Norrskensfesten
This past weekend was Norrskensfesten, Frostheim's annual big event, and it was the second annual Norrskensbard competition. I was the autocrat again this year, and again used the format inspired by the Mists Bardic Competition event, with an all day feast interspersed with bardic competition rounds and other entertainment.
I had originally planned to head to site around mid-day on Friday, so I would have time to do a liesurily set-up and cooking dinner, and then would have time after people arrived to do things like sew the new Norrsken tablet-woven band onto the Norrskensbards cloak. However, the car we bought this summer for carrying stuff to SCA events had been showing a warning light and not sounding quite right, so we have been avoiding moving it till it could be looked at, and we booked an appointment with the shop he has been using for many years. However, the shop has been quite busy, and the earliest appointment we were able to get was for Thursday before the event. Then, during that week they called us to say that some other repairs had gone way over time and offset their schedule, so they had called in a favour with another shop and transferred our booking to them for the same time. This turned out to be a good thing, as the other shop is only a 20 minute walk from my office, so I was able to bring the car in and then just walk to work (the original shop is a 20 minute drive from my office, which means taking two cars and driving one back).
Thursday afternoon they called to say they had found the problem, that they had one of the needed parts in house, but the other wouldn't arrive till the following morning, but they still hoped to be done with the job by noon on Friday. Thursday evening was Frostheim's craft night, during which I helped one of our new guys sew together the costume we had cut out the previous week (he drove the machine, I pinned the pieces together and handed them ready to sew). Then O. and I stayed up later than we should have talking, as we hadn't had a chance to do so earlier in the week, after which I got like four hours of sleep and he went home to do some school work, because he was inspired to do so.
Friday morning I got up and finished the last of the packing and had everything ready to go by the time my friend Å. arrived at mid-day (he picked up O. on the way in, since O. had just missed his bus. Then we took Å's car to the shop, where I picked up my car, returned home, and the three of us loaded everything up into both cars (which meant that I could see out of the back window a bit). Then, after a quick second lunch, I went straight to site, and the boys went to fetch V. and L.
This gave me time to unload all of my stuff, set up my nest in the corner back-stage with a movable shelf to enclose my space and organize my stuff, get the foods out, and start work on dinner before the second car arrived. Then I whipped the cream into butter, used the butter milk to make reiska (a fairly quick flat-baked Finnish bread that, these days, is often done with baking powder in either oat or rye flour, but my grandmother always did it with yeast, and often mixed the oats with wheat flour--I opted for a mix of four grains (wheat, spelt, rye, and oat) for this weekend's version), and put L., R., and A. (who had arrived just after Å.'s car full) to work making the soup. By the time we had people looking for food the soup (veg and bean) was ready, the bread baked and the sausage cut up. It was a bit later than I would have preferred to have eaten (18:30), but everyone else was happy. After I ate I made a second batch of bread, as the first was going fast.
Once I had eaten and gotten the kitchen clean and ready for H. to start his pre-cooking for the feast I had thought to start sewing the trim onto the cloak, but instead I never really got a chance to sit down the rest of the evening, as people kept coming to me with questions. The fencers had a candle lit fencing tournament in the hall, the hot tub was enjoyed by some people, others worked on projects, and/or sang songs. As it got close to midnight a couple of the musicians started playing Swedish folk music, so I, and the girlfriend of one of them, danced for a while, neither of us caring that the music and dance style is a few centuries out of period, it is still fun. Then I did my yoga for the day, followed by some acroyoga practice with E., and managed to get to bed around 01:00. By then I was totally exhausted, yet had problems falling asleep as my legs were aching/cramping up a bit, since I had been on my feet pretty much non stop (other than the yoga and acroyoga poses in which my feet leave the ground) since arriving on site sometime after 15:00. O., on the other hand, opted to stay up late talking with people, and didn't join me in bed till around 04:00, and he reports that he couldn't really sleep either, as he found the bed both too warm and too small.
I got up at 06:30 on Saturday, so I would have time to do my morning situps before getting up and starting breakfast, which involved more fresh-churned butter and reiska, hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, apples, etc. I managed to get the breakfast mess in the kitchen cleaned up before H. arrived to start the feast cooking. Around that time the fighters went outside to do their morning tournamnet, and we started setting up tables in the hall for the feast. Before the tournament the Crown Prince told me that he intended to keep fighting for as long as he could talk people into playing with him after the tourney, so if he wasn't ready yet when the feast started we should start without him. So we did.
