Höstdansen

[kareina]

This weekend was one of my favourite events in Norra Nordmark. Höstdansen (Autumn Dance) is an annual event held in the shire of Uma (Umeå), about three hours south of Frostheim (Luleå), and the same north of Gyllengran (Sundsvall). As a result it tends to draw folk from both directions, and there were between 40 and 50 of us on site, ranging from brand new to the SCA to decades of experience.

We got a late start after work on Friday, so didn't reach site till 23:00, by which time the main sleeping room was already full of air mattresses and camping mats ready for people to sleep, so we put our bedding in the downstairs gym, where there were only a few people sleeping, then put on garb and went upstairs to the main social room, where everyone on site who were still awake were sitting on couches around some tables chatting with one another.

It felt really good to have so many of them jump up when we came in to give us hugs. It is nice to be part of this community. After catching up with people for a bit I fetched a sheepskin and did my yoga while listening to the flow of the conversation.

Yoga made me realize that my shoulder and neck were really messed up. (Possibly because of slipping off the bottom step on my way to check laundry earlier that day, which resulted in my landing abruptly, sitting on the third step, with my right arm hooked by the elbow over the railing, which, at that point, was above my head. That hurt, and the inside of the elbow is still bruised and tender. The sideways wrenching that must have gone with that sort of landing could well explain the pain that showed up, hours later, in the other side of my neck, and could well have been further bothered by three hours in the car.)

Therefore I sat down in front of the massage therapist from Sundsvall and he managed to loosen it up enough that I was able to get to sleep later that night. Since I was paying more attention to what he was doing to my neck and shoulders I didn't really follow much of the conversation going on around me, but before yoga I had mostly chatted in Swedish.

Saturday morning the dance classes started directly after breakfast and continued all day, with breaks for lunch and fika. I did set out the Norrskensbard cloak on a table and one of the ladies worked on it for about thirty minutes, but I just danced, ate, and chatted with friends for most of the day.

I did take a break from dancing to get a thirty minute massage, which really helped the neck and shoulders, but it isn't completely better yet. In the evening was the banquet, which was nicely informal, there being no royals on site. The only peers present were me and another viscountess. It amused me that it happened to be her who discovered that the bathroom sink was clogged just as I came in, so, of course, we fixed the problem--she wearing a fancy Tudor dress, and I my silk bliaut, but she held the bucket and I unscrewed the under-sink ick catcher, and used a chopstick to push the blockage through. No costumes were splattered by ick in the process.

I had my duclimer with me, and lord_kjar his nyckleharpa, and another lady her violin, so there was a reasonable amount of music happening during the banquet. There was also a performance by a local middle eastern dance troupe, and then more dancing. Late in the evening, after the feast the other two musicians played some Swedish folk music, so a handful of us danced to that too. It may not be period, but it is fun.

Today (Sunday) we stuck around to help out with site cleaning, and left just before noon, when pretty much everything was done. Then we drove north only as far as his parent's new home in Kinnbäck, where we helped celebrate his mother's 65th birthday with a small family dinner & cake. His dad plans on getting up really early tomorrow for a hunting trip, so we didn't stay that late, and were home by 21:30.

I have managed to put away some things from the event, but the rest can wait for tomorrow, as it is now time for yoga, a hot shower, and bed...