Middle Marches Baronial 12th Night

Today I taught an informal class on Viking Women in the Icelandic Sagas at the Middle Marches Baronial Twelfth Night, an SCA event that was held nearby.  I was a bit under the weather, so I was only there for my class and a bit afterwards to take some photos. As usual, I have omitted everyone’s official SCA titles.

My longtime friend Janet VanMeter, known in the SCA as Errill, was there and looking quite lovely indeed:

She was sitting at the table I had set up for the Viking Women class, which partly explains the Iceland travel guide in front of her. I took tons of my Viking and Saga-related materials, books and maps and such.  I pointed out the relevant sites from the two sagas I discussed on a road map of Iceland. I’ll be visiting many of those sites in May.

I certainly enjoyed that hour, and it seemed as though the six people who joined me did, as well. I hope it was both informative and entertaining. 😛

Here are some of the photos I took afterwards. Another really nice one of Errill, having a fun chat with Vorlin:

Here is my new friend, the embroidery expert Jerusha  a’Laon who has fairly recently arrived in Ohio from Arizona. She taught a class during the event, at the same time as mine so that I couldn’t attend it, but luckily she will teach it again next week at Flaming Gryphon’s Baronial Twelfth Night, which I’m also attending. That way I’ll get to take the class from her and learn eight basic period embroidery stitches!

Uilleag Balbhán was one of the folks in my Viking Women class. Here he is perusing one of the books:

His wife, Slany Bean Uillic, was also in my class, along with Leslie Collins. Here is a photo with Artemisia diFirenze on the left, Leslie in the center and Slany on the right, which Uilleag took:

Another teacher at the event was Hosokawa Gentarou Masahiro, who gave a class on Samurai arms and armor. It was also at the same time as my class, so I didn’t get to attend.

Masahiro’s friend wore an amazing hat outside that I thought was some kind of ancient Japanese court attire, which instead turned out to be a surplus Russian Army hat! You never know where people will find things to turn into the most effective and arresting garb. Here he is hatless (and also nameless, alas!). You can just barely see the hat on the table, I think:

[UPDATE:] A photo of the hat appeared on my Facebook timeline, along with the gentleman’s name, which is Terry Young, who is Malcolm of Blackheath in the SCA. Here he is with his Warden of the Marche award, a Baronial fighting award, that he received at Court that day:

And the hat was remarked upon as being similar to this one worn by the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, in a painting by Pisanello in 1443:

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Emperor:

Sigismund of Luxemburg (14 February 1368 – 9 December 1437) was Prince-elector of Brandenburg from 1378 until 1388 and from 1411 until 1415, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1387, King of Germany from 1411, King of Bohemia from 1419, King of Italy from 1431, and Holy Roman Emperor for four years from 1433 until 1437, the last male member of the House of Luxemburg.  Sigismund von Luxembourg was the leader of the last West European Crusade – the Crusade of Nicopolis of 1396. Afterwards he founded the Dragon Order to fight the Turks. He was regarded as highly educated, spoke several languages (among them; French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin) and was an outgoing person who also took pleasure in the tournament.

Other photos of folks and friends among the populace:

Another lovely SCA event! I only wish that I could have stayed longer. 🙂