kareina

Last week was a busy one, with the Nyckleharpa group meeting on Monday (I bring my dulcimer, play along on the two songs I know, and spend the rest of the evening listing to lovely music being learned/practiced while I make progress on my current sewing project), Choir on Tuesday (this year's issues with attendance has continued--we had two sopranos, two altos, two bass, and one tenor. Therefore we have decided that since our recruitment attempts aren't working we will try plan B: bring along musical instruments and when there aren't enough voices to do parts we just sing and play, but when there are we can sing parts), Wednesday was Solar Wind Orchestra (the instrumental spin off group that is formed of (mostly) members of our Choir, Aurora, and which we are hoping will keep the choir alive a bit longer by taking the instruments to Choir), Thursday we flew to Gothenburg (as it is spelled on maps written by English speakers), and Friday we took the bus out to the site for the St. Egon Feast and Normark Coronet Tournament and Investiture.

The busy week schedule meant that I hadn't really properly recovered energy levels after the Australia trip, since I wound up staying up later than I should have on pretty much all of those nights. As a result I was so tired by early Friday evening that I wound up laying down for a two hour nap, and then getting up and being sociable again in the late evening. I think I went to bed again around 01:00, yet still woke up around 07:00 with enough energy to go out for a walk before breakfast (which was scheduled to be served at 08:00).

I wound up taking a side road up a hill past a number of farm and eventually into a forest, where the road ended at a gate next an old farm house that, these days, only grows old cars lying around the field in careless abandon. By the time I got back down the hill to the site it was just after 08:00, and I enjoyed my breakfast.

This was the first time I have made it to a Nordmark Cornet. They happen only once every nine months (give or take). The year that it was held here in Frostheim (in July, that year, which is why I say "give or take, since one can't get to March from July by counting nine months at a time) was the year I had to be in Australia, awaiting my visa to move to Sweden. I did call in and get to listen to the final rounds (one by a Frostheim fighter!), but it is not the same as being there. The subsequent Nordmark Cornet tournaments have been held far enough away during times we didn't have the budget and/or time to travel, so I missed them. We probably wouldn't have gone this time either, since we aren't in a habit of it, but C talked us into coming down for it--she has been up here three times to visit since moving away in October, and it was our turn to visit her.

The tournament was scheduled for 11:00, and there were seven fighters in the list, which was fought round-robin, with each bout being done as a best two out of three (the one time there was a double kill they went to four bouts to decide it). At the end of the day there was one knight who had six victories, and two fighters who had four each. So the two fought one another, and then the victor fought the one who was clean (and by clean I mean his lovely white silk surcoat with a damask fleur-du-lis pattern on it was still lovely and white despite the mud--he had been careful to not actually fall down during the (few) deaths he had had during the sub-round bouts). I was not terribly surprised when the knight won, and was pleased to see it--he and his lady are delightful people, and they like to make spiffy stuff, so will always look the part.

Lunch was scheduled for 13:00, and the tourney was over in plenty of time for us to be back inside (out of the wind, which was surprisingly cold, given that there is no snow at all on the ground that far south) in plenty of time for it, but lunch prep wound up taking more time than expected (or something--I didn't hear the details) so food wasn't served till 13:30. This gave us time to check out the two merchants on site and pick up some more linen thread since we were running low.

After lunch I changed out of my nice warm Viking boy clothes (normal version, not the man/muscles and beard that I use when actually trying to play a man at a Lajv) that I had brought along to wear Friday night and during the tournament (ok, I didn't actually wear the wool trousers or wool over tunic Friday night, they only went on for being outside, and whilst indoors I contented myself with my white undertunic and a black linen tunic I made years ago that used to belong to clovis_t, which his mum gave me when I was visiting Tassie) and into my blue/brown wool bliaut and added my braid extenders. Then C put on her new braid extenders, which had been inspired by mine. In her case it really is her own hair sticking out the bottom--she saved the hair that got cut off during a tragic misunderstanding of a hair dresser about just exactly what she wanted done. My extenders hang just to my hips, hers rich to mid-thigh. Need to re-do mine to make them longer...

