This is Crag Duggin
for the Calontir Living History series talking to Duke Sir Finnvarr de
Taahe. It is Friday night at Pennsic 19
at Cooper's Lake.
CD: I'm going to recall first a night about three
or four Pennsics back where I first noticed that instead of being a continuous
long, loud party that lasted all night, suddenly people started going to bed at
midnight and a few of us were wandering around in the fog about 11:30 and I
bumped into Finnvarr. Pavel Yosevich was
with me and we bumped into Ternon de Caer Liant. We stood around at a virtually quiet Pennsic
on a Friday night and called ourselves the Ghosts of Pennsics Past. With that as a lead-in, I'm going to speak to
a man who was a well thought of, well-respected person when I joined twelve
years ago and is crucial in the act of the forming of Calontir. Before we get into that, though, I'm going to
ask Duke Finnvarr something I've asked the others that I knew better -- what
are the titles and the honors that you've collected over the years?
FdT: That's a good question; I'm not sure I can
remember them all. I'm a knight, a
master of the Pelican. I have a Willow for, I believe, my writings about
Society history. I have a Purple Fret
for autocrating events. Perhaps that's
all.
CD: When were you knighted?
FdT: I was knighted on October 30 or 31 of 1971
which, I believe, is AS VI. I was the
seventh knight of the Middle Kingdom.
CD: That's actually jumping somewhat ahead. You are also once king of the MidRealm, or
twice?
FdT: Once king of the MidRealm and first king of
the East before that. I began in the
Middle Kingdom. I'm an old-timer in the
fact that I "founded the SCA".
What I mean by that is that I did not join an established group. I
helped build a group in an area that was close to no other established groups
in a kingdom that was practically brand-new.
My first group was Northwoods, the second really flourishing group in
the Middle Kingdom. The exact chronology
of whether we were actually second or not is a little up in the air. I got interested in late 1969 because there
were two people, Baroness Signy and Baron Thorvald (as they would later be
known) who had attended in 1968 the BayCon demo which is when the SCA started
spreading outside the San Francisco area to all sorts of centers of science
fiction fandom in the United States.
They came back immediately enthusiastic but until my friends and I
became interested about 1-1/2 years later, nothing much happened. Then we put together a group, put together an
event and liked it so much that we kept going.
Northwoods quickly became the biggest and most active group in the
kingdom, so I was close to being on the ground floor although, of course,
Tree-girt-Sea did predate us and did actually found the kingdom. I was around for much of the crucial founding
of the kingdom as something more than a single group based in Chicago.
In 1972 I graduated
from the university at Michigan State, went to live with my parents for a year
in New Jersey. While I was there, I won the crown of the East and that was my
first crown.
CD: What place do you have in the lineage of the
East?
FdT: I don't remember how many kings there were
before me because they had some short reigns and they had some long reigns; it
was a very irregular type of thing.
Maybe the eighth or ninth king of the East, maybe earlier than
that. I was the king of the East at
Pennsic 2. During my reign, even before
Pennsic 2, I moved back to what was, in theory, the Middle Kingdom -- Toronto
-- to go to grad school and became again a Middle Kingdom knight. After about a
year there, another Northwoodser, somebody I didn't actually know personally, a
former seneschal of the barony moved to Toronto for the same reason. The two of
us, with the help of our Northwoods friends, started the Toronto group which
was first the Shire of the Eoforwic, the very first beginnings of what would
become Ealdormere, Eoforwic: you couldn't get this name in the Society anymore;
it is an old name for York. Toronto was
originally York.
CD: You tell me you were the seventh knight in
the Middle Kingdom. Were you squired to
anyone?
FdT: I was not a squire because the people who
were the good fighters in Northwoods all started fighting together and when one
of us was knighted, which was Thorvald, the rest of us did not become his
squires. We took pseudo-squires of our own because we knew something about
fighting and the new people who were coming in didn't. It just wouldn't have been right to
centralize that much power in one person. There was never any hostility or
anything about this; it was just the right thing to do.
CD: Pseudo-squires?
FdT: Trainees, what would you call them,
apprentices, members of our households.
People who aren't knights do this all the time today. They start a fighting household and train up
people. I was not a squire. I didn't have the opportunity to become a
squire. As I said I was a founder of
that group.
CD: During your first reign in the East, did
anything significant happen? This is of
interest, in a sense, because part of our lineage comes through the East
Kingdom and this would be part of our history, too.
FdT: Yes, the Middle Kingdom was very briefly, at
least in theory, a principality of the East.
It didn't really mean very much.
It was a principality until the first prince was crowned. I don't know exactly how that happened.
CD: Who was the first prince?
FdT: The first prince was Cariadoc of the
Bow. He was the first king. He won a tournament which was meant to be a
crown tournament, so in a very, very loose and theoretic sense the Middle
Kingdom was a principality of the East.
We would not, in our modern day, recognize this as being a
"real" principality.
CD: Was he ever styled as a prince?
FdT: Between winning the crown and being crowned,
he was called prince but he was both crown prince and principality prince.
CD: What was the interval there, do you remember?
FdT: Very short.
From July to September of 1969.
In fact I could have gone to the first coronation of the Middle Kingdom
because I was at the science fiction convention in St. Louis, Missouri, where
it took place -- in Calontir, in other words, as it would become. I just wasn't interested at that point. I knew what the SCA was but I wasn't all that
interested. Apparently, it wasn't a very
impressive occasion so it is perhaps just a fortunate that I didn't go; I might
have gotten a bad impression. There was
some kind of rivalry between West Kingdom and East Kingdom representatives who
were there.
CD: Cariadoc says, as he recalls, the West king
actually crowned him.
FdT: I thought that the Queen or a former Queen of
the West, named Adrianne of Toledo, brought out a crown but I wouldn't be able
to tell you that. I don't know who was
king of the West at that time or whether he was at that convention or not.
CD: Going on, you went to Toronto and founded
Eoforwic. Tell me about the growth of that group.
FdT: Cariadoc once asked me why Toronto didn't
become part of the East Kingdom because we are very close there to New York
State and Toronto is not terrifically close to Michigan, which is where there
was real activity in the Middle Kingdom at that point. What it really came down to is that all East
Kingdom activity at that time, with a very few exceptions, was on the East
coast and we were a mere six hours drive from Northwoods and both Gillian, the
co-founder of Eoforwic, and myself had good friends in Northwoods who would
help us and they helped a lot. Eoforwic
started out with people I knew from science fiction fandom and from the
university in Toronto and it grew from there.
