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Bringing history to life SCA members study, portray life in the Middle Ages By R.D. Hohenfeldt Rose Blair was looking for a new hobby when she saw an old friend’s picture in a newspaper. “It was a picture of people involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I recognized a person I’d gone to college with at UMR,” Blair, a member of the counseling staff at Newburg Public Schools, says. “I was working way too many hours and was looking for something new to do, so I called them up and said, ‘Tell me about this.’ That was 13 years ago and I’ve been doing it ever since.” What she (and her husband and children, too, at times) have been doing is escaping from the current world and spending a few hours each month in the sixth through the 16th centuries. “The whole object of our organization is to recreate the Middle Ages,” says Blair. A non-profit
educational organization, the Society for Creative Anachronism
encourages its members to study the history of “You adopt a persona, but you cannot be someone who actually lived. We’re unlike Civil War re-enactors in that regard; we can’t be anybody in history,” Blair says. SCA members choose different areas of interest for their research. Some enjoy learning about and even making jewelry, clothing or pottery of that time. Some enjoy blacksmithing, archery or combat. “In our Kingdom there is a man who makes paper, a lady who makes quill pens and ink,” she says. “And we have friends wanting to build a Viking long ship.” Blair’s research is in the clothing people wore and the foodways of the Middle Ages. “My area if interest is what people ate and how they cooked, their manners and customs as well as their clothing and how it reflected their society ” Blair says. “I have cookbooks back to the 12th Century as well as books on costume and fashion that cover thousands of years. ” Her persona is
Lady Roselyn of Blair says her husband, John, and children James and Joanna have all been involved with the SCA, but work and school now keep them busy with other tasks. Locally, the
Rolla-St. James-Newburg-Fort Leonard Wood area is called the Shire of
Calanais Nuadh, or New Calanais. That name is an allusion to an area in “Because of the
The local members—there are around 30 of them with about half of them most active—meet at 6:45 Tuesday nights at the Newburg Elementary School. The first Tuesday night of each month is for business; the others are for educational presentations or for working on projects. Most Sundays, the members of the group interested in archery have archery practice at Beaver Creek Conservation Area south of Rolla. Annually, the
Shire hosts two major events, Spring Spears which is scheduled for the
weekend of March 31-April 1, and Autumn Arrows on the first Saturday of
October outside Rolla. At
Spring Spears the focus is on fighting tournaments while the fall event,
Autumn Arrows is all about archery, with tournaments and demonstrations,
including archery from horseback. SCA members make their own armor and other clothing to look like what was found in the medieval world including chain mail, as well as armor made of boiled leather and/or plate steel. They brandish swords, spears and axes made of rattan and duct tape. Fighting of battles includes a strong emphasis on safety. None of the fighting is choreographed, which is another thing that makes our reenactments different. When we fight the Battle of Hastings, sometimes the Vikings win! For more information, log onto www.sca.org and www.geocities.com/calanais_nuadh2001/. Or you can contact Rose Blair 573.308.5207 for more information.
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