I know that many people in our Society are drawn to the pomp and finery of the nobility in the High Medieval period, and I can see the appeal — such pretty outfits! — but on some level it’s hard for me to escape the gnawing knowledge that this gaudy display is only one face of a system of profound inequality.
Continue reading Downsides of Increasing Centralization of PowerAuthor: Mathghamhain
Museum Visit: Bronze Age Mesopotamia
We continued our series of museum outings with today’s visit to the Morgan Library and Museum for “She Who Wrote,” an exhibit of Mesopotamian artifacts focused on the role of women in these bronze-age civilizations.
Continue reading Museum Visit: Bronze Age MesopotamiaMuseum Visit: Bronze Age Balkans
Today we visited the “Ritual and Memory” exhibit at the
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
Although I’ve been summarizing the exhibit as focusing on the “Bronze Age Balkans,” the artifacts on display covered a wider range of time, from the Copper Age through the Iron Age, and of space, from the Balkan mountains to the Carpathian mountains. Continue reading Museum Visit: Bronze Age Balkans
Museum Visit: Pattern Books
Alienor and I ventured out today to see the “Threads of Power” exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, exploring the development and social significance of lace, including examples of needle and bobbin lace from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, courtesy of Switzerland’s Textilmuseum St. Gallen.
Although the fabric examples were impressive, the thing that particularly caught my attention were a few fifteenth- and sixteenth-century examples of “pattern books” — printed collections of designs to be used as source material by people working with fiber and fabric. Continue reading Museum Visit: Pattern Books
Putting Up The Provincial Pavilion
The Crown Province of Østgarðr owns a 20′ x 30′ pavilion, generally known as “the green and white,” which is used for most of our outdoor events.
The tent was purchased sometime around 2013 and is still in good shape, with just one or two small holes in the fabric.
Putting it up takes some effort, but the shade and rain cover are well worth the effort. Continue reading Putting Up The Provincial Pavilion
Putting Up The Pennsic Camp Gate
The Østgarðr provincial camp at Pennsic features a decorated entrance gate which needs to be put up and taken down each year.
The End of a Quest
At Pennsic 49, as the Viceregents of Østgarðr approached the end of their term in office, we brought to a close a long-running bit of court schtick: the Quest for the Viceroy’s Yaks.
Here are the words I wrote for my presentation in provincial court.
Three years ago, you asked for my help in finding a number of yaks that had gone astray. Thankfully, many members of the Province stepped up to assist me, and as time passed, a large number of yaks have found their way back to you — so many yaks.
Continue reading The End of a Quest
Welcome to Our Pennsic Kitchen
A bunch of people are camping with Østgarðr at Pennsic for the first time this year, and it’s been a few years since any of us did this, so I thought it would be useful to write up some notes about one aspect of camp life that might be of interest to others: our kitchen.
The Østgarðr encampment does not have a camp kitchen or a formal meal plan, but it does have a tradition of generous households and communal meals which everyone in camp is welcome to share.
But before I get to that, let’s begin with a bit of background information for folks who are new to Pennsic. Continue reading Welcome to Our Pennsic Kitchen
A Simple Shower for Pennsic
For many years, Østgarðr has constructed a simple shower structure at Pennsic, an effort led by Sir Edward. In 2019, at Pennsic 48, he explained his technique and let me lead the construction. In the wake of his subsequent passing, I figured I should document this approach for posterity. Continue reading A Simple Shower for Pennsic
About Our Household Name
We chose Tyddyn Ystradfflyr as the name for our family’s household in the context of our historical re-creation activities within the Society for Creative Anachronism.
The name is Welsh, and is intended to suggest a small family farm in an idyllic medieval valley filled with flowers.
The word Tyddyn is Welsh for “farmstead” or “family farm,” while Ystradfflyr is a compound word meaning “vale of flowers.”
As far as I can tell, the appropriate pronunciation for Middle Welsh is /’tə-ðɨ̞n ‘əst-rad’flɨ̞r/, or to use American newspaper phonetics, “Te-thin Est-rad-flir.”
With a bit of poetic license, one might render this into English as “Bloomingdale Farm,” a name that appealed to us as an echo of the Bloomingdale neighborhood of New York City where we have lived for the last fifteen years.
The historical documents we cited to support the registration of this name with the Society’s College of Arms are shown below.
Tyddyn is a Old Welsh word meaning a family farmstead, as documented in Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn’s “Period Welsh Models for SCA Households and the Nomenclature Thereof” which says:
… tyddyns or homesteads, each with its share in the surrounding fields…. each tyddyn is held, in theory, by an individual household … the Ordinance Survey Map of Anglesey turns up more examples, such as Tyddyn Mawr (Big Tyddyn) and Tyddyn y Felin (Tyddyn of the Mill).”
Ystradfflyr is the historical name of a mansion in central Wales, as documented in Aryanhwy merch Catmael’s “A Collection of Welsh Household Names from 1602” which says:
Ystradfflyr (Cardigan): Welsh. ystrad ‘vale’ + n. fflur ‘flower’ …