[Ponte Alto] In the washinton paper:

[AbelSussman at aol.com]

Thought you might enjoy
-Abel



LORDS, LADIES REVEL IN THE DAYS OF OLDE
 
 Mark Longaker
 SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
 
 Foot soldiers wearing shiny steel helmets, chain-mail vests,
 heavy leather boots and other medieval armor, foot soldiers
 in the two opposing lines approach each other, raise their
 emblazoned shields and brandish swords and spears of rattan.
 "Lay on!" roars the warlord, and the lines charge each other
 across the broad lawn at Marietta Mansion in Glenn Dale, Md.
 They collide, swords and spears flashing like lightning,
 crashing down on wooden shields. Some 15 furious seconds
 later the skirmish ends. The "dead" rise from the grass to
 rejoin the living, and everybody talks it over, amiably.
 These are the weekend warriors of the Society for Creative
 Anachronism (SCA), and the melee is just a warm-up for the
 all-out war tomorrow through Sunday at Darlington, Md. —the
 Kingdom Crusades. The "crusades" will pitch two rival SCA
 kingdoms into a medieval maelstrom, their massed battalions
 storming across a storied field straight out of Arthurian
 legend. 
 Life in the past lane attracts a growing legion of devotees.
 Thirty-five years after its inception, the SCA now numbers
 nearly 30,000 members, up a third in the last decade.
 SCAdians, as they dub themselves, dedicate themselves to
 researching and re-creating pre-17th century history. They
 live in a global realm of 16 kingdoms. Christened the Knowne
 Worlde, this land of lore welcomes members and non-members
 alike into its mythic celebration.
 A similar organization, the Markland Medieval Mercenary
 Militia, operates from the Virginias through the New York
 City area and specializes in the darker ages, those before
 1300.
 Whatever the era, the return to simpler and even primitive
 times seems an answer to a 21st century need.
 "There are magic moments," says SCA viscount Sir Saeric
 Scireham (otherwise known as Steve Traylor, a massage
 therapist living in Silver Spring), "when you're sitting
 around a campfire. Nothing but torches light you all the way
 around. You hear a lute and a singer in the distance. You
 see people tromping by in armor. There is nothing from the
 modern world, and it seems like you're transported back."
 • • •
 The SCA began as a swashbuckling theme party thrown by the
 Literature Department at the University of California,
 Berkeley, on May 1, 1966. Come wearing whatever costume you
 like, they said, so long as it suits a gallant era of sword
 and fabled song.
 Everybody enjoyed this novel party but thought little more
 about it until May Day rolled around again a year later.
 They threw another bash, bigger this time, and bigger fun.
 That led to other medieval costume parties. A society soon
 formed, which incorporated itself as a non-profit,
 educational group in 1968, officially launching the SCA.
 True to its party roots, the SCA takes an expansive look at
 history. It covers the years 600-1600 A.D., says the
 charter, but no one pushing those limits a little is turned
 away; some SCA members even study the code of the samurai,
 the warriors of medieval Japan. This flexibility
 distinguishes SCAdians from more traditional re-enactors who
 focus narrowly on specific periods — like Civil War
 re-enactors, or regiments re-creating American Revolutionary
 battles. Members are free to flesh out their favorite
 time-traveling fantasies how they will.
 "It's a chance to play at your archetype," says Sir Saeric.
 "In the modern world, you don't get to be a hero, you don't
 get to be a warrior."
 As a knight living 800 years ago, he gets to play the hero,
 both on the valorous field and in the royal court. He wields
 an agile sword, instructs and mentors fighters and, above
 all, upholds the honor of his lady. He can tell you all
 about his parents and grandparents and how the family got
 its name.
 All SCAdians have personas, as they are called. Some, such
 as the viscount's, mirror the modern world fully in the
 past, with elaborate personal histories appropriate to the
 time. Others might be only a name to justify a particular
 costume.
 Mr. Traylor began constructing the character of Saeric
 Scireham midway through college 20 years ago, when he joined
 the SCA. Getting into the group gave him a new spin on
 history, not one of his more favorite subjects in school. So
 wondrous was this new vision of the past that he switched
 majors and got a bachelor's degree in — what else? —
 history.
 Soon he won an award of arms, the first honor bestowed by
 the society on new members. This allowed him to display a
 coat of arms and to title himself a lord. Most people reach
 that rank, which they earn for service to their kingdom, but
 few go any higher.
 It took him 13 years to gain the exalted level of
 knighthood. He got there by showing exemplary courtesy and
 formidable prowess on the field and by rendering
 indispensable service in the court.
 "Knights are supposed to be an example of everything the
 society stands for," Mr. Traylor says. "That makes
 knighthood both a joy and a burden, because you are on
 display at all times."
 Part of this display calls for adding several distinguishing
 insignia to his costume, which only knights may do. These
 include a white belt, worn to symbolize chastity — "You
 cleave to your one lady," he says. Around his neck goes a
 gold chain, signifying the oath of fealty that all knights
 swear to the crown.
 Signaling the horsemanship of his kinsmen long ago, he
 clamps spurs to his boots, though only for ceremonial
 occasions. They tend to fall off his favorite pair of boots,
 made for riding motorcycles rather than horses. But that's
 OK. Knights don't ride horses in the SCA. And black
 motorcycle boots look really medieval from 10 feet away.
 • • •
 Last year Mr. Traylor vied in a special tournament held
 every six months to select new monarchs. Such contests, in a
 category known as heavy fighting, call for a contestant's
 stoutest sword and toughest armor. They progress through a
 series of one-on-one bouts by double elimination.
