Franklin’s Highland Games add axe throwing to Scottish festival weekend

Axe throwing took a place in Franklin’s 27th annual Taste of Scotland Festival and Highland Games, where the sport shared space with stone lifting trials, birds of prey, clan tents, pipes and drums, Viking reenactors and food and artisan vendors across the June 19-21 weekend in Franklin, North Carolina. The setup made the throwing lane part of a larger Scottish-heritage showcase, not a side attraction.

The festival’s schedule split the action between a Friday evening parade and ceilidh in downtown Franklin and a Saturday field day at the Macon County Fairgrounds at 1436 Georgia Road. Saturday admission was listed at $15 for ages 12 and up, $5 for ages 6-11 and free for children 5 and under, with organizers telling attendees to bring their own chair for the main competition day. The festival bills itself as Franklin’s Scottish Heritage Festival and is organized by Taste of Scotland Society, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization.

That framing matters for axe throwing because Franklin placed it inside the same athletic package as the Highland Games. The broader games tradition is built around heavy events such as the caber toss and hammer throw, along with piping, drumming and dancing, and the Franklin schedule treated axe throwing as part of that same competitive rhythm. It was listed alongside stone lifting trials and the rest of the Saturday field events, giving it the feel of a live sport rather than a novelty booth.

The festival’s weekend mix also widened the audience around the throwing lanes. Families, tourists and regular Highland Games followers moved through the same grounds as the axe throwers, with clan tents, herding dog demonstrations, birds of prey exhibits and the pipes-and-drums program all pulling traffic toward the athletic field. The result was a festival model that relied on participation and spectacle at the same time, the kind of setting where a first-time visitor can watch axe throwing up close and imagine trying it later at a local venue.

Franklin has long leaned on the event as a marker of Scottish heritage, and the Taste of Scotland Festival also highlights its Scots-Irish roots and historic relationships with the Cherokee. In that setting, axe throwing fit neatly between heritage performance and modern recreation, giving the weekend a sport that could speak to both Highland Games purists and casual festivalgoers.