MICEL FOLCLAND BIBLIOGRAPHY II
Working on a new version of the bibliography and sharing it here. These books are recommended—or warned against—by members of the group and other medievalists. Please write with any additions you suggest!
ARMS & ARMOR
Dickinson, Tania. Early Anglo-Saxon Shields (Archaeologia)
A slim but effective overview of the construction methods of Aglo-Saxon shields.
Heath, Ian. Illustrated by Angus McBride. The Vikings (Osprey Elite 3)
A sample of the British-written Elite series, which are larger and more specific books than the companion Man-At-Arms series. They are designed for gamers and modelers, not scholars, and feature neither notes nor bibliography. Still, they are good introductions, on a vast range of subjects.
Hjardar, Kim, and Vegard Vike (Translated by Frank Stewart). Vikings at War.
A recent translation of a Norwegian book and has many excellent pictures.
Peirce, Ian. Swords of the Viking Age
Profusely illustrated and exhaustive list of swords from the Viking Age.
Pollington, Stephen. The English Warrior from Earliest Times till 1066
Any book by Pollington is fabulous. He writes well and in a satisfying manner, answering your questions and not just (as it were) talking to hear himself talk. This volume has a glossary and fabulous illustrations. It is fascinating and educational reading even if large portions deal with periods that are pre-period for us.
Short, William. Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques
Book by the leader of Hurstwic, who bases his text not only on artifacts but on the Icelandic sagas and oop manuals.
Siddorn, Kim. Viking Weapons and Warfare
Authoritative book by Regia’s founder, with many photographs of Regia events as well.
Wise, Terence. Illustrated by G. A. Embleton. Saxon, Viking and Norman (Osprey Men-at-Arms 85)
A sample of the extensive, British-written Man-at-Arms series. They are designed for gamers and modelers, not scholars, and feature neither notes nor bibliography. Still, they are good introductions, on a vast range of subjects. This volume covers Regia’s period well.
MICEL FOLCLAND BIBLIOGRAPHY I
Working on a new version of the bibliography and sharing it here. These books are recommended—or warned against—by members of the group and other medievalists. Please write with any additions you suggest!
ARCHAEOLOGY
Adkins, Lesley, Roy Adkins and Victoria Leitch. The Handbook of British Archaeology.
Fascinating collection of essays and articles about methods of British archaeology. Originally published more than quarter century ago, this completely revised and updated edition is packed with the latest information and now includes the most recent developments in archaeological science and every section has been extensively updated by a team of experts.
Arwidsson, Greta. The Mästermyr Find: A Viking Age Tool Chest from Gotland
Informative and well-illustrated volume on the famous Mästermyr tool find.
Aspects of Saxon and Norman London: Finds and Environmental Evidence (London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Special Paper)
Profusely illustrated examination of London in the Early Middle Ages.
Carver. Martin. The Sutton Hoo Story: Encounters with Early England
Earlier than our period, but fascinating look at the Sutton Hoo find, with text, photos of the discovery, illustrations of the artifacts and photographs as well.
Comey, Martin G. Coopers and Coopering in Viking Age Dublin.
Line illustrations of cups and other interesting wooden objects from the Hiberno-Scandinavian culture.
Dobney K. M., D. Jaques, James Barrett and Cluny Johnstone. Farmers, Monks and Aristocrats: The Environmental Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Flixborough
Excellent collection of essays on various types of environmentally-oriented artefacts found at Flixborough.
Evan, D. H. And Christopher Loveluck. Life and Economy at Early Medieval Flixborough, c. AD 600-1000
Excellent collection of essays on various types of artefacts found at Flixborough.
Fanning, Thomas. Viking Age Ringed Pins from Dublin.
Line illustrations of pins from the Hiberno-Scandinavian culture.
Hall, Richard. Viking Age Archaeology (Shire Archaeology)
Brief but profusely illustrated Shire publication written by the late director of the York Archaeological Trust.
Hammond, Brett. British Artefacts: Late Saxon, Late Viking & Norman
Nice collection of illustrations.
Hodges. Richard. Goodbye to the Vikings? Re-reading Early Medieval Archaeology
Collection of interesting articles.
MacGregor, Arthur. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life : Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn from Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features antler, bone, horn and ivory work.