We managed to get dressed up in good time for court, which was both the last court of Sven and Siobhan and the investiture of William and Isabetta. Having grown up in Oertha, where the new Princess have overnight to prepare for their Investiture, at first it sounded kind of fast to do the Investiture just a few hours after the tournament. However, it turns out to have been plenty of time for them to prepare, since, after their investiture and accepting the oaths of fealty from their officers, they actually had business of their own! They called up lord_kjar and presented him the scroll from his AoA (and the man who had been the Prince to give him that AoA happened to be the herald for this court, so he got to beam happily from behind the thrones for that). Then, when lord_kjar was ready to return to his seat they told him that he did not have leave to depart, and then presented him with Ljusorden, the Principality award for arts and sciences, in appreciation of the fact that he is playing beautiful music at every event he attends. They apologized for not having a token for him, but said to make it up to him they had not one, but two beautiful scrolls to commemorate it. Therefore, in one event, he managed to go from zero scrolls to one more than I have. Their new Highnesses actually presented several different awards, and each one came with a scroll. Now that is truly being prepared to hit the ground running!

(ok, so they had help from the outgoing royals, who had arranged a few award scrolls to be made for people for whom they would have been happy to be the ones presenting, and the calligraphy carefully didn't state the names of the Prince and Princess, so that either the incoming or the outgoing pair could sign the scrolls and give the awards, but still, it is quite impressive, especially to one like me, who grew up in a Kingdom with a huge backlog and who still doesn't have her AoA scroll, from 1985.)

After court was the banquet. I, of course, was long since done eating for the day, but we still put out a plate and bowl to mark my place next to lord_kjar and C. We were seated across the table from a musician with a violin, and adjacent to several other musicians and singers at the next table, so there was much music and singing happening in our end of the hall before the feast, and at random intervals during it. I sensibly did my yoga early in the feast, finishing up as the toasts were called (I like being at an event large enough that I don't need to make one of the toasts--as "just" a viscountess I really am fairly far down the OP, but here in the north I am the third ranked person, since we have only one each count and countess, and this is a Kingdom in which the toasts are made in order of presence).

They held a couple of mini-courts during the feast, mostly to acknowledge and thank people who had worked at the event, presentation of gifts from ambassadors from other branches, and other similar business. They also presented two awards to people on behalf of former royalty (in one case from several years back), that had been officially presented during court at an event in which the recipient hadn't been in attendance, so everyone kept the secret until they could get it at the next event at which both they and the royals were in attendance. There was also a performance of the Drachenwald Theater Guild--a very silly impromptu story, which had been written in advance in the form of a mad-lib: the Queen had been given a list of questions to answer, and those words were slotted into the story (The Princess and the Pea), to make for a very absurd tale, which was acted out by random members of the populace, chosen by guild members on the spur of the moment, while the (guild head? the countess in the jester costume, anyway) read the story aloud. Since the audience was participating the story held everyone's attention, and there was much laughter.

The feast, like lunch before it, was served about a half an hour behind the originally planned schedule, which meant that when it came time to depart to go catch our bus back to the city (at 22:30) desert had not yet been served. It took two buses and one tram to get back to C's apartment, and we arrived just at midnight. This meant that I had re-done the packing for the next day's flight home, and managed to go two sleep by around 1:30 ish, and slept till around 07:00. We had to depart for the airport at 09:40, and were landing at the airport in Luleå around 14:00, since we were lucky enough to get a direct flight home (the flight down involved a change of planes in Stockholm, and then getting off that plane when something in the door broke when they went to close it, so we passengers were re-booked onto the next flight, which meant we took off from Luleå at 18:30, but didn't make it to C's apartment till midnight).

Despite the weekend of adventures down south, we still managed to make it to dance on Sunday evening, which was fun. Today I walked both to and from work, since lord_kjar wasn't able to come home for lunch, and someone needed to be here from noon to accept the piano delivery. Yup. We have a new piano. His sister called him recently to ask him if he wanted a nice walnut wood piano. Never mind that we already had an old school piano in the living room, of course he said yes. It cost about 4000 SEK to ship it up from southern Sweden (almost €430, or $550 USD, or $615 AU at today's exchange rate), but that isn't bad for a nice instrument that sounds so much better than the one we already had. It will need tuning, of course, but even so it already sounds nicer.

As it turned out, they didn't deliver till almost 15:00, so he was able to be here and help the two delivery men get it up the stairs and into the front door.

We have nothing special on tonight's calender, which is a delightful change (and probably why I am finally finding time to post something), but tomorrow is Choir, and Wednesday is Solar Wind...