It was small for awhile and eventually it got bigger. We had the disadvantage of starting a group
in a large, cultured city with lots of alternative things happening but we
persevered long enough that eventually it became an immense advantage. At first you have to sell people an idea that
has almost no concrete manifestations when they could easily be doing something
else. Eventually we attracted the right
people. It has been a very, very, very successful group in the fact that it has
always produced good fighters, people who really care about the Middle Ages,
good artists. It has always had both a
certain seriousness and a really good sense of fun. I am very proud of the group and having been
associated with it.
CD: Carry on and while we're at it, talk to me a
moment about the development of the whole region that became Ealdormere.
FdT: I wish I'd studied this up a bit. I did write a history of the Barony of Septentria
at one point which has the chronology right.
CD: Do you still have a copy of that you could
send?
FdT: I'm not sure.
Well, I may; I'll see. The second
group was also in the metropolitan Toronto area, based originally at York
University which is the other university in Toronto. Then we had some people in Hamilton and
Windsor who knew each other who started a household, more or less, which
developed into two groups when they got more members. About 1975 (it's hard for me to think in
society years, so I'm going to use the mundane ones) was Eoforwic's first
event. I think before that year was up
we had a second one and there had been something small and very informal at the
Norlanda group at York University. By the time I became prince of the Middle
Kingdom in 1976 it was obvious that things were happening and we had to decide
what we were going to do.
One thing that I
did, besides being the knight's marshal of the group, I also acted as the
chronicler and put out the newsletter. I
made sure that everybody in all of Ontario got the newsletter, if they were at
all interested, and started talking to people, when I was prince specifically,
about whether we wanted to form something, basically a regional entity, or
wanted to have no formal links or specific informal links at all. I was very strongly of the opinion that it
would be awfully good for everybody if we worked together in the hopes of
forming perhaps a barony in the future.
There was some suspicion from the people who were outside of Toronto of
this idea but eventually we did sell it to them. This is, in part, because Toronto is, of
course, by far the dominant city in Ontario and is the dominant city in most of
Canada. People naturally think of
Toronto as 'Hog Town', not because it has a lot of slaughter houses (although
there are some of those) but because it is a hog and sucks everything out of
the rest of Canada. People looked at
this as another Hog Town trick and there were some real tensions. Eventually in
1978 we did form a barony which included all of Ontario, in theory; in fact, it
was just three locations.
CD: How did you resist the temptation to call it
a province?
FdT: Because the Middle Kingdom never had a
province and because the idea of having a province was, for one thing, too
mundane if you already lived in a province; i.e., the province of Ontario, and
second, it didn't give you anything. One
of the advantages of being a barony is that you have a Baron or Baroness to be
a focus of loyalty and symbolism when you don't have a crown around all the
time.
CD: There are times when I think that more and
more, that's less of an advantage.
FdT: It is very important. Well, it depends. There are places in the West Kingdom that for
many years had no baronies and didn't need them. The core part of the West Kingdom had no
barons and that was, more or less, right for them until it stopped being right
and then they had a few.
CD: Just so many times the personality problems
develop within a barony.
FdT: It's very tricky because it's the one
powerful position that is eternal in the Society.
CD: Moving on, Septentria has now formed a barony
and is prospering. There are now three
groups there. What has Finnvarr been
doing this time?
FdT: What happened was that in October of 1976 I
won the crown of the Middle Kingdom.
CD: Do you remember the fight?
FdT: I remember the fighting fairly well. Merowald was my opponent in the finals; he
won the next crown to become a duke also.
He had been king of the Middle Kingdom before. I went to a Steeleye Span concert on Friday
night because I was not going to miss Steeleye Span even for a crown tournament
that everybody I knew thought I would win because, of course, I was by far the
dominant fighter in my area. I was
actually very good at that stage. My
squires and various other members of my household just sort of crammed me into
the car after this concert. We drove to
Flint, Michigan, crashed on the floor for about 3-4 hours, then they rushed me
out to find breakfast, rushed me out over to the site, slammed me into armor
and warmed me up so I would have my best shot at it. I managed to win. The big issue of that reign was ...
I never told you
much about my Eastern reign. The big
issue of my eastern reign was, would there be another Pennsic War. Everybody
wanted one but was it actually going to happen because I was king of the East
at Pennsic 2. This was the year the
debatable lands was founded. I was
involved in that.
When we came along
to my MidRealm reign, Pennsic War was still not terrifically
well-established. There had been five
wars. There had been bad feelings about
the fighting at every single one of them.
We had not had the same site twice.
Duke Dagan du Darregonne of the Middle Kingdom had found Cooper's Lake
for Pennsic 6 (my war) and that was the first war at Cooper's Lake. There were some other tricky things to do,
arranging a reasonable set of rules for the war because they weren't at all
standardized and had been different every time.
That was the first war where perhaps a significant number of people from
other kingdoms came to fight. That was
when the Magnificent Seven -- many people have seen the video tape of this --
or whatever they called themselves, including Paul of Bellatrix, came out from
the West Kingdom and fought. Of course,
it was the year that the Tuchucks showed up for the second time which was a
disaster; it was a very bad unpleasantness at Pennsic 6 with them. They had also been at Pennsic 3 but they were
really dangerous at Pennsic 6.
In that war I
managed to salvage a tie for the Middle Kingdom by single combat with the king
of the East, Fernando, and winning. We
had a different plan but nobody would fight the Tuchucks. There was supposed to be field battle. We had a woods battle which was very much
like a field battle, over in the old archery field and areas around that, very
close to where we are sitting right now.
The East was ahead and there as one more point to be fought and there
was not going to be a field battle or there was going to be blood. Fernando and I got along very well,
fortunately, and we put together this compromise that it would be a single
combat between kings. If he won, they
won and if I won, it was a tie. Fortunately, I won.
After I became a
duke we in Ontario very quickly got to the stage where we could be a barony
with the membership we had all over and with a certain amount of accomplishment
in putting on events, much of that done by Eoforwic but not entirely, with
activity now springing up in other places.
Ottawa, Skraeling Althing was the next (fourth) place. We were going on to baronial status. One of the smartest things I ever did was not
become baron. Gillian who had just a
good a right to the title as I did became the Baroness and did a very good job.
