[MR] Myrkies

[E L Wimett]

Well, it is a bit more complex than that.

For one thing, you can actually write your charter in another language but 
charters generally no longer have the force of law but merely tradition so 
it has been YEARS since one went to the Board.  (And royalty generally has 
caught on and asks for a translation.)  Since charters don't have the force 
of law, if anything higher in the food chain disagrees with the charter, 
you are out of luck.  (This is perhaps relevant for the "Order" of Saint 
Aiden. . .)

For another, the main part that made the BoD so apoplectic was the fact 
that the Dominion considered itself exactly that: a sovereign dominion not 
really in fealty to the East.  That caused some very interesting issues 
occasionally when people got awards, when Pennsic came around, etc. . .

Alisoun
Who used to regularly have to explain not only the Dominion but also the 
Crown Province of Ostgardr to the rest of the Known World

On Monday, October 01, 2001 12:15 PM, Craig Levin [SMTP:clevin at ripco.com] 
wrote:
> Do{n~}a Violante:
>
> > What's a dominion?
>
> It all begins in the dim, dark days of legend and myth, when the
> number of kingdoms was such that one only needed a single hand to
> count them, and the Freon can was the helmet of choice...
>
> A bunch of people wanted to found an SCA group at Cornell U., and
> they gathered their friends together. They sat down, hit on a
> nifty Norse name, and sent off a group name registration. All
> looks normal, right?
>
> Then they wrote their group charter-still normal, right? Wrong.
> These folks wanted to recreate the spirit of the Icelandic
> republic of the 1000's. So they wrote the charter in Old Norse,
> adding in clauses that essentially guaranteed their liberties
> from BoD actions, and sent it off to SCA, Inc. HQ.
>
> The BoD, trusting souls that they were, didn't bother to hunt up
> a translator. The charter was approved unread, for all practical
> purposes. When the Myrkies did something that made the BoD antsy,
> the BoD sent them a nasty note.
>
> The Myrkies informed the BoD that it could pound sand, as what
> they were doing was covered in their charter. The BoD replied
> that that wasn't the case. The Myrkies asked the BoD whether it
> had actually read the charter. The BoD huffed and puffed, and
> admitted that the charter was simply approved as it was. The
> Myrkies then told the BoD to have the charter translated, and
> once it was translated, to get back to them.
>
> The BoD did so, got apoplectic, and the Myrkies have since been
> free. The BoD now requires all group charters to be written in
> modern English.
>
> Pedro
> --
> http://pages.ripco.net/~clevin/index.html
> clevin at rci.ripco.com
> Craig Levin				Librarians Rule Oook!
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