Timeless fun and fellowship to be had in the Shire of Ravenwood | PHOTO GALLERY

ALBANY — Once a month, Albany’s Turtle Park, along the banks of the Flint River, is transformed into an ancient battle ground where medieval and renaissance history comes alive as costumed lords, ladies and knights, clad in period armor and garb, gather together for an afternoon of chivalry, battle and friendship.

Mobile users click here for photo gallery

To a passerby witnessing a scene like that in downtown Albany, it might appear to be nothing more than grown men and women playing dress-up and whacking each other with realistic looking weapons. It’s actually much more than that. And as strange as that spectacle might seem, it’s been happening in Albany for decades.

Those brave knights, along with the lords and ladies bearing witness, are members of an educational organization and hail from what is called the Shire of Ravenwood. Located in Albany, the Shire of Ravenwood is part of a larger nation known as the Kingdom of Meridies, itself part of an even bigger world known as the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

Founded in the late 1960s by a medieval studies graduate from the University of California at Berkley, the SCA, and, by extension, the Shire of Ravenwood, which was established roughly 10 years later, is made up of a group of like-minded individuals who are fascinated with cultures that developed and thrived during the middle ages.

While members of the Shire of Ravenwood and the overarching SCA do, in fact, get together and whack each other while they are dressed as knights and such, that is hardly their purpose.

TRAVEL IN TIME

Dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts, skills and traditions of pre-17th century Europe, and those cultures which Europeans of that time might have encountered, the SCA offers its members a chance to immerse themselves in history.

Members of both the Shire and the SCA at large devote countless hours to researching those bygone times to learn and practice ancient arts such as calligraphy, cooking, armoring, metalworking, carpentry, needlework, dance, fiber arts, heraldry, archery, combat and much more.

According to Barbara Gagnon, who serves as the seneschal, or president, of the Shire, the group functions like any other social group or club. Its members engage in a variety of activities related to their love of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

“We recreate the Middle Ages as we would like to remember them,” Gagnon said.

Gagnon said the main starting point for society members is to find a period of pre-1600s history that they are interested in and begin researching what life was like during that time.

“We research what a person from that time would wear, how they would speak, what they would do … things like that,” Gagnon said. “We focus on European cultures and any culture an European might have encountered.”

Once a participant has centered on a time period, he or she typically begins building a “persona,” essentially creating a character who is like an individual who might have lived during that time.

The Participant adopts a name modeled after real names from the time period and culture, then begins learning certain crafts, arts or combat styles native to that culture.

After time, many participants will then have their name registered as their official SCA name and, in essence, become their alter ego within the world of SCA. In Gagnon’s case, her official SCA name is Birna galin, which is drawn from the Norse culture of her persona.

Shire member Mark Sebree, another member, adopted a persona of a mid-14th to early 15th century Italian. His SCA name, which he registered roughly