We grew quite a bit during the time she was baroness. Then she left Toronto in 1981. We had our second king already (Hugo) and
Aedan and Caffa took over from Gillian, an inspired choice. They were actually quite new. Their very first event was my coronation in
1977 and this was only four years later.
They hadn't actually been all that active right off the bat. Very soon in their time as baron and baroness
it came to a crucial point at which people in Ottawa thought that for their own
development -- as Ottawa is not particularly close to Toronto -- they should be
their own barony. They had everything
they needed to be one. This is not the
way I had envisioned it. I envisioned
that the barony would become a principality like the Corpora seems to set forth
as an ideal, but this never happened.
Skraeling Althing formed a barony and now we in Ontario had two
baronies. It was a very friendly parting; it was hardly a parting at all. Before we actually got around to becoming a
principality, we had three baronies. So,
it is not the principality of Septentria.
Aedan and Caffa were a very successful baron and baroness because they
were not greedy. They had exactly the
same feeling that any sensible person would have, that if we're not going to
advance to a principality as one barony, then Septentria has no business being
as large as it is; it should evolve as quickly as is practical. They were very
good at helping people develop their own land.
CD: It always surprised me because even at
Pennsic 10 Septentria was fairly large.
FdT: At Pennsic 10 Septentria was Ealdormere, geographically
speaking, and it is the foundation of Ealdormere in historical development and
geographic extent.
CD: Now you were king of the MidRealm then in
1976, you said?
FdT: No, in summer of 1977. I won the crown in October 1976.
CD: Now we're coming into a time where you touch
on Calontir a little bit.
FdT: My first touch on Calontir history was
actually quite trivial from the point of view of a sitting king; I mean, in the
sense that it took a very short amount of my time and not a lot of serious
thought. Although it was a serious
matter, I thought the answer was obvious, but who knows whether my actions
would mean anything to anybody in the long run.
The crown tournament
in that year, May of 1977, was in Minneapolis; the first time they had a big
kingdom event. That was not a short trip
for me. At that event, I think it was
Geoffri of Wareine, the original baron of Forgotten Sea, and some people
approached the crown at that court with a petition that Calontir, which didn't
have a name at that time, be recognized as a region. Basically they wanted
permission to have a name, more or less, to work as a region, work
together. Everything in my experience
favored the request -- remember, by this point I have already been thinking
about what should happen in my area which was far closer to the center of the
kingdom than Calontir was but had some of the same problems; so it made perfect
sense to me. It struck me that these
people west of the Mississippi actually had the brains to want to work together
which was the only way that they were ever going to get anywhere and the Crown
should encourage them. The kingdom
seneschal -- this was Rory O'Tomrair -- soon after that asked me if I thought
that was a good idea. I don't recall
what the petition said but basically what everyone interpreted it to mean was
that they would have their own officers.
This certainly didn't strike me as a bad idea and I don't think I was at
all surprised that they did it, so maybe it was in the petition. Rory said that there aren't any such things
as regions in Corpora. I explained what
I thought as my common sense view of it and said that basically this is
something to encourage people to do something and to let them do it. Perhaps that ended up being a charter of some
importance to Calontir.
CD: It is.
It still remains.
FdT: Yes, but you see what I mean by it being a
trivial matter. Who knows, these could
have all been a bunch of turkeys as far as I knew, but the principle was very
clear.
My further
involvement in Calontir... See, you told me earlier that there was a story that
I was the first king to progress through Calontir. When I was king of the Middle Kingdom, I
never went to Calontir. The first king
that I know of to visit was my successor, Merowald. The Barony of Forgotten Sea got some money
together and said they were willing to pay some of his expenses to come out
there. He went out there and he was his
charming, wonderful self and told them they were all great people which apparently
they all were, and took a squire (Ternon de Caer Liant) which as an incredibly
big deal because there were no squires.
Three Rivers, which was close enough to interact with some knight or
another, had a very strong Dark Horde tradition at that time and there was no
likelihood that anybody there would be a squire but Forgotten Sea was less into
that trip and they were just thrilled.
It was honest, sincere interest from a sitting monarch in people who
were doing neat things, so that was a very constructive thing.
My further
involvement took place -- when was that?
The crown tournament that was held in St. Louis not too long after that
which Nathan won, 1978. There was some
sort of an election for the first regional officers of Calontir. There had been candidates put up and all the
groups sent in votes. They wanted me to
help count the ballots or validate it which meant that these people already
thought of me as a supporter of Calontir, and Merowald, too, was involved in
this. It was another thing that was easy for us to do and meant something to
them.
Going to a crown
tournament is not the way to know the local group putting on the event, so the
tourney didn't tell me much about Calontir.
Oh yes, that crown tournament is interesting because it was when I first
met Ternon. It's the classic story in
which the guy is pulling an armor bag out of the back of his car. An established fighter more or less from the
local area comes out and says 'If you want to authorize, go over there' and
then later on he finds out that this was a duke. Well, Squire Ternon told me to authorize and,
yes, I as a duke. I didn't find out
actually that much about Calontir, but I was there. All these people were trying to build up the
society in their area and they seemed to be all right, and more power to
them.
A little bit later on I gave some continuing
support to Calontir when I was earl marshal for about a year. That was a busy year, 1979 I think it was. I was in a position of authority. This was Laurelen's first reign, I guess, at
least part of the time that I was earl marshal.
I was working with the local people to help. The local person in particular was Brummbar
who was Calon Marshal, as they said back then.
I started regional deputies in the marshallate. He became one of them, obviously. His region was the most obvious one. When Baroness Arwyn got married to Chepe and
they had a tourney to celebrate, they said 'Why don't you come on out? We'll pay your gas money' which in 1979 meant
something because that was during one of the oil shocks. My lady and I drove a vast distance to St.
Louis and fought in a tournament there.
I won the tourney prize which didn't hurt because I didn't have much
money back then. It was something like
$20 in dollar coins. It was a berserker
tourney. One other thing that happened
there. My lady Ragni Dzintara was an
authorized fighter. People were still
adjusting to women wanting to fight in the society. Calontir was a little bit behind the times at
this point and the men of Calontir were not being very encouraging to the women
of Calontir who wanted to fight. The
fact that here was this woman who actually could fight made a big impression on
some people. It was a very, very
friendly event. People were very nice to us.
Somebody told me, years later, of course, that there had already been
trouble with the kingdom about Calontir's distinctive identity. So when the bigwigs showed up from outside,
the distinctiveness was put on hold. We
came about as close as anybody to seeing what Calontir was like when there were
no outsiders around at that event -- so I was told.