The hall we were using is decent sized, and there was no problems last year just setting the tables in a horse-shoe ring around the edge of the hall leaving an open place in the middle for dancing and performances. However, last year there were only 70 people registered for the event, and this year we were 100. Therefore, in order to keep that open space in the middle I placed three tables on the stage for high table. Their Royal Highnesses and the outgoing Norrskensbard sat in the middle table, and we six competitors sat on the two side tables. My household was well represented at high table. My table included me, my apprentice A., and lord_kjar, and my minion sat at the other table with the other two entrants (and the small son of one of them, since his wife had charge of their other child at one of the tables on the floor).
The sequence of events went: serve the food, slight pause to give everyone a chance to at least taste their food, then a round of the competition, followed immediately by a long-dance (farendole style), which lead the dancers to the voting station. Each entrant had a glass jar covered with paper and their name written on it, and after each round people would drop one of the beans they had received when they checked in into the jar of their choice (the gold bean was for round 1: period piece, the silver for round 2: piece in a period style, the blue bean for round 3: on the theme of nature, and the white bean for the three words out of a hat). After voting there was a short break before the next round of food. This pattern was for the first, second, fourth, and fifth courses of the banquet. To break the day up after third course we had a performance by the musician of Luleå Nycklehearpa plus all the other musicians on site who were able to join in on the songs, during which I called dancing. We hadn't taken any time to teach, just jumped in, and even though there were a few people who didn't already know the dances, it went really well. After that musical interlude their Royal Highnesses had a short court, where they distributed the scrolls that hadn't made it north when the Crown was up here this summer presenting awards, and they also gave tokens of welcome to the new members. I was grateful for that break, as I actually wound up drifting on the edge of sleep during the court, which gave me enough energy to continue participating in the competition.
I was really happy with the competition--it seemed like all six of us were better prepared than were the four of us who entered last year, and the overall quality of performances was better. I got some good feedback on my poems and presentation, and my wonderful apprentice Astrid won, which made me very proud. (There was an additional proud moment when it was revealed that each of the four rounds had a different winner, and the winners were the four of us in the contest from my household, especially as one of the other entrants has an amazing voice and is able to do Kulning (the distinctive loud, musical, calls women did to call the cows home).
For my period piece I opted to just play Turdion on the dulcimer, since I could do that, and I ran out of time to actually learn the 12th century sestina I had hoped to use. For my piece in a period style I used the Prolouge to the Canturbury tales (my last-year's period piece) as the inspiration for a Prologue to Double Wars poem. This was the round I won, which didn't surprise me, as I had won the period piece the year before. My singing is now passable, after years of singing in choir, but it isn't impressive. On the other hand, compared to the other entrants, I am better at recitation, with good projecting, vocal variety, body language, etc. My piece on the theme of nature was my song "Winter time it has arrived" (to the tune of Summer is acumin in), which would have gone better if I had made more time to learn the new verse I wrote the week before the event, since I forgot a line and needed to pause and start that bit over. My three words out of a hat were ever so much fun. Before we drew our words the Crown Prince had commented to me "none of the words will be shorter than 'trebuchet'". So, of course, I had to use it.
I had planned to do a song for my 3 words piece, and had chosen Bacche, bene, venies as the tune to use. However, I wound up drawing Bacchus as one of my three words, and just couldn't bring myself to use that tune, as it would have felt like cheating. Though, in hind sight, I suppose I could have just written a new verse and used the original chorus, but at the time it seemed unacceptable to do that. So, instead, I wrote a quick, very silly, story in iambic pentameter (these things happen when that is the form one used for one's piece in a period style), using as many odd words as I could toss in (including trebuchet), so that people would have it harder to guess the three words.
Towards the end of the feast E. and I did our acroyoga performance. We opted for only a slight variation on previous acroyoga performances, due to pretty much no time to plan or practice before the event, but stil got some good feedback, and at least two different Phire members commented to me about liking the fact that we added in some new stuff, so, clearly, doing the changes was a good thing.
After the feast there was a workshop in playing the Finnish This past weekend was Norrskensfesten, Frostheim's annual big event, and it was the second annual Norrskensbard competition. I was the autocrat again this year, and again used the format inspired by the Mists Bardic Competition event, with an all day feast interspersed with bardic competition rounds and other entertainment.
