I admit it: I am overwhelmed. I think that I’ve taken on a few too many tasks to complete for Coronation, which is this Saturday. Less than two days away!

Just the preparatory duties, including making my new garb, are wearing me out. And that doesn’t even take into account all the duties that I have to perform on Coronation Day itself.

On Coronation Day, I will be accepting registrations for attendance at the event at Gate from 8 am to 10 am, then guarding the Royalty Room until 11:00 am.

I teach an hour-long class beginning at noon. Then I’ll be running a performance space called Bardic Circle from 3 pm to 5 pm. I will also be performing myself during Bardic Circle, on harp and voice.

At 5 pm is Evening Court, during which time I’ll be addressing the new King and Queen from Havamal, in the Poetic Edda, and accompanying myself on harp while I do so. Part of my recitation is in Old Norse.

Whew!

Yesterday I released the schedule to the Bardic Circle performers, as I had told them that I would several weeks ago.

Then today I got an email from one of them that showed that the person in question did not even have a grasp on what time the Circle is being held, but instead asked for a performance time entirely outside its parameters and raised a new conflict during the two hour window that the Circle actually does take place.

Sheesh.

This, at the time when I am scrambling to pull together the disparate strands of the second year’s expanded version of my class called “Women in the Viking Age.”

This year’s model includes, and then goes beyond, last year’s focus on the many and varied lives of women as portrayed by the Icelandic family sagas, a group of medieval writings about an even earlier medieval time period in Iceland.

In this year’s class, in addition to the sagas, we will also look at tenth-century Princess Ol’ga of the Viking culture to the east of Scandinavia in what is now Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

We’ll also be devoting some time to women in Norse mythology and how those mythical women shaped the lives of some historical Viking women, especially in the Icelandic family sagas.

Wish me luck!