CD: That trip must be the one that I've heard
referred to as what I interpreted to be a progress.
FdT: I've not been to that many Calontir
events. What else did I go to? I went to the first coronet tourney and I
have been flown out to lecture at Forgotten Sea. I can't remember when that was; it was after
I was married, so it was about 1982 when I came out and gave two lectures.
What I want to do is
make this point here. What I have done
for Calontir has been pretty painless for me.
For one thing, a significant portion of the time my way was being at
least partially paid, so I don't think that I deserve too much credit.
CD: Except for an openness at a critical time...
FdT: Yes, well I'll claim that.
CD: You know forest fires are started with
matches. It would have taken
considerably longer and who know what would have occurred if you had said no to
Geoffri and turned around and walked off.
FdT: It would have real bad. I'm sure it would
have been very bad because we were just entering into a period when Rory was
quite new as seneschal and we didn't know what he was going to be like. We didn't know that the Cleftlands Dynasty
was coming along; it wasn't all that far in the future. This is the gray period of repressiveness in
Middle Kingdom history in which diversity was actively discouraged by all the
important people in office.
CD: How many people would you call that? Don't name names, but just how many people
would you say were in this. As I've gone
back, there is a time when I had this vague notion that there were large
numbers of folks. Now as I have been
studying and thinking about it and talking with people, I would almost say that
you could count them on the fingers of one hand.
FdT: What do you mean, the Cleftlands Dynasty?
CD: No, the people that significantly opposed
places like Calontir developing.
FdT: It is a small number of people but in the
society a small number of people in the right positions have a tremendous
influence on the direction of the kingdom.
I'll give you an example that has nothing to do with any of this
stuff. In 1970 the society went through
a crisis in California that affected the rest of the known world but mostly
affected the Kingdom of the West. The
Board of Directors at that time was the bogey man Board of Directors that is
constantly brought up by people who are unhappy with things in the society.
CD: 'The BOD, the BOD,the BOD thinks it's God,
it's God, it's God."
FdT: That's exactly the one. They ran things in a very unbusinesslike
manner. They had constant meetings and
they interfered in absolutely everything, trying to give direction to
absolutely everything. Of course, this
could be very bad if you were in the Middle Kingdom because there were these
thunderbolts from far off that would descend but at least they were infrequent
thunderbolts. If you lived in the Bay
Area, in the Mists, there was constant interference. What happened at that point was fighting
policy which was a really touchy point.
Edwin Bersark was the Society Marshal and his ideas of fighting were
significantly different from most other members of the chivalry of the West
kingdom. He was the big boss of all fighting in the entire
universe and what the king wanted, what the earl marshal wanted, what the
knights wanted, what the fighters wanted in the West Kingdom didn't seem to
figure in in any obvious way. He had the
backing of the board; I don't think he was on the board. What happened then is
that James Grayhelm and Paul of Bellatrix traded the throne back and forth for
a little bit over a year (they have three kings a year) and effectively declared
the independence of the Kingdom of the West from the board of directors. Two people who thought exactly alike on the
crucial issues were constantly in charge and had backing of other people. They
said to the BOD, you can set certain general policy things but if you start
messing around with tourneys or you start giving orders to kingdom officers
over the head of the king, forget it, we won't let you do that. Those two kings changed the entire way the
SCA worked on the West Coast. Similarly
with the Cleftlands Dynasty: here, half
a dozen, eight people maybe, the kings and queens and certain officers on the
Curia, with a very clear idea of what the Middle Kingdom and the Society should
be like, had a very big influence.
CD: I was talking to Myrra yesterday and I got
the feeling from her that when Calontir separated and became a separate kingdom
the vast majority of the Middle kingdom populace were not much more aware of it
than the majority of the Indian population was aware of the end of the British
Raj.
FdT: Why should they be? I think that's probably true. Things like the United States of America or
the Middle Kingdom are myths to a certain extent. They don't just naturally
exist. It takes a power of imagination
to make them exist. If you have an
actual working, mundane country there are certain things that help it exist.
Look at the Soviet Union today. If you
stop believing the Soviet Union exists or is workable and nobody forces you to
believe it, it immediately starts falling apart. When you have something that is just held
together entirely by the imagination anyway, then if I'm just some person
living in Eoforwic, the Middle Kingdom may or may not mean anything to me and
where it ends in the western part doesn't necessarily mean very much to me at
all. If I go there and I know people
from there, then I may have an opinion. If I don't, I won't.
CD: I think it interesting to those of us who
were in that formative period of Calontir, what I remember most when I was
beginning to get active beyond my shire in 1979-81, you were very highly
thought of. When did you take Juan as a protege?
FdT: Can't say.
Trying to remember. Would have been in that period. it was very likely
it was in 1979. That's when I started to really know individuals in Calontir
fairly well -- when I got to know Ternon, Juan, Geoffri, Brummbar, Arwyn a lot
better than I had -- and various other people whose society names escape me at
the moment.
CD: Did Juan ask you or did you ask him?
FdT: He asked me.
CD: How many proteges have you had over the
years?
FdT: He asked me to become a squire because he was
interested in becoming a better fighter and he had a high ideal of knighthood.
Since I was already a Pelican, he really knew that this was probably more
appropriate to his talents. There was no
developed idea of a Pelican protege at the time; in fact, I don't like that
term at all because it gives visions of people giving you cushy jobs in the
bureaucracy.
CD: I agree.
FdT: He took advantage of the fact that I was a
knight to get the title of squire, but it was a perfectly honorable thing to do
and an appropriate thing to do because he wanted to work with me towards a
peerage.
CD: So he was your protege, not your squire?
FdT: He was my squire, not my protegee.
CD: Oh, I beg your pardon.
FdT: I guess he still is my squire although in a
way the quest was fulfilled when he became a Pelican, he deservedly became a
Pelican. They let me ask the boon for
him; it was very nice. It felt
good. You think about it. I know that he is less than a perfect person
who has screwed up big time a number of times and I'm not talking about his
political agitation either. He really is
the kind of person who gives dynamism. He helps create an idea. You know Calontir doesn't naturally exist; it
has to be an idea in people's minds and somebody has to start the idea rolling
and encourage people to believe it actually could be. He was one of them; he was a big deal one of
them because he is quite eloquent.