Mainman, A. J. Anglo-Scandinavian Pottery from 16-22 Coppergate (CBA Research Reports) (Vol 16)
Profusely illustrated examination of pottery work from the York Archaeological Trust.
Mainman, A. J. and N.S.H. Rogers. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: the Small Finds from Anglo-Scandinavian York
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features miscellaneous finds.
Morris, Carole A. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Wood and Woodworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features wood work.
Mould, Quita. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Leather and Leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features leather work.
Ottaway, Patrick. Anglo-Scandinavian Ironwork from 16-22 Coppergate, York: c.850-1100 A.D
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features ferrous work.
Rizzoli (editor). From Viking to Crusader: The Scandinavians and Europe, 800-1200
A museum catalog that offers an extensive number of black-and-white photos of the exhibited items, along with essays and wonderful color photos. Out of print and hardly likely to be brought back into print, copies are expensive when available.
Rogers, Walton. Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate (The Archaeology of York)
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features textile production.
Rogers, Walton. Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate (The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds)
One of the profusely illustrated, phenomenal books from the York Archaeological Trust, showing finds from excavations in York, plans and small essays on the craft. This one features textile production.
Schietzel, Kurt. Spurensuche Haithabu
German language examination of artifgacts from hedeby, with marvelous line illustrations and photographs. An English translation is planned.
A REENACTOR WITHOUT AN OPINION IS LIKE A VIKING ON A BICYCLE
I first published this nearly twenty years agom but it is still amusing and pertunent…
The past was not safe. There was a reason that the average life expectancy was so low.
There were no regulations to ensure your safety. There were no guard rails. No warning label on swords (This Sword May Be Dangerous to your Health.) No nutrition sticker on the skyr you drank this morning. You were on your own, and you learned how to avoid dying or…well, you didn’t. See above about the average life expectancy.
People took responsibility for their own actions and probably kept an eye out for someone who would have torn that warning sticker off the sword.
Nowadays, we don’t. We take it for granted that if we do this, we take that or we wear this that we will live forever. People expect that they will be protected. Anything that might remotely be unsafe is not good, and all too many people justify an action by cloaking it in safety concerns, and there is probably a coterie of lawyers somewhere sending their kids through college by writing safety regulations. Many of these safely regulations are good. Others protect the lowest common denominator. Not all safety legislation and guidelines are foolish or superfluous, and I am certain not in favor of removing all such protection, but in many cases, they become absurd. What is needed is common sense and to tell when the accuracy of something must be compromised for safety concerns.
If today’s safety specialists had their way back then, when a Norse rode a bicycle into combat, he’d have had to wear a bike helmet and just paint the horns on the side. Now you might say that Norse never wore horned helmets, but then bicycle crash helmets had never been invented during the Viking Age and even the most rudimentary bicycles themselves were undreamt of. But let’s use bicycles and bicycle helmets in this essay.
Accuracy
Obviously, if you want any sort of accuracy, you would not use bicycles in your Viking-Age reenactment. Not even if you “disguise” it, so that it looks like a horse, or a goat, or a dragon, or anything else. What it will end up looking like will be a fairly nice variable speed Huffy with a furry blanket over it. Not exactly how you want to educate the tourists.
The bicycle did not exist. One can rant about thinking outside the box all her wants, but the fact that you can’t find proof that the Norse-Cycle didn’t exist—you’ll never find, “Olaf went off to the Fjords on his Huffy, so some people might affirm to some people that means that he might have had a bicycle. He didn’t. A person putting forth that theory is wrong. Misguided perhaps or stupid perhaps but wrong definitely. An Oseberg bicycle was not found, and bicycles weren’t sunk in that fjord by Roskilde and even Lee Majors didn’t ride a bicycle in The Norsemen. I don’t care. You can sort through Norse graves until Doomsday (some time in the eleventh century, I believe), you could squint at all the runestones you wanted to and you could read any translation of the Sagas you want, and you will not find a bicycle. The bicycle did not exist. Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: The-Bicycle-Did-Not-Exist.
Bicycles aren’t the only thing that the revisionist history and retro-documentation wants to believe exist. But unless you have a clear, uncomplicated description or proven artifact or some other unimpeachable authority, it did not exist. Washing does not make it so, believing crackpot theories does not make it so and finding something that looks like it if you squint at it from five miles off in the dark while wearing your Uncle Joel’s glasses does not make it so. Go try to make a good reproduction of one of the many Norse artefacts that do exist and quit wasting your time and everyone else’s by trying to prove that your fifth-grade art project was real.