 Winning the tournament, he became prince of Northshield, a
 principality centered on Milwaukee, Wis., where he then
 lived. Northshield belongs to the Middle Kingdom, a vast
 region that includes the north-central United States and
 sections of Canada.
 When he stepped down from his six-month term as prince, he
 was granted the title of viscount, an honor reserved for
 ex-princes. His royal obligations over, he wanted to leave
 the kingdom of Northshield. But moving meant asking the king
 to release him from his oath of fealty, something that his
 long allegiance to the land made difficult to do:
 "[The king] is someone I've known for 15 years," says Mr.
 Traylor. "I've known him as John, a captain in the Illinois
 state troopers. But he is also Sir Bardolf, king of the
 Middle Kingdom."
 He broke the bond, anyway, to join his wife, studying for a
 Ph.D. in speech therapy at the University of Maryland,
 College Park. Last month he swore a new oath of fealty, with
 all due ceremony. To take the vow he knelt before King Galmr
 Ingolfsson and Queen Aryanna Hawkyns at their coronation as
 rulers of Atlantia, a kingdom spanning Maryland, Virginia,
 the District, North and South Carolina and Augusta, Ga.
 "The formula for becoming the king and queen is: King by
 right of arms, queen by right of love and beauty," says the
 viscount.
 The viscount's wife, Ciara ni Mhaille, stands nearby,
 wearing a long dress and a broad-brimmed black hat. "In one
 kingdom we had a woman win the Crown Tournament," she says.
 "She was queen by right of arms."
 In the mundane world, which is everything not of the Knowne
 Worlde, she goes by Virginia Traylor. Mistress Ciara, as she
 is formally addressed in the SCA, wears a large, amber,
 tear-drop pendant around her neck on a thin silver chain. It
 was awarded to her by the king of the Middle Kingdom. An SCA
 jeweler made it, engraving the back with a laurel wreath.
 The award signifies her acceptance into a select society
 peerage called the Order of the Laurel. Membership in the
 order honors those who excel at medieval arts and sciences.
 For example, Mistress Ciara received it for her skills in
 embroidery. She teaches classes on the subject at SCA
 workshops, and can tell you about every embroidery style
 known to exist between 600 and 1600.
 The laurel imparts the same rank that knighthood does. So,
 Mistress Ciara's word carries nearly as much weight as that
 of her husband, the viscount. They met in the SCA 17 years
 ago.
 Embroidery may be more appealing to most women than wielding
 a sword, even in these post-20th-century days of parity
 between the sexes. Certainly, during the Middle Ages, seeing
 a woman on the battlefield would have raised more than a few
 eyebrows. Cooking, sewing, spinning, weaving — crafts of the
 hearth, rather than crafts of war — were their domain.
 The SCA teaches all these crafts and more, free of charge,
 to any member who wants to learn and enjoy them, regardless
 of traditional gender stereotypes. This impartiality
 reflects the Society's emphasis on recreation rather than
 re-creation.
 • • •
 "You don't have to be an historical weenie to be in the
 SCA," says Anarra Karlsdottir, who also wears a Laurel
 pendant around her neck. "You can just come and have fun."
 Mistress Anarra won the Laurel, a large hand-crafted
 medallion of butter amber, as much for her mastery of Viking
 history as for her devotion to bringing it alive. Her
 surname reflects a traditional Nordic custom still practiced
 in Iceland today. Children were given their father's first
 name, appended by their sex, as a last name. The patronymic
 identifies her as Karl's "dottir."
 Mundanely, she is Terry L. Neill, a business analyst from
 Baltimore, Md. She joined the SCA at the age of 12, some 20
 years ago, after seeing several events it held in Eugene,
 Ore., where she grew up.
 "Everybody loves something different about the SCA," says
 Ms. Neill. "I promote the research that goes into an
 as-close-to-historically-accurate Viking living experience
 as possible."
 Indeed she does. She even sails a Viking ship on the
 Chesapeake Bay, as a member of the Longship Company, Ltd., a
 medieval re-enactment group, incorporated in Maryland, that
 operates two replica Viking ships. Though Longship's focus
 is Dark Age Nordic life, it belongs to the broader medieval
 group known as the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia.
 Similar to the SCA, though sticking pretty much to eras
 before 1300, Markland takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to
 its chosen era and to itself. Its anthem, for example,
 speaks of its home turf, Markland, as a "slimey sod forsook
 by all the gods," and its men as "noble sons" who "run from
 the sounds of guns." To add to the fun, the song is sung to
 the melody of Czarist Russia's national anthem.
 Markland began as a battle. Washington-area swordsmen,
 looking for something with more flair than Olympic-style
 fencing, gathered on the University of Maryland's College
 Park campus in 1969. They staged the Battle of Hastings,
 that epic struggle of Oct. 14, 1066, that saw the defeat of
 King Harold II of England at the hands of Duke William of
 Normandy and began the Norman conquest of the Saxon land.
 The staged battle became an annual tradition, attracting an
 ever-growing cadre of medieval enthusiasts. Now, Markland
 covers an area from Virginia to New York. It shares the
 field with the SCA as the only other similar living-history
 group of note in the region. Members of one group often
 belong to the other.
 In fact, the weekend warriors at Marietta Mansion included
 some Marklanders, who fought on familiar turf. They know it
 well, because the Battle of Hastings re-enactment, too large
 anymore for Maryland's quad, takes place there every year.
 It will again this weekend, when the Normans attack the
 Saxons on the Marietta lawn to commemorate the 935th
 anniversary of the epic conquest. Afterward, there will be
 revelry — a Hastings feast, with music by a very old Norse
 band named Thrir Venstri Foetr (Three Left Feet) and dancing
 by all. And there will be a Viking ship.
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