CD: I always thought he was sort of a Samuel
Adams of our revolution.
FdT: As a matter of fact, it was at Pennsic War I
heard he was going to get the Pelican and somebody whose name I won't reveal
said 'What's he getting it for, treason?'.
CD: That was Earl Sir Bearengaer.
FdT: No,he didn't say that. Maybe he said it, too.
CD: Well, I bumped into him on the road that
Pennsic and he said to me,'Well, I heard that Juan is going to get a Pelican'.
I said, 'Yes, that's true' and I think he said 'What's it for?' I said 'Treason' and he said, 'Well, that's
all right because in Calontir treason is a protected activity' or something to
that effect.
FdT: Well, this other Pelican said to me, 'What is
he getting it for, treason?'. I stopped
for a moment, thought, and said, 'Yes'.
There are times when treason is the right thing to do.
CD: I argued for him, and for some others that we
did, that unsuccessful revolutionaries are hung; successful ones are made
heroes and therefore this is the avenue one does that for.
FdT: It never should have been conceived in those
terms. That was the sad part of the
early history of the Middle Kingdom.
CD: You understand that we were saying that
rather tongue-in-cheek.
FdT: I realize that but unfortunately other people
took that idea quite seriously, that pushing for independence,
self-determination for Calontir was somehow treason. This is a ludicrous idea from my point of
view.
CD: How do you like the crown principality being
used for Ealdormere?
FdT: It was a big step forward. In some ways after we got it, people sat back
and said 'Why are they making us go through this farce?' In a way they were right but in a way it was
maybe nice to have the breathing room because we got burned rather badly and
some of it was our own fault, but not much.
It allowed us to not do things in a huge, hectic hurry after a period of
enforced inactivity. That might have led
us to make some serious mistakes. It is
hard to say what might have happened otherwise but things have been working
very nicely in our first reign as a full-blown principality. It's hard to argue with that.
CD: As opposed to going ahead and becoming a
principality two years earlier and independent like we are. When Calontir became a principality it was
sort of a given that in 2-3 years we would be a kingdom but that is being
carefully avoided with Ealdormere.
FdT: I don't think people in Ealdormere are that
strongly -- well, there are different opinions -- but the thing is that
Calontir was a big area and it was really far from the center of the
kingdom. It was working well -- if it hadn't been working well, why all
the opposition? If it was falling apart,
there was no need for anybody to oppose Calontir doing whatever it wanted to
do; since they couldn't do it anyway, why oppose them. What people in Calontir were talking about
was, 'God, how can we become a kingdom?', 'How can we get to first base by
becoming a principality?' It was 1981
when Calontir became a principality. In
1979 and 1980 people in Calontir who were really dedicated to it and a lot of
other people were saying 'How are we ever going to become a kingdom?' As there were crises, this feeling became
stronger. 'If we could just get to be a principality, we really got it beat
because we will be legitimatized and we would show them we could do it'. In our case, there are people who are looking
forward to us being a kingdom and some people are probably pretty strong on it
but the general thing that we are talking about is how we are going to make
this principality work. Many of
Calontir's institutions were formed in the regional period like Huscarls, the
Fyrd and various other things I'm probably not particularly aware of. You had a character and institutions, you
just needed the stamp of approval. We've
got a character but we don't have the institutions. We don't have common institutions because we
devolved all our common institutions away to encourage growth. Now we have to pull them all back together.
CD: This was the original Septentria group?
FdT: If we'd stuck with Septentria or if when
Skraeling Althing went its way, if we'd given up Septentria as a name for the
rest -- well, I don't know how we could have done it differently.
CD: Do you foresee developing your own award
structures?
FdT: We're already
developing awards which is something I'm not terrifically enthusiastic
about. I don't like SCA awards as
they've developed. They're not medieval at all.
They perform a certain function but they tend to evolve into awards
inflation just by the very nature of it and become less satisfying as we go
along. Anyway, I have a different idea
of what would be neat.
CD: Which is?
FdT: Well, something I wrote into the laws of the
principality. Our first prince and princess
who have many other things, many things to think about, have not followed up on
it and have instituted awards of the normal sort. I wanted to have a scroll of
honor which whenever the prince and princess saw something neat happening, they
would inscribe people's names on the scroll of honor which, to my mind, is a
much more effective way of doing things than having awards for most
things. I mean, it doesn't substitute
for peerages obviously. But for
nonpeerage award, once you get your arts award, four years down the line, who
the hell knows what you got it for? How
the hell are they going to find out?
Will they even think about it? If
we actually got the scroll of honor going, it would be displayed quite
frequently and you could read it -beautiful calligraphy, different types of
calligraphy, saying 'At Pennsic War 19 Grimwolf tweaked the nose of Duke
Palymar by dressing up in a Mykfaellin surcoat and going out and taking
pictures of a supposedly secret unbelted champions battle practice out in the
woods' which, in fact, actually happened at this Pennsic War. Perhaps this would not be a particularly
diplomatic thing to put on the scroll, but say that you didn't care about this
and you gave him an award for something or the other, some award that you could
give him. Well, who knows what he got it for four years down the line. If it is written on this scroll of honor, it
is there forever.
CD: What a neat concept.
FdT: It is a neat concept. It would take a bit of work and a bit of
belief to do it. Habits are very strong in the society; it is a very
traditional society.
CD: Why do we not take better care of our own
history? Your work is probably the best
example of how to do something. It has
been an inspiration to me for a number of years. Why, as interested as we are in history, is
the kingdom's historian's office one of the least of the lesser lights?
FdT: I think perhaps because the Society has a
split personality and has had it from the first tournament, I'm sure, between
the people who want to recreate the Middle Ages and the people who want to
create a chivalric dream. Actually, if
you're developing a chivalric dream, to think about it in a mundane sense as
being history is kind of devaluing it.
It's much nicer if it's myth. I
mean, you can think of the early Christians.
No Christian wrote a real history of the church until about the year 300
because earlier Christians thought of themselves as living in this mythical
moment, a numinous moment where everything was about to change. Merely mundane things like the history of the
church since the resurrection or since the apostles were trivial because they
were living in this community that was about to experience this vast change and
time would end. We live in a community
where we're trying to enact our dreams of heroism and honor in their vast
variety; it's still kind of new. It's
still kind of mythical rather than historical.
We're looking for mythical experiences; history is humdrum. History is real life.