Safety
Let’s forget the fact that bicycle helmets are as anachronistic as the bicycles. Without bicycles, bicycle helmets just would be superfluous. It’s much the same as if you had a grizyk helmet today, when gryziks won’t be invented for another 240 years. You could have chariot helmets or maybe waggon helmets or maybe horsie helmets. But they didn’t. Remember all those Frederick Remington paintings of cowboys wearing horsie helmets astride their cow ponies. I don’t either.
Considering the modern state of litigation, as well as the safety first mind set, common sense seldom comes into the equation in modern reenactment. There will always been risks that you have to take in order to do something. Just leaving the house can be dangerous. You might be struck by a bus, have a heart attack while walking down the street or be hit on the head by the remnants of a meteor. Chances are, though, that no dire thing will happen. You have to balance the possibility of harm with the probability.
However, most of what we deem safety issues are convenience issues. Wearing comfy shoes is a comfort issue to most persons. So is wearing spectacles, modern jewelry or that great bleeding goat in a pentangle that you got at the naked pagan fest. Do the benefits outweigh the compromises? Does it give an miseducational or unrealistic spin on history? Does it conflict with the established regulations of the group or the site? Is it a genuine safety concern, or is that just a rationale to retain comfort?
Most safety concerns, such as horsie helmets, must be carefully studied and examined with common sense. Only if a practice is, after due reflection, suitably unsafe to require a compromise should that compromise be made.
Compromise
Let’s say that there is a nearby reenctment. You ride a bicycle to it. You wear a bicycle helmet. But when you get to the event, keep the bicycle out of the living-history areas. Quite obviously, most people will have to use a bicycle, or some form of modern transportation, to get to a reenactment. That does not invalidate the historical concerns. It is a compromise that you have to make, and there are other compromises which you must make almost without thinking.
Safety is paramount in this hobby, if for no other reason than a preventable injury in such a controversial and ill-understood hobby would be disastrous. A pr nightmare even if it did not involve legal action. There are hard and fast rules about safety. Compromises are made all the time without us even thinking about them. No one—well, no reasonable person—will fault you for opting out of complete and total accuracy. Firepits are kept well away from the public behind ropelines although ropelines are hard accurate. In rebated steel combat, you hardly ever see a combatant bragging to a buddy how sharp his seax is or, for that instant, a Civil War reenactment that uses live rounds. There are hardly any groups that force you to butcher your own meat at the show, and even fewer make certain there are weevils in the bread. You don’t have to wear lead make-up if you’re Elizabethan, eat off lead pewter if you’re colonial or rip out fillings or inject yourself with some exotic infection. Compromise, as I noted, is common sense. Use it.
And be certain that you ride a bike to use wingas!
RELIGION IN REENACTING
I am an atheist. Not a pagan. Not a Protestant. Not a Jew, a Muslim nor a Zoroastrian.
Yet in my Anglo-Scandinavian impression, I wear a religious pendant about my neck. I have bound many books that reprint Psalms, Gospels and Homilies. I have written my own homilies and compiled a harmony or two. I have carved and constructing crucifixes for hanging, preaching crosses and reliquaries (well, my wife does use one as a jewelry/spinning box 🙂 ). Many people who do not know my personal lack of beliefs might muse happily to themselves, What a good true Christian!
A contradiction?
Hardly. Reenacting is, more than anything else, acting. Guess what? I am not an Anglo-Scandinavian. You are not a fierce Viking warrior. The woman at the loom is not a Norse or Englisc good wife. It is called acting. Pretending. Asking the audience to join in on being deceived. It does not matter how ridiculous my behavior might be. It was what was believed and done at the time. It is part of an accurate portrayal of the time! And I am proud to do it!
It is one of the reasons that I came to despise the anti-religious aspect of a medievalesque LARP. They said it was so that it did not offend anyone; I was offended by the fact that tried to force farby impressions and actions. I act out religious motifs in Regia presentations and do many other things that would give vapors to that medievalesque LARP.