I had originally planned to head to site around mid-day on Friday, so I would have time to do a liesurily set-up and cooking dinner, and then would have time after people arrived to do things like sew the new Norrsken tablet-woven band onto the Norrskensbards cloak. However, the car we bought this summer for carrying stuff to SCA events had been showing a warning light and not sounding quite right, so we have been avoiding moving it till it could be looked at, and we booked an appointment with the shop he has been using for many years. However, the shop has been quite busy, and the earliest appointment we were able to get was for Thursday before the event. Then, during that week they called us to say that some other repairs had gone way over time and offset their schedule, so they had called in a favour with another shop and transferred our booking to them for the same time. This turned out to be a good thing, as the other shop is only a 20 minute walk from my office, so I was able to bring the car in and then just walk to work (the original shop is a 20 minute drive from my office, which means taking two cars and driving one back).
Thursday afternoon they called to say they had found the problem, that they had one of the needed parts in house, but the other wouldn't arrive till the following morning, but they still hoped to be done with the job by noon on Friday. Thursday evening was Frostheim's craft night, during which I helped one of our new guys sew together the costume we had cut out the previous week (he drove the machine, I pinned the pieces together and handed them ready to sew). Then O. and I stayed up later than we should have talking, as we hadn't had a chance to do so earlier in the week, after which I got like four hours of sleep and he went home to do some school work, because he was inspired to do so.
Friday morning I got up and finished the last of the packing and had everything ready to go by the time my friend Å. arrived at mid-day (he picked up O. on the way in, since O. had just missed his bus. Then we took Å's car to the shop, where I picked up my car, returned home, and the three of us loaded everything up into both cars (which meant that I could see out of the back window a bit). Then, after a quick second lunch, I went straight to site, and the boys went to fetch V. and L.
This gave me time to unload all of my stuff, set up my nest in the corner back-stage with a movable shelf to enclose my space and organize my stuff, get the foods out, and start work on dinner before the second car arrived. Then I whipped the cream into butter, used the butter milk to make reiska (a fairly quick flat-baked Finnish bread that, these days, is often done with baking powder in either oat or rye flour, but my grandmother always did it with yeast, and often mixed the oats with wheat flour--I opted for a mix of four grains (wheat, spelt, rye, and oat) for this weekend's version), and put L., R., and A. (who had arrived just after Å.'s car full) to work making the soup. By the time we had people looking for food the soup (veg and bean) was ready, the bread baked and the sausage cut up. It was a bit later than I would have preferred to have eaten (18:30), but everyone else was happy. After I ate I made a second batch of bread, as the first was going fast.
Once I had eaten and gotten the kitchen clean and ready for H. to start his pre-cooking for the feast I had thought to start sewing the trim onto the cloak, but instead I never really got a chance to sit down the rest of the evening, as people kept coming to me with questions. The fencers had a candle lit fencing tournament in the hall, the hot tub was enjoyed by some people, others worked on projects, and/or sang songs. As it got close to midnight a couple of the musicians started playing Swedish folk music, so I, and the girlfriend of one of them, danced for a while, neither of us caring that the music and dance style is a few centuries out of period, it is still fun. Then I did my yoga for the day, followed by some acroyoga practice with E., and managed to get to bed around 01:00. By then I was totally exhausted, yet had problems falling asleep as my legs were aching/cramping up a bit, since I had been on my feet pretty much non stop (other than the yoga and acroyoga poses in which my feet leave the ground) since arriving on site sometime after 15:00. O., on the other hand, opted to stay up late talking with people, and didn't join me in bed till around 04:00, and he reports that he couldn't really sleep either, as he found the bed both too warm and too small.
I got up at 06:30 on Saturday, so I would have time to do my morning situps before getting up and starting breakfast, which involved more fresh-churned butter and reiska, hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, apples, etc. I managed to get the breakfast mess in the kitchen cleaned up before H. arrived to start the feast cooking. Around that time the fighters went outside to do their morning tournamnet, and we started setting up tables in the hall for the feast. Before the tournament the Crown Prince told me that he intended to keep fighting for as long as he could talk people into playing with him after the tourney, so if he wasn't ready yet when the feast started we should start without him. So we did.
The hall we were using is decent sized, and there was no problems last year just setting the tables in a horse-shoe ring around the edge of the hall leaving an open place in the middle for dancing and performances. However, last year there were only 70 people registered for the event, and this year we were 100. Therefore, in order to keep that open space in the middle I placed three tables on the stage for high table. Their Royal Highnesses and the outgoing Norrskensbard sat in the middle table, and we six competitors sat on the two side tables. My household was well represented at high table. My table included me, my apprentice A., and lord_kjar, and my minion sat at the other table with the other two entrants (and the small son of one of them, since his wife had charge of their other child at one of the tables on the floor).