CD: To me what was interesting was when I read
your history of the Middle Kingdom, it became mythical to me.
FdT: Yes, that's true but you have to remember
that it's the songwriters who sometimes do the best work here. My historical training is as a
historiographer, a historian of how history has been written. That is a concept that every professional
historian is familiar with but most of them aren't really interested in it and
that's not what they work on. This is,
again, the history of how people think about what's happening, how people
revisualize the past for various reasons at various times. Early on I wanted to write a history of the
Middle Kingdom. I was mad as hell about one of the early reigns of the Middle
Kingdom and I wanted to write sort of an expose type of history but I didn't do
it.
CD: The Iriel reign?
FdT: Yes. I
eventually wrote my version of it but with a little bit less anger and a little
more feeling for the sort of classic pathos of the whole thing.
CD: The pathos of that is what came across.
FdT: I saw it all, too, or almost all of it. I did hope for the mythical thing to be in my
histories.
I do think that
writing history is important. I'm just
saying that I understand why people don't do it very often. Actually, making kingdom historians is not
the way to get history. What you need is
people who really care about something or the other, and it's usually when
they're mad that they write things. I
wrote the first part of the history of Septentria when I was happy about
something, how well things were going. Somebody else wrote a second part which
hasn't been published yet, just because he thought it should be done for the
decennial of the barony. He wrote most of it and somebody else has written more
onto it and it's stuck in production.
The third part, which again is unpublished, was written by somebody
after Ealdormere was shot down by the Curia Regis; again, he was mad. These special occasions come along where it
seems appropriate to write history. If
you just tell somebody that it's their job to write history, they come out with
some dry garbage because they have no passion. Good history is written out of
passion.Good historical studies may be written out of sheer interest in the
puzzle of how something happened but the great histories are written out of
passion. That is the kind of thing that
people in the society want. Somebody did write a history of the early West
Kingdom once. It as the most
unbelievable piece of garbage I ever read in my entire life; I couldn't read
it. I saw a copy someplace. After about four pages of neat stuff about
the early kingdom, the rest of it is a catalog of what happened at every single
tournament for the first 10-15 years of the West Kingdom. It was a reference work maybe but it was not
something that anybody would read for enjoyment or be inspired by. If you knew that Duke Andrew of Riga had done
such and such and you wanted to check the date, this was a good place to
go. It was just a catalog of
information. It was not a mythic
history. It was not a passionate history
of what made the West special or what was rotten about the West or the cool
people in the West who should be remembered.
There was nothing of that in it at all.
Just no artistic sense whatsoever. This is the kind of thing one would
expect to have from kingdom historians.
We had a kingdom historian fired because he wrote a history and he had
opinions in his history. Everybody
knows, expect perhaps historians, that historians only write the facts; they
don't have opinions. It would be nice if
there was more history but, as I say, I understand why we have somewhat less
than we should. The Middle Kingdom actually
has had a number of historians; we're lucky that way.
Is there any
Calontir history?
CD: Not really.
There have been a few vignettes written and I have about fifteen
interviews. I caught Cire just before he
left and moved out. This got started. I
had been thinking about doing this a long time and when William Coeur de Boef
was killed I thought that I didn't get around to it soon enough; we're already
losing it. That tells you how long I
have been dallying and doodling. I've
really only gotten on it this past year or two but I'm beginning to see folks.
Not everybody is a quasi-immortal like Finnvarr. We've lost many people. We've lost Ternon, although I have a two hour
tape of him that someone else did a year or two before. At any rate, we don't have that and that is
really what this project is about.
Let's run a bit
further on you because there are a couple of more things that I mentioned. We've done your first reign -- you reigned
once in the East and then once in the MidRealm.
Into the 80's, besides working on Ealdormere, tell me what happened when
you got slapped down by the Curia Regis.
I'd like that story.
FdT: I was on the Board at that time which put me
in an interesting position, real tempting, but considering the quality of the people
on the board at that time, real foolish to try to abuse my position on the
board. What happened was that -- my lady
is actually very responsible for some of these early things. We had a regional seneschal basically (the
title was deputy kingdom seneschal). She
got the job as the second one, I guess, and she said we really should think
about what we're going to do. She
thought that the obvious thing to do was to have a regional champion's tourney
and have a name. Where have I heard that
before? I don't know if she was
specifically thinking of Calontir when she thought of this; it's just the
society model. She'd been to Calontir,
but it's important to point out that this is a very simple idea and very logical
in the society context. She called various
officers from around and said we ought to try and do this and the people were
reasonably enthusiastic about it. I
guess I was at board meeting, so I wasn't even present when people got together
to discuss this. The people at the moot
liked the idea and we did it. We
informed the higher ups about what was going on and they didn't interfere,
which is somewhat to their credit.
In fact, it was at
the Eoforwic decennial tourney that we had the first regional champion's
tourney. I was the autocrat and didn't compete.
It was won by a somewhat controversial fighter, a big, strong guy with
not a lot of culture, good-hearted, not dumb but rough; and a lady who was
reasonably well-known. Yog was the name
he picked when he was told he couldn't have his own name; he has a very
medieval mundane name, Helmut something or other. His name was one thing people didn't like
about him. Hannorah O'Neill was his lady.
Yog and Hannorah were cruising along as Champion and Consort of
Ealdormere. They had collars, they didn't
have crowns. There must have been some
real uneasiness about this in the minds of some kingdom officers. The way I understand it is that Hannorah started writing letters to kingdom officers
in which she seemed to be getting well above herself. I think there may also have been some little
thing about Yog but basically it was mostly Hannorah writing letters, and
probably using her title when she signed it, Consort of Ealdormere.
This was when Alen
was king and Isabella was his queen. Alen's previous queen was the kingdom
seneschal. Palymar and Katherine were
prince and princess for the first time and were real new in the society. They
had a curia meeting over the telephone which I think was the bare minimum of
the quorum which was the seneschal, king and queen. They made a decision and called Palymar and
Katherine and basically got them to be the front people, which I thought was
despicable, to call us up and tell us we couldn't have our champion or our
consort or our name or anything. What
was really, really bad about this was that at this point Ealdormere was full of
peers and had two landed baronesses and a baron, none of whom were even called
until the mighty decision had been made from on high. A crown that took seriously medieval ideas of
fealty like we claim to base ourselves on, would have involved them. If you
have a problem, you talk to the people who are closest to you, the peers and
barons; these are the people the crown should be talking to. Maybe there is a solution; they should know
something. Maybe you even want to chew
them out, but none of this was done. We
were not happy. They said we couldn't
have our name. My lady resigned as
seneschal because she thought this was the British tradition, when the
minister's activities aren't acceptable to the crown, the minister
resigns.
We got another good
seneschal in who basically picked up the pieces. Our baronage and peerage told everybody that
if you want to write to the board or to the crown, do it, but don't rave at
them and don't do anything stupid. Nobody much did, I guess. Eventually the
dynasty broke down and more positive people came along. We had the support of people like Fern and
Tadashi whom she was then married to and various other people, especially
people who in other regions of this overlarge Middle Kingdom had been thinking
of emulating what we were doing with our region already. There was actually some serious reaction from
other parts of the kingdom with people saying, 'What the hell is going
on?'. Not an awful lot. Most people are totally oblivious, of course,
but people who had been thinking about the future of their own regions, certain
peers reacted. So eventually when the
influence of the people who are against any type of devolution or any type of
splitting of the might Middle Kingdom's unity lost their influence, basically
by burning out as everybody eventually does, there were people around who were
willing to encourage us. I was not
involved in any of the movement that came to us becoming a Crown Principality
which was two years ago. There had been
some discussion.I don't even remember who was king and queen at that time. I think Palymar and Katherine felt very bad
about the situation. The thing is that
there were people around who were positive. The various people who were really
carrying the ball showed up at Pennsic 17 and a charter was written up. That was a great moment in court. We got the promise that we were going to get
someplace and got our name back and got our principality. We were a principality although it didn't
really feel real until coronet.
CD: How was your first coronet tourney?
FdT: It was good; no problems.
CD: Do you think that the first coronet tourney
was perhaps the most exciting, enjoyable tourney?
FdT: It was wonderful. Your first coronet tourney was wonderful. I
remember the bells; that was a wonderful touch. It was just so good. It really
made me happy to hear those bells at Calontir's first coronet tourney. I was
happy to be there. I didn't even get to
see our first principality court. We had
to go home and feed our animals. It was
really late. The feast was very good at
ours but it was real late getting started and if somebody had really been on
the ball, they could've had the coronet court first and everybody would've been
happier, I think. That as our biggest
problem! I took part in the
coroneting. I was proud of my own performance
in the lists because with only a very little practice I got a lot of mental
exercise; that was the important part. I
got up to third. It may not be that
impressive for a duke to get up to third but we actually had some pretty good
fighters. The fighting was very clean
and very skilled; it was neat. It
would've been nice to have a really pretty fighting site or a really pretty
feast site. Actually, I guess the feast
site was okay. It was hard to tell
because there were so many people crammed into it. One of the best people for the job won, so we
have a really good prince and princess.
CD: Who are they?
FdT: David and Tangwystl.
CD: You said earlier that you have designs on
some day being the Prince of Ealdormere?
FdT: I'm seriously thinking of going for it. I'm not going for the next one because I
wasn't that enthusiastic about doing it this fall. I want to write on the book I'm writing at
the moment instead. Anyway, I missed the
deadline. We have a reverse invitational, you invite yourself in and the
coronet have the opportunity to say no for a reason. They don't have to make a big public fuss over
it like Atlantia does.
CD: That's how we do it. The only time the reason has to be released,
as I understand it, is at the request of the person being denied. If they wish it published, it can be
published.
FdT: There is a very strong feeling around the
principality about the coronet.
Everybody was tired of purely invitational lists, but everybody
recognized that there were a couple of people they really were very
uncomfortable about winning the coronet and they might do it. They would be very unsuitable people,
especially the first time around. Nobody
was actually excluded from the first one but I think there were a couple of
people who were sort of encouraged not to apply, that it might be better for them
in the long run. If people had doubts
about them
as fighters, for
instance, them winning the coronet would not tend to dispel those doubts in the
slightest but if they sort of stood back for a little bit, they might be seen
as a little less pushy than otherwise.
CD: Let's look in the future for a minute and
wrap this up. You've been in the society
for 20 years. It's changed a lot. Has it changed in the directions you thought
it would go? Are we closer to what you
wanted it to be now?
FdT: I think maybe in some ways. What I wanted out of it, perhaps, has changed
somewhat but that would be hard to define. I think that in a way we're doing
very well, in a way we're drifting away from what we should be doing. Being part of the Middle Kingdom and having
been on the Board of Directors I think that people are too wedded to a rigid
centralized idea of how things should be run.
I mean, unity of the society does mean quite a bit to me actually, but
it is not sort of a god that all our children should be sacrificed to. I think that much of the problem that the
society has is that it is so big that it is no longer as satisfying as it used
to be, especially for the newer people, which is why you often have unofficial
things, things that are unexpected in
the society context jumping up, some of which are good and some of which are
really stupid and bad but all of them because people joined the society to do
something, at least the worthwhile people do.
They don't join the society to be spectators. We have very big kingdoms, even Calontir is a
pretty good sized kingdom. There are
going to be a lot of people condemned to mainly a spectator role, and maybe for
quite an extended period, and this is not good for them or anybody else. I
think many of the society's problems would be solved -- and I say this a little
bit facetiously, but not entirely -- if we had 50 kingdoms. That would solve an awful lot of our
problems. Some of those kingdoms would
be hideous places. You'd have to send in
the exterminators. Every few years you
would decide which ones would have to be destroyed. But we have had kingdoms like this already in
the society, we really have, or at least principalities that have had serious,
serious problems. If other people had
really realized how bad they were, they would have really been shocked. You just have to deal with those things.
It's getting to the
point where, you know I've been on the board, and you can't run these things
from the center if you're going to let people participate. I mean the idea of
societywide heraldry has been a joke for ten years. I tried to radically reform heraldry when I
was on the board but I got off the board before I could completely follow
through on it. It's just going to get to
the point where running things from the center isn't going to work very well
and we're going to have to come up with some creative solutions. There are going to be corresponding
disadvantages to it.There are going to be things that happen that nobody can
stop which, that if we had a centralized structure, we could stop. It might be too high a price to pay to
continue to keep things the way they are.
I just don't think it's going to be workable for very much longer, too
many people.
CD: Would you then see the role of the board in
those things diminishing in terms of standardizing policy?
FdT: I suppose so.
I think that is pretty much inevitable if things keep developing. The corresponding thing is that -- well, I'll
tell you a story that happened at this Pennsic.
Yesterday afternoon I was walking down the road with some ice cubes in
bags, more than I could comfortably handle, and I saw a man standing by the
side of the road. I knew who he was, he
was Duke James Gray Helm, somebody I had met several times on trips to the
West. He is a real old-timer, he's king
and on his eighth reign, a legend in his own time. He was a legend in his own
time 20 years ago when he was 16 years old and king. Yesterday he was bummed out. He had been in a royal encampment. There had been this lady lifting this immense
trunk that she couldn't handle and a man is sitting around doing nothing. He, the king, went over and offered to help
this lady truck this immense thing full of some other king's feast gear back to
where it belonged. I think that was just
one thing and maybe a couple of other things that happened. He said he was
really fed-up with the society. For
somebody who has been in the society for 20-some years to say that, I thought,
was kind of alarming. He is generally a very cheerful fellow. I told him that I
had seen some pretty rotten things at this Pennsic, too, but then I told him
all the neat things I had seen at Pennsic like the Pennsic Parade of Fools, the
fun feud we have been having with Aramanthra the Vicious' household who has the
camping site that we had last year which is like this Eden over on the other
side of the lake. We went over there and
were ritually cocking a snook every time that we passed by and they were waving
their buns at us in return. Then they said they realized they were on our
ancestral lands and the bones of our ancestors were buried there. They said
they were looking for the bones of those ancestors and would bring them back.
They put together a vast parade of people in fancy dress with heralds and
banners and presented the bones of our ancestors to us. After they left the real kicker was that
Death showed up five minutes later to inspect the bones of our ancestors, with
a black cloak and a black hood over it and a big scythe. He almost freaked our baroness right out. He said he was just shopping, it wasn't an actual
visit. The Pennsic Parade of Fools could
be described at length, too. It was
wonderful and very authentic. All this
living theater of the society, really, really good stuff. When it comes down to it, I think the Pennsic
War fighting the last few years has been much better and people are much less
serious about their wars.
CD: It seems to be less hostile.
FdT: You bet.
I mean the early Pennsics were hideous if you took them at all
seriously. There was just incredible
mistrust, incredible misbehavior, incredible back-biting. It was just nightmarish at times. I really
mean that. I can remember being complete
overcome, partly I think from depletion
from standing in the sun, but just being completely overcome by how bad
everybody is feeling at the end of this war and it shouldn't be like that. That was Pennsic 3. At Pennsic 3, when I was King of the East,
there was so much diplomacy about whether women were going to be able to fight
for the East Kingdom or not in this war that I blanked it all out; I can't
remember any of that crap. I was in
favor of it but all my old friends in the Middle Kingdom thought it was a
horrible idea and they wouldn't fight women.
Just garbage. All sorts of other horrible scandals, some of which have
never become public knowledge. I think
it's better now but it's sure far from perfect.
One thing that
people get dissatisfied with the society for, and I have some squires who feel
this way, is about the inauthenticity of a lot of people in it and the fact
that they know nothing about the Middle Ages which is true of an awful lot of
people. You really have the choice
between an open society where you encourage people to get involved or a closed
society in which you very carefully screen people and have very definite rules
that are very strictly enforced. You can
sort of fantasize that it would be neat but you realize that all the heralds
and seneschals and laurels that you dislike would be the entire membership of
that organization. All the people who
are always spoiling everybody else's fun would be the entire membership of such
an organization unless it were very cleverly devised. I would like the SCA to
be a lot better than it is but I think the idea is pretty neat.
CD: I see a lot of folks that start out and the
first couple of years that they're in, they are everything that's not right but
sooner or later so many of them get bit with the bug and they go places and you
said this is not something that this person could have ever in their lifetime
have imagined themselves to do and it has provided them an opportunity to grow.
FdT: Exactly.
I've seen the society wreck people's lives and I've seen it save
lives. Incredibly creative people who
are just sort of sitting around and slugging back the beer because they really
had no obvious direction to go. It could
be a big stepping stone for them. It
wouldn't necessarily keep them in the society forever.
CD: Have you seen people who stepped up to the
throne and matured and stepped down and really were radically different people
because they learned. I've noticed that
on a number of folks.
FdT: I've also seen people get incredibly rigid
backbones after being on the throne, too, which is unfortunate. While they gain
something, they sometimes lose something, too.
It's a challenge for royal peers to stop taking themselves too seriously
after awhile.
CD: Not a problem I shall ever have to face. Let's do one more thing. Let us try and see the future one more time. I hear an enormous amount of blather, I term
it, which tells you where I come from, about how we've got to change up the
three major orders because they are so inauthentic and the worst thing of all
is that Pelicans and Laurels are not treated with respect and knights are;
therefore we should tear apart the whole system or rename them all to be
knights of this, that or the other. We
should all be Knights of the Laurel, Knights of the Pelican, Knights of the
Chivalry. What's your view on this?
FdT: That's crap.
You know why it's crap? Because
if people don't respect Pelicans and Laurels and only respect people who hit
other people with sticks, changing all the names will not make the slightest
bit of difference. People will know who
the stick knights are and they will think it's great. People will know who the embroidery knights
are and if they don't respect that kind of accomplishment, they won't give them
any respect. I have heard that,
too. There are other things but I don't
think the society can change its basic structure. It is too big. What you'll have is this: any organization
that grows to a certain extent, and it's already happening, will have schisms
and reformations and new churches formed and they will go on. They'll go on in parallel and may go on with
a certain amount of hostility. There is
less reason for hostility in our situation than in real life. I think that any radical change will just
create a new organization. The old
organization may fall apart and wither after the new one leaves, but I doubt
it. I think this organization, as it
exists with its pretty much its current structures and attitude has a long life
ahead of it, not an eternal life but probably a good generation at least. If any really radical changes are made, it
will probably split the organization.
CD: What do you think demographics are going to
do to us?
FdT: Well, as long as we have fighting as an
important part of the society's life, we're always going to bring in the young
men and the young men will bring in the young women and this is one of our
advantages over many other similar organizations. We are kind of gentrifying a bit and it is
kind of alarming sometimes but we do have a certain corrective built into the
system.
CD: I find your final opinion so agreeable that I
think I'm going to stop right there.
Thank you very, very much, Duke Finnvarr.
FdT: It's been fun. I love to talk.
CD: We'll do this again sometime.
FdT: Sure.
---Corrected 12/8/90