Religion was so very important to many cultures of the past. Throughout history, religion has been important. The number of cultures not shaped by religion—or by a militant reaction to religion—is few indeed. Yet, in much of living history, religion is neglected, misinterpreted and at times forbidden. However, if the purpose of living history is to provide a realistic view of everyday life—as I believe it is—then the neglect of religion is not merely a hindrance to understanding but in many cases actually serves to dis-educate both participants and spectators. They approach and react to what they see as the Past in a way that is false and misleading. Forbidding any attempt to present such an important aspect of their culture is akin to a command, “Be authentic…but not too authentic.” It is akin, in my mind, to teaching the nineteenth-century flat earth theory in a medieval culture!
For example, in Regia, we have priests, monks and nuns. They are not hidden, but no one is offended. They add to the medieval environment. And that is why I emphasis the importance of religion in reenacting. (I have concentrated here and at reenactments on the Christian religion. Almost nothing is known about Norse and Englisc pagan religions because Christian endeavors and censorship has been so successful. Most of what is “known” has actually been invented by modern pagans!)
The only thing that really concerned me when I started to incorporate religious actions and artefacts into reenactment was whether it would offend the genuinely religious. I made inquiries to many sources. Those who responded said, “As long as you are being honest and not making a burlesque of your presentation, I have no problem with it.” Now that is akin to a film or a teevee show where some actor is portraying a cleric when he is anything but. Only the most radical and extremist of religious zealots will object to this, or to a Jew portraying a Christian or anything else that they see in an orinary film or teevee presentation. For that same reason, a reenactment that presents an honest interpetation of a religious pratice should not be condemned.
Be honest. Do not be a burlesque. Try to present another aspect of everyday life. Have fun, and be accurate. Research to insure that accuracy might be as enjoyable as researching historical garments, researching common food of the time, research what kind of swo…well, not not if sharp and shiny and blingy things are your most important concerns because they are sharp and shiny and blingy! 🙂
If you are atheist, agnostic, Latter Day Saint, a Baptist, a Catholic or a pagan, that should not affect how you portray the past. You should do your best to portray the past as it was.
So sing a hymn (the earliest music for the middle ages that we know), crown or marry participants, hold masses, pray over your troops and hold a religious ceremony for your village (we do have written ceremonies from the time that show us exactly what to do), it is all part of accurately re-creating history!
THE TEN FOOT APPROACH TO HISTORICAL ACCURACY
So many LARPists who like to brag about their accuracy while making it as simple and comfortable for the LARPists. We are talking about LARPists who ignore anachronisms such as sneakers or spectacles, who allow the use of synthetics since they think they look like wool, who just say it is no worth it to anal about accuracy since “no one will notice.”
However, the most aggravating LARPist justification for farb is the so-called “ten foot rule.” This assures the hap-hazard and lazy reenactor that anything they keep with ten feet (or another distance) is okay since no one will notice any inaccuracies. Of course, beyond the actual inaccuracy—which some LARPists go to great lengths to minimize or to justify—there are three reasons why the Ten Foot Rule should bee avoided.
It Normalizes Farbishness
The LARPist becomes Erique Claudin! You become satisfied with farb as long as it can disguise your face. Your display is now is just something that you can hide behind, and you become eager to hide all your farb behind scars of your own farb.
The Disguise of Farb Becomes More Important than Accuracy
The focus of the game changes from wanting things to become more accurate. You come to be intrigued by developing something that will fool onlookers at ten feet and not by doing the accurate thing. You are not so nearly interested by research you were earlier found intriguing or by finding an accurate way to accomplish things.
It Makes you Satisfied and not Want to Improve
Living history never ends. At least in theory. Reenactors are always learning new things and should never be satisfied with what they know. At least should. One should want to learn more rather than be satisfied with what you know and to come up with new ways to disguise it. Being able to hide your shortcomings means that you need not be as concerned with accuracy or with learning as you once were.
One might think that I do not think that the ten-foot rule is a good idea. For me, I certainly do. There are plenty of reenactors out there who do see it as a good thing. They proudly state that anal accuracy should be disregarded and that the hobby should just be what is enjoyable for them. And that is the philosophy that they gleefully share with MoPs. It is very difficult though for me to call them reenactors, participating in serious living history. What they are most proud of, I am not, and I can only hope that readers out there agree with me!
folo1
The Anglo-Scandinavian Chronicles 