The sequence of events went: serve the food, slight pause to give everyone a chance to at least taste their food, then a round of the competition, followed immediately by a long-dance (farendole style), which lead the dancers to the voting station. Each entrant had a glass jar covered with paper and their name written on it, and after each round people would drop one of the beans they had received when they checked in into the jar of their choice (the gold bean was for round 1: period piece, the silver for round 2: piece in a period style, the blue bean for round 3: on the theme of nature, and the white bean for the three words out of a hat). After voting there was a short break before the next round of food. This pattern was for the first, second, fourth, and fifth courses of the banquet. To break the day up after third course we had a performance by the musician of Luleå Nycklehearpa plus all the other musicians on site who were able to join in on the songs, during which I called dancing. We hadn't taken any time to teach, just jumped in, and even though there were a few people who didn't already know the dances, it went really well. After that musical interlude their Royal Highnesses had a short court, where they distributed the scrolls that hadn't made it north when the Crown was up here this summer presenting awards, and they also gave tokens of welcome to the new members. I was grateful for that break, as I actually wound up drifting on the edge of sleep during the court, which gave me enough energy to continue participating in the competition.
I was really happy with the competition--it seemed like all six of us were better prepared than were the four of us who entered last year, and the overall quality of performances was better. I got some good feedback on my poems and presentation, and my wonderful apprentice Astrid won, which made me very proud. (There was an additional proud moment when it was revealed that each of the four rounds had a different winner, and the winners were the four of us in the contest from my household, especially as one of the other entrants has an amazing voice and is able to do Kulning (the distinctive loud, musical, calls women did to call the cows home).
For my period piece I opted to just play Turdion on the dulcimer, since I could do that, and I ran out of time to actually learn the 12th century sestina I had hoped to use. For my piece in a period style I used the Prolouge to the Canturbury tales (my last-year's period piece) as the inspiration for a Prologue to Double Wars poem. This was the round I won, which didn't surprise me, as I had won the period piece the year before. My singing is now passable, after years of singing in choir, but it isn't impressive. On the other hand, compared to the other entrants, I am better at recitation, with good projecting, vocal variety, body language, etc. My piece on the theme of nature was my song "Winter time it has arrived" (to the tune of Summer is acumin in), which would have gone better if I had made more time to learn the new verse I wrote the week before the event, since I forgot a line and needed to pause and start that bit over. My three words out of a hat were ever so much fun. Before we drew our words the Crown Prince had commented to me "none of the words will be shorter than 'trebuchet'", so, of course, it was necessary for me to use that word.
I had planned to write a song for my three words, and had selected bacce benne venies as the tune. However, I drew "Baccus" as my first word, and just couldn't bring myself to use that tune. Yes, I could have kept the original chorus and done a new verse, but that would have felt like cheating, so instead I just wrote a poem in the same iambic pentameter I used for the piece in a period style. It was a short, very silly story, into which I squeezed as many odd words as possible to make it harder for the audience to guess which words were compulsory.
Towards the end of the evening E. and I did an acroyoga performance. We opted for only a slight variation on previous acroyoga performances, due to pretty much no time to plan or practice before the event, but stil got some good feedback, and at least two different Phire members commented to me about liking the fact that we added in some new stuff, so, clearly, doing the changes was a good thing. We are now working on yet more variations for a performance at my 50th birthday party next month.
After the feast there was a workshop in playing the Finish Kantele, which seemed to be well attended (I so didn't have the energy to participate), and was mostly full of musicians, so the teacher really enjoyed the class, and I suspect that she will come over from Finland for our events again. After that workshop Master S., who had missed the feast due to staying home with a sick child, and then came out to site after his wife and daughter went home, called people to come listen to some of his stories, and he had quite a circle of people at his feet. I didn't have the energy at that point to concentrate on understanding the Swedish, so I did my yoga in the corner and enjoyed listening to the rhythm of what he was saying. His storytelling continued longer than did my yoga, and I was feeling really sleepy, so I went out to the hot tub to see if a bit of hot water would keep my legs from cramping up when I slept. Sadly, the tub was only about 36 C, which feels pleasantly hot when one gets in, but isn't quite hot enough to make the muscles truly relax, so while it helped, it wasn't a total cure.
After my soak I went to bed (just before midnight), and slept in to 07:30 before getting up to make breakfast (including more fresh churned butter and reiska) for people. Then I started on cleaning and organizing to head home. interspersed with pauses to visit with people coming over to say farewell. Enough people pitched in to help that I managed to leave site sometime between 14:00 and 15:00, and then went home to curl up with a book and a bowl of popcorn before putting away more than half of the stuff. Then I did my yoga and went to bed really early (20:15!).
