Wow, short newsletter this month. Thank you Eithne….the only local submission. Hopefully with everyone taking a month off, there will be lots of interesting reports and stuff for the September edition. And all you slackers not going to Pennsic…..we’ll miss you!
Angelique
Greetings everyone,
Viv, Jeff, Sam and I met at the last A & S Meeting and discussed what should be included in the Marshall tabards. I will obtain the necessary materials and start working on them. They really shouldn’t take very long and they will have pockets on the inside of them for various items that the Marshalls usually carry. If anyone wants to help, look me up.
Sites of Interest
Furniture collection of House Grey Dragon
http://www.greydragon.org/furniture.html
Here you will find information, articles, and construction plans for various
pieces of medieval furniture that have been built by members of House Greydragon, such
as Medieval Chests, beds, chairs, benches, lanterns and tables.
Food links: A selection of Web Pages Related to Food History
http://www.vub.ac.be/SGES/foodlinks.html
This web page hosted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is an extensive collection of
links to Reference and terminology works, online bibliographies and databases, menus,
photos, museums, General works, newsletters and journals, and other food-related sites
from all over the world.
http://www.arkeodok.com/femalegrave.html
A high-resolution photo of an archaeological dig of a Viking woman and where her accessories were found in relation to her body. the artifacts
I have many times been asked about how different artefacts were carried in the Viking Age, for instance the animal head brooch, if the nose was up or down. It is actually not that easy to tell the details about this, even if we have a rather well preserved skeleton in front of us. For your amusement and for hoping to get a bit of understanding of the problems to understand all the details that you many times want to know, I have put up a high-resolution photo of a female grave from Fröjel. Please have a look at: As known, I'm working mainly on the island of Gotland - a tremendous site when it comes to Viking Age. But we are a bit short handed on the island, while we have none written information of the island in the Viking Age. That is in contrary to Iceland, this fascinating country with its Sagas. There has for long time been a discussion of how much you can trust what the Sagas are telling, and a way to get a more reliable point of view, you can compare the stories from the Sagas with the results of archaeological field investigations, and you might come up with rather fascinating informations. This is exactly what Professor Jesse Byock and his team have been doing in Iceland since 1995. I have got a small report from Professor Jesse Byock to put on the web for you all to read. Read it, and think about how different it can be in our research world (http://www.arkeodok.com/Reports.html).
Dan Carlsson
Eithne
Missing Officer Reports/Articles:
Seneschal - Julienne - No article this month.
Pursuivant - Dugan - No article this month.
Exchequer - Francesca - No article this month.
Knight’s Marshal – Aileen - No article this month.
Archery Marshal - Simon - No article this month.
Fencing Marshal - Catalin - No article this month.
Thrown Weapons - Vacant - No article this month
Chatelaine - Ellen - No article this month.
Minister of Children - Vacant - No article this month.
It’s so scary, sometimes. I mean, what won’t some of these companies do to make a few bucks? A recent spate of movies at the theaters helps to demonstrate that mentality. I mean, they make a new movie based on an old TV series which wasn’t that good to begin with, in the hopes of getting folks who no longer remember how bad the TV series was to pay money simply for the nostalgia of watching a bunch of people who weren’t born at the time attempt to recreate roles that simply weren’t that good at the time, and have aged even less well. Well, sometimes they don’t bother to make a new movie with new actors, nor do they try to talk people into going to the theaters to see it. Sometimes they simply take an old TV series, or the pilot to an old TV series, cobble it together as a stand alone movie, and release it straight to video. Well, this month’s review is one of those. The TV series wasn’t that old – 1987-1989. And they didn’t wait all that many years later to create the “movie” from it – 1995. But you can still find copies of it around on videotape, and so, having been loaned such a copy, this month Da’ud Bob reviews Crossbow.
Starring Wil Lyman as William Tell, Jeremy Clyde as the Governor, Hermann Gessler, John Otway as Conrad, David Barry Gray as William Tell’s son Matthew, Hans Meyer as Tyrrol, this movie/TV series purports to tell the story of the legendary William Tell. Yeah, the one who shot the apple off his son’s head with a crossbow. Still all that part takes place in the first fifteen minutes, leaving a large amount of time that had to be filled with, umm, “plot development”. Well, filled with something, anyway, though certainly not a lot of actual history.
The series never really did all that well, partly because it bore too close a resemblance to the then recently ended “Robin of Sherwood” series the British had produced.
Good points: It’s not widely available; you’ve got to hunt to locate it. (Well, you can find it for as little as $2.00-$2.50, plus shipping – which costs more than the videocassette – on eBay.)
Bad points: The costuming. Leather coifs and aventails with helms. Fantasy dragon “coat of arms” banner and breastplate. Very modern eagle’s heads coat of arms banner. Calling the son of the Emperor “Your Majesty”. What was that chunk of chainmail our erstwhile hero wore atop his left shoulder? Almost no beards anywhere, except for old men. The armor. A mule used as a horse. Fake chain mail (seams down the back of the “mail” coifs). The action (and music) regularly builds to a forced peak and then breaks, disrupting the flow of the movie, right where you’d expect a commercial break. It was, at times, very distracting. Synthesizer William Tell Overture during the closing credits.
Zero breasts. One gallon of blood. 18 dead bodies. Lash fu. Stone fu. Fire fu. Sword fu. Dagger fu. And, of course, crossbow fu. Guards roll. Cart rolls. Gratuitous slo-motion scenes. Gratuitous nightmares. Gratuitous arm wrestling. Gratuitous man in the iron, err, black cloth, mask. Gratuitous fake suspense. Academy Award nominations to Jeremy Clyde as Governor Gessler for “Don’t ever think; just follow orders”; and to Valérie Steffen as the Princess for her response to Gessler’s “A single rose says something”, “Yes; that you are too cheap to buy the whole bouquet.” A 63 on the Vomit Meter. 1˝ Stars. Da’ud Bob says “Check it out!”
This is the on-line version of The Scolairi Notes. Scolairi Notes is the publication of the Shire of Baile na Scolairi, a branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. Scolairi Notes is available from Renee LeVeque, 711 E Taylor, Bloomington, IL 61701, at no cost. It is not a corporate publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., and does not delineate SCA policies. Opinions expressed herein are not those of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. Webbed version created by Rory mac Feidhlimidh.