, as it can easily be construed as saying “You should really be happy that this happened to you, because it means that you are actually a really good Christian!” But, nonetheless, it was a very strong, moving, and immersive experience. 

Sin

The concept of sin is great for roleplay, as it creates a strong incentive to not do things that might otherwise be very tempting to do. During the larp, my character often struggled with whether it was alright to lie – if you lied to protect someone, or if you were forced to lie by someone threatening you with violence. 

Even more powerful was the thoughts around suicide and abortion. After my character had been raped, she was both traumatised and terrified of a pregnancy. On top of this, she had no future employment, and would soon be without food and housing. It was quite a heavy and hopeless situation, and the thought occurred to her more than once that she would be better off dead. But as suicide was a sin, this was of course out of the question. Similarly, if she did end up pregnant, then aborting the pregnancy would be a sin. This meant that she would simply have to submit to whatever God chose for her, and continue bearing it as well as she could.

Submitting, come what may

And this, I suppose, is the core of it: to submit. To keep faith. To suffer the sins of others, without turning to sin yourself. To bear a life with endless hardships and toil, trusting that after death all that suffering would go away, and you would be rewarded by an eternity in heaven. 

I felt this very deeply all through the larp, in a way I never have before. And it was a quite moving experience. It was also exceptionally suited to solo play, even when I was too busy working, or couldn’t find play for other reasons. The immersive relationship to God was ever-present. This is why I claim that Christianity is an excellent immersion closet. 

What to take away from this article

In this article, I have focused on Protestant Christianity, since that was the religion at the larp in question. However, I think that the same playstyle can be relevant to explore in relation to other religions as well.

As a larper, I feel that it is very valuable to immerse deeply into experiences different from your own. It gives us a little bit of understanding and empathy for others, and humility before the manifold ways to live and understand life. I feel this to be even truer when it comes to getting a new perspective on religion, which is as important to many people today as it was centuries ago. I encourage other players to explore this, and to do so in an immersive, introspective way. Find your own Christian immersion closet, and/or religion as the lens through which you interpret and understand both everyday and extraordinary events. 

As an organiser, I encourage designing for religious play, and not focusing solely on the outward expressions of religion – the rituals, the prayers, and so on. These things are great reminders to have during the larp, but they are not enough. Consider how you can design for religion to be always present in the back of the characters’ minds, to be informing the everyday moral choices and interpretations that they make. In short: design for more people to have religious play as their immersion closet. 

Ludography:

Snapphaneland (2024): Sweden. Rosalind Göthberg, Mimmi Lundkvist and Alma Elofsson Edgar (Bread and Games). https://snapphaneland.org/