Monday after work I managed to photograph all of the lost and found, and put away a few more things, but Tuesday was Phire practice and Choir after work, and I went to bed straight after getting home, so today will be the rest of the event recovery.
I had originally planned to head to site around mid-day on Friday, so I would have time to do a liesurily set-up and cooking dinner, and then would have time after people arrived to do things like sew the new Norrsken tablet-woven band onto the Norrskensbards cloak. However, the car we bought this summer for carrying stuff to SCA events had been showing a warning light and not sounding quite right, so we have been avoiding moving it till it could be looked at, and we booked an appointment with the shop he has been using for many years. However, the shop has been quite busy, and the earliest appointment we were able to get was for Thursday before the event. Then, during that week they called us to say that some other repairs had gone way over time and offset their schedule, so they had called in a favour with another shop and transferred our booking to them for the same time. This turned out to be a good thing, as the other shop is only a 20 minute walk from my office, so I was able to bring the car in and then just walk to work (the original shop is a 20 minute drive from my office, which means taking two cars and driving one back).
Thursday afternoon they called to say they had found the problem, that they had one of the needed parts in house, but the other wouldn't arrive till the following morning, but they still hoped to be done with the job by noon on Friday. Thursday evening was Frostheim's craft night, during which I helped one of our new guys sew together the costume we had cut out the previous week (he drove the machine, I pinned the pieces together and handed them ready to sew). Then O. and I stayed up later than we should have talking, as we hadn't had a chance to do so earlier in the week, after which I got like four hours of sleep and he went home to do some school work, because he was inspired to do so.
Friday morning I got up and finished the last of the packing and had everything ready to go by the time my friend Å. arrived at mid-day (he picked up O. on the way in, since O. had just missed his bus. Then we took Å's car to the shop, where I picked up my car, returned home, and the three of us loaded everything up into both cars (which meant that I could see out of the back window a bit). Then, after a quick second lunch, I went straight to site, and the boys went to fetch V. and L.
This gave me time to unload all of my stuff, set up my nest in the corner back-stage with a movable shelf to enclose my space and organize my stuff, get the foods out, and start work on dinner before the second car arrived. Then I whipped the cream into butter, used the butter milk to make reiska (a fairly quick flat-baked Finnish bread that, these days, is often done with baking powder in either oat or rye flour, but my grandmother always did it with yeast, and often mixed the oats with wheat flour--I opted for a mix of four grains (wheat, spelt, rye, and oat) for this weekend's version), and put L., R., and A. (who had arrived just after Å.'s car full) to work making the soup. By the time we had people looking for food the soup (veg and bean) was ready, the bread baked and the sausage cut up. It was a bit later than I would have preferred to have eaten (18:30), but everyone else was happy. After I ate I made a second batch of bread, as the first was going fast.
Once I had eaten and gotten the kitchen clean and ready for H. to start his pre-cooking for the feast I had thought to start sewing the trim onto the cloak, but instead I never really got a chance to sit down the rest of the evening, as people kept coming to me with questions. The fencers had a candle lit fencing tournament in the hall, the hot tub was enjoyed by some people, others worked on projects, and/or sang songs. As it got close to midnight a couple of the musicians started playing Swedish folk music, so I, and the girlfriend of one of them, danced for a while, neither of us caring that the music and dance style is a few centuries out of period, it is still fun. Then I did my yoga for the day, followed by some acroyoga practice with E., and managed to get to bed around 01:00. By then I was totally exhausted, yet had problems falling asleep as my legs were aching/cramping up a bit, since I had been on my feet pretty much non stop (other than the yoga and acroyoga poses in which my feet leave the ground) since arriving on site sometime after 15:00. O., on the other hand, opted to stay up late talking with people, and didn't join me in bed till around 04:00, and he reports that he couldn't really sleep either, as he found the bed both too warm and too small.
I got up at 06:30 on Saturday, so I would have time to do my morning situps before getting up and starting breakfast, which involved more fresh-churned butter and reiska, hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, apples, etc. I managed to get the breakfast mess in the kitchen cleaned up before H. arrived to start the feast cooking. Around that time the fighters went outside to do their morning tournamnet, and we started setting up tables in the hall for the feast. Before the tournament the Crown Prince told me that he intended to keep fighting for as long as he could talk people into playing with him after the tourney, so if he wasn't ready yet when the feast started we should start without him. So we did.
The hall we were using is decent sized, and there was no problems last year just setting the tables in a horse-shoe ring around the edge of the hall leaving an open place in the middle for dancing and performances. However, last year there were only 70 people registered for the event, and this year we were 100. Therefore, in order to keep that open space in the middle I placed three tables on the stage for high table. Their Royal Highnesses and the outgoing Norrskensbard sat in the middle table, and we six competitors sat on the two side tables. My household was well represented at high table. My table included me, my apprentice A., and lord_kjar, and my minion sat at the other table with the other two entrants (and the small son of one of them, since his wife had charge of their other child at one of the tables on the floor).
The sequence of events went: serve the food, slight pause to give everyone a chance to at least taste their food, then a round of the competition, followed immediately by a long-dance (farendole style), which lead the dancers to the voting station. Each entrant had a glass jar covered with paper and their name written on it, and after each round people would drop one of the beans they had received when they checked in into the jar of their choice (the gold bean was for round 1: period piece, the silver for round 2: piece in a period style, the blue bean for round 3: on the theme of nature, and the white bean for the three words out of a hat). After voting there was a short break before the next round of food. This pattern was for the first, second, fourth, and fifth courses of the banquet. To break the day up after third course we had a performance by the musician of Luleå Nycklehearpa plus all the other musicians on site who were able to join in on the songs, during which I called dancing. We hadn't taken any time to teach, just jumped in, and even though there were a few people who didn't already know the dances, it went really well. After that musical interlude their Royal Highnesses had a short court, where they distributed the scrolls that hadn't made it north when the Crown was up here this summer presenting awards, and they also gave tokens of welcome to the new members. I was grateful for that break, as I actually wound up drifting on the edge of sleep during the court, which gave me enough energy to continue participating in the competition.
I was really happy with the competition--it seemed like all six of us were better prepared than were the four of us who entered last year, and the overall quality of performances was better. I got some good feedback on my poems and presentation, and my wonderful apprentice Astrid won, which made me very proud. (There was an additional proud moment when it was revealed that each of the four rounds had a different winner, and the winners were the four of us in the contest from my household, especially as one of the other entrants has an amazing voice and is able to do Kulning (the distinctive loud, musical, calls women did to call the cows home).
For my period piece I opted to just play Turdion on the dulcimer, since I could do that, and I ran out of time to actually learn the 12th century sestina I had hoped to use. For my piece in a period style I used the Prolouge to the Canturbury tales (my last-year's period piece) as the inspiration for a Prologue to Double Wars poem. This was the round I won, which didn't surprise me, as I had won the period piece the year before. My singing is now passable, after years of singing in choir, but it isn't impressive. On the other hand, compared to the other entrants, I am better at recitation, with good projecting, vocal variety, body language, etc. My piece on the theme of nature was my song "Winter time it has arrived" (to the tune of Summer is acumin in), which would have gone better if I had made more time to learn the new verse I wrote the week before the event, since I forgot a line and needed to pause and start that bit over. My three words out of a hat were ever so much fun. Before we drew our words the Crown Prince had commented to me "none of the words will be shorter than 'trebuchet'". So, of course, I had to use it.
I had planned to do a song for my 3 words piece, and had chosen Bacche, bene, venies as the tune to use. However, I wound up drawing Bacchus as one of my three words, and just couldn't bring myself to use that tune, as it would have felt like cheating. Though, in hind sight, I suppose I could have just written a new verse and used the original chorus, but at the time it seemed unacceptable to do that. So, instead, I wrote a quick, very silly, story in iambic pentameter (these things happen when that is the form one used for one's piece in a period style), using as many odd words as I could toss in (including trebuchet), so that people would have it harder to guess the three words.
Towards the end of the feast E. and I did our acroyoga performance. We opted for only a slight variation on previous acroyoga performances, due to pretty much no time to plan or practice before the event, but stil got some good feedback, and at least two different Phire members commented to me about liking the fact that we added in some new stuff, so, clearly, doing the changes was a good thing.
After the feast there was a workshop in playing the Finnish This past weekend was Norrskensfesten, Frostheim's annual big event, and it was the second annual Norrskensbard competition. I was the autocrat again this year, and again used the format inspired by the Mists Bardic Competition event, with an all day feast interspersed with bardic competition rounds and other entertainment.
I had originally planned to head to site around mid-day on Friday, so I would have time to do a liesurily set-up and cooking dinner, and then would have time after people arrived to do things like sew the new Norrsken tablet-woven band onto the Norrskensbards cloak. However, the car we bought this summer for carrying stuff to SCA events had been showing a warning light and not sounding quite right, so we have been avoiding moving it till it could be looked at, and we booked an appointment with the shop he has been using for many years. However, the shop has been quite busy, and the earliest appointment we were able to get was for Thursday before the event. Then, during that week they called us to say that some other repairs had gone way over time and offset their schedule, so they had called in a favour with another shop and transferred our booking to them for the same time. This turned out to be a good thing, as the other shop is only a 20 minute walk from my office, so I was able to bring the car in and then just walk to work (the original shop is a 20 minute drive from my office, which means taking two cars and driving one back).
Thursday afternoon they called to say they had found the problem, that they had one of the needed parts in house, but the other wouldn't arrive till the following morning, but they still hoped to be done with the job by noon on Friday. Thursday evening was Frostheim's craft night, during which I helped one of our new guys sew together the costume we had cut out the previous week (he drove the machine, I pinned the pieces together and handed them ready to sew). Then O. and I stayed up later than we should have talking, as we hadn't had a chance to do so earlier in the week, after which I got like four hours of sleep and he went home to do some school work, because he was inspired to do so.
Friday morning I got up and finished the last of the packing and had everything ready to go by the time my friend Å. arrived at mid-day (he picked up O. on the way in, since O. had just missed his bus. Then we took Å's car to the shop, where I picked up my car, returned home, and the three of us loaded everything up into both cars (which meant that I could see out of the back window a bit). Then, after a quick second lunch, I went straight to site, and the boys went to fetch V. and L.
This gave me time to unload all of my stuff, set up my nest in the corner back-stage with a movable shelf to enclose my space and organize my stuff, get the foods out, and start work on dinner before the second car arrived. Then I whipped the cream into butter, used the butter milk to make reiska (a fairly quick flat-baked Finnish bread that, these days, is often done with baking powder in either oat or rye flour, but my grandmother always did it with yeast, and often mixed the oats with wheat flour--I opted for a mix of four grains (wheat, spelt, rye, and oat) for this weekend's version), and put L., R., and A. (who had arrived just after Å.'s car full) to work making the soup. By the time we had people looking for food the soup (veg and bean) was ready, the bread baked and the sausage cut up. It was a bit later than I would have preferred to have eaten (18:30), but everyone else was happy. After I ate I made a second batch of bread, as the first was going fast.
Once I had eaten and gotten the kitchen clean and ready for H. to start his pre-cooking for the feast I had thought to start sewing the trim onto the cloak, but instead I never really got a chance to sit down the rest of the evening, as people kept coming to me with questions. The fencers had a candle lit fencing tournament in the hall, the hot tub was enjoyed by some people, others worked on projects, and/or sang songs. As it got close to midnight a couple of the musicians started playing Swedish folk music, so I, and the girlfriend of one of them, danced for a while, neither of us caring that the music and dance style is a few centuries out of period, it is still fun. Then I did my yoga for the day, followed by some acroyoga practice with E., and managed to get to bed around 01:00. By then I was totally exhausted, yet had problems falling asleep as my legs were aching/cramping up a bit, since I had been on my feet pretty much non stop (other than the yoga and acroyoga poses in which my feet leave the ground) since arriving on site sometime after 15:00. O., on the other hand, opted to stay up late talking with people, and didn't join me in bed till around 04:00, and he reports that he couldn't really sleep either, as he found the bed both too warm and too small.
I got up at 06:30 on Saturday, so I would have time to do my morning situps before getting up and starting breakfast, which involved more fresh-churned butter and reiska, hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, apples, etc. I managed to get the breakfast mess in the kitchen cleaned up before H. arrived to start the feast cooking. Around that time the fighters went outside to do their morning tournamnet, and we started setting up tables in the hall for the feast. Before the tournament the Crown Prince told me that he intended to keep fighting for as long as he could talk people into playing with him after the tourney, so if he wasn't ready yet when the feast started we should start without him. So we did.
The hall we were using is decent sized, and there was no problems last year just setting the tables in a horse-shoe ring around the edge of the hall leaving an open place in the middle for dancing and performances. However, last year there were only 70 people registered for the event, and this year we were 100. Therefore, in order to keep that open space in the middle I placed three tables on the stage for high table. Their Royal Highnesses and the outgoing Norrskensbard sat in the middle table, and we six competitors sat on the two side tables. My household was well represented at high table. My table included me, my apprentice A., and lord_kjar, and my minion sat at the other table with the other two entrants (and the small son of one of them, since his wife had charge of their other child at one of the tables on the floor).
The sequence of events went: serve the food, slight pause to give everyone a chance to at least taste their food, then a round of the competition, followed immediately by a long-dance (farendole style), which lead the dancers to the voting station. Each entrant had a glass jar covered with paper and their name written on it, and after each round people would drop one of the beans they had received when they checked in into the jar of their choice (the gold bean was for round 1: period piece, the silver for round 2: piece in a period style, the blue bean for round 3: on the theme of nature, and the white bean for the three words out of a hat). After voting there was a short break before the next round of food. This pattern was for the first, second, fourth, and fifth courses of the banquet. To break the day up after third course we had a performance by the musician of Luleå Nycklehearpa plus all the other musicians on site who were able to join in on the songs, during which I called dancing. We hadn't taken any time to teach, just jumped in, and even though there were a few people who didn't already know the dances, it went really well. After that musical interlude their Royal Highnesses had a short court, where they distributed the scrolls that hadn't made it north when the Crown was up here this summer presenting awards, and they also gave tokens of welcome to the new members. I was grateful for that break, as I actually wound up drifting on the edge of sleep during the court, which gave me enough energy to continue participating in the competition.
I was really happy with the competition--it seemed like all six of us were better prepared than were the four of us who entered last year, and the overall quality of performances was better. I got some good feedback on my poems and presentation, and my wonderful apprentice Astrid won, which made me very proud. (There was an additional proud moment when it was revealed that each of the four rounds had a different winner, and the winners were the four of us in the contest from my household, especially as one of the other entrants has an amazing voice and is able to do Kulning (the distinctive loud, musical, calls women did to call the cows home).
For my period piece I opted to just play Turdion on the dulcimer, since I could do that, and I ran out of time to actually learn the 12th century sestina I had hoped to use. For my piece in a period style I used the Prolouge to the Canturbury tales (my last-year's period piece) as the inspiration for a Prologue to Double Wars poem. This was the round I won, which didn't surprise me, as I had won the period piece the year before. My singing is now passable, after years of singing in choir, but it isn't impressive. On the other hand, compared to the other entrants, I am better at recitation, with good projecting, vocal variety, body language, etc. My piece on the theme of nature was my song "Winter time it has arrived" (to the tune of Summer is acumin in), which would have gone better if I had made more time to learn the new verse I wrote the week before the event, since I forgot a line and needed to pause and start that bit over. My three words out of a hat were ever so much fun. Before we drew our words the Crown Prince had commented to me "none of the words will be shorter than 'trebuchet'", so, of course, it was necessary for me to use that word.
I had planned to write a song for my three words, and had selected bacce benne venies as the tune. However, I drew "Baccus" as my first word, and just couldn't bring myself to use that tune. Yes, I could have kept the original chorus and done a new verse, but that would have felt like cheating, so instead I just wrote a poem in the same iambic pentameter I used for the piece in a period style. It was a short, very silly story, into which I squeezed as many odd words as possible to make it harder for the audience to guess which words were compulsory.
Towards the end of the evening E. and I did an acroyoga performance. We opted for only a slight variation on previous acroyoga performances, due to pretty much no time to plan or practice before the event, but stil got some good feedback, and at least two different Phire members commented to me about liking the fact that we added in some new stuff, so, clearly, doing the changes was a good thing. We are now working on yet more variations for a performance at my 50th birthday party next month.
After the feast there was a workshop in playing the Finish Kantele, which seemed to be well attended (I so didn't have the energy to participate), and was mostly full of musicians, so the teacher really enjoyed the class, and I suspect that she will come over from Finland for our events again. After that workshop Master S., who had missed the feast due to staying home with a sick child, and then came out to site after his wife and daughter went home, called people to come listen to some of his stories, and he had quite a circle of people at his feet. I didn't have the energy at that point to concentrate on understanding the Swedish, so I did my yoga in the corner and enjoyed listening to the rhythm of what he was saying. His storytelling continued longer than did my yoga, and I was feeling really sleepy, so I went out to the hot tub to see if a bit of hot water would keep my legs from cramping up when I slept. Sadly, the tub was only about 36 C, which feels pleasantly hot when one gets in, but isn't quite hot enough to make the muscles truly relax, so while it helped, it wasn't a total cure.
After my soak I went to bed (just before midnight), and slept in to 07:30 before getting up to make breakfast (including more fresh churned butter and reiska) for people. Then I started on cleaning and organizing to head home. interspersed with pauses to visit with people coming over to say farewell. Enough people pitched in to help that I managed to leave site sometime between 14:00 and 15:00, and then went home to curl up with a book and a bowl of popcorn before putting away more than half of the stuff. Then I did my yoga and went to bed really early (20:15!).
Monday after work I managed to photograph all of the lost and found, and put away a few more things, but Tuesday was Phire practice and Choir after work, and I went to bed straight after getting home, so today will be the rest of the event recovery.