Folcemoot and Folkestone

In the last few months, ØC has been working with the Folkestone Townscape Heritage Initiative on their project, 'Finding Eanswythe: the Life and Afterlife of an Anglo-Saxon Saint.' Back in June, we were invited to do a talk at the Dover Museum with them. We were arranged into topical panels, with scholars presenting their research and a few re-enactors talking about our experiences with whatever those topics were. This Folcemoot, or “meeting of peoples,” was a great mixing of knowledge and experience and a wonderful time was had by all. 

Matt Town and Eliot were on the panel with Dr. Mike Bintley, talking about the significance of trees to the medieval cultures and how that fed into the significance of the wooden construction of a long hall. They talked about Wychurst, how medieval people would have seen their hall as a place of refuge and community in a very dark and uncertain world, which is a sense that the Regia members have all felt during feasts in our hall. Liam and Matt Demedts did their talk on the weaponry, and then Matt Town joined them for a weapons and fighting demonstration. This was accompanied by a talk on early Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and the possibility that the Saxons had horse archers based on one grave find. I think a few ØC people are very excited about the possibility to incorporate that into our shows. 

I was on the panel discussing the various ways things were made, chaired by Dr. Megan Cavel. I had thought her name sounded familiar, but I remembered why when her book cover come on the powerpoint behind me. I had read and referenced her book Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature in my thesis project that I completed in April. That was a bit of a moment for me. I chatted with her after and tried to keep my fan-girling to a minimum. Her talk was really interesting, all about how the various Anglo-Saxon riddles give us a lot of clues on how things were made, with a particular focus on the riddles discussing books. She also runs a blog called The Riddle Ages - https://theriddleages.wordpress.com, if anyone wants to check it out. 

I was originally there to fill in for Jordan, so I talked about his work with food, the various things that people of the early medieval period would have eaten and drank and how we adapt that for our shows. When I had run out of knowledge on the matter, I started talking about textiles, since that tends to be what I work on at the wic. The mystical aspect of textiles came up, how they were connected with magic and the working of fate, which again, I had just finished writing a paper on. Megan brought up the Darraðarljóð, the poem about the Valkyries weaving the fates of men. I will confess to a moment of showing-off when I began reciting the passage she was referring to and felt just a teeny bit proud of myself. The contrast and connection between the art of weaving and the art of war, lead right into Tony's talk about blacksmithing. 

The moot was a huge success and I think both the academics and the re-enactors came away really excited about future projects together. 

Folkestone

We had another show with the Finding Eanswythe people last weekend, setting up a one-day re-enactment at the public park in Folkestone. We arrived very early to quickly erect a fighting field and five tents consisting of a food display, armoury, a coin mint, a textiles and dye display, and a gaming tent.

I managed to get a large amount of embroidery done on my new dress, just to find out that I didn’t really fancy it and took it all out, so my day’s net productivity was still zero. I have a blue dress that seems to have a will of its own, and it wants to be dyed red. At a previous show, it had red wine spilt all over it, and at this show a beet rolled off a table and all down my back, leaving a lovely set of red blotches on my back and skirt. Fortunately, both mishaps have washed out, and this one was actually rather pleasant. Since we were very near the ocean, I went and stood in the salt water to get the stain out, which was a relief in the plus 30 degree heat. 

Throughout the day, we had a steady stream of people coming through the camp. Most people were originally there for the beach or the playground, but the sound of clashing metal soon drew a large crowd. We had the warriors divided into Saxon and Viking sides, with Liam being a priest who was leading his fighters to rid the land of Rob’s pagan forces. The conflict started off friendly, with our usual series of games and challenges of strength and skill, however the contest soon became heated, so they decided to have a contest of champions. The contenders were chosen by the kids in the audience and set against each other. The vikings won that match, but their victory soon turned into a brawl, which lead to a battle being set for the afternoon. 

We were attacked by "dragons" at one point. There was an air show going on somewhere nearby and so we had a Hawker Hurricane Mk I, an Avro Lancaster, and a Supermarine Spitfire Mk IA fly past us. It was taken as a good omen for the fight to come. The final battle once again drew a crowd to the amphitheater. While Liam's forces were over powered during the battle, during the final one-on-one fight between him and Rob, Liam was able to release a lot of pent up anger and triumphed.