When the Minnesota Vikings were looking to add some authenticity to their pregame show, they didn’t go to Scandinavia looking for help. They called Tim Jorgensen.

He and two other Fargo-Moorhead area men now have the best seats for Vikings home games at TCF Bank Stadium — in the end zone.

Jorgensen and fellow Viking re-enactors Jeff Swenson and Sam Overland dress in their historically accurate linens and helmets, brandishing shields and weapons as the Guardians of the Gate, letting the team onto the field before kick-off.

“It really got the blood pumping,” Overland said.

Which is the troupe’s role, to fire up the crowd.

Before the Minnesota Vikings-New England Patriots game on Sept. 14, the North Dakota trio and their Minneapolis comrade Paul McLagan take their place in front of two large wooden gates at the entrance to the home team’s tunnel.

As game time drew closer, the re-enacting raiders banged their battle axes and swords on their shields to rile the crowd. They synchronized the gates opening to an animation on the jumbotron. Cheerleaders took the field, and then the team.

“It was exhilarating,” Swenson says. “I didn’t realize how much of an NFL game was a large TV production.”

Swenson recently replaced Jorgensen as events and exhibits coordinator at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County and will head up next year’s Midwest Viking Fest at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead.

Jorgensen recruited Swenson and Overland after getting call from a Vikings program director wanting more of a presence on the field at TCF Stadium. Jorgensen says they’ve talked about keeping the arrangement once the new Vikings stadium opens in 2016, with a long-term living-history presence.

The team treats the re-enactors well, with meals, lodging and mileage all covered, the troupe says.

“They give us a little wallet-padding. It supplements our full-time pillaging,” said Jorgensen, a lifelong fan who never thought being a re-enactor would get him onto the field for a Minnesota Vikings game.

As re-enactors, Jorgensen and crew want to keep the presence accurate.

“I was a little leery at first. I was kind of thinking they’d want to put horns on us and scream and have blood all over us,” said Overland, a re-enactor for 20 years. “They were very much into letting us push the authenticity: ‘Portray Vikings as they would be.’ ”

These Vikings come from different groups and Jorgensen said they are trying to design a shield to give them some uniformity. They’ve already had talks about what colors to wear.

“Nobody wants to make the mistake of wearing the opposing team’s colors while they’re standing at the Vikings’ gate,” he says, adding that purple, too, would be wrong, or at least historically inaccurate.

How to arm them was another issue. Team officials didn’t want them to bring spears, though they were a popular weapon.

Axes and swords are OK, but Jorgensen says they have to remember that when the blades are hoisted in the air, they’re at face level for front-row fans.

During the game, the re-enactors hang back in the end zone. Jorgensen said they’re still trying to figure out how they should interact with the fans.

While they haven’t met any of the players, they’ve mingled with the cheerleaders and fist-bumped Ragnar, the team’s mascot.

Overland said it would be more authentic to have a cup of mead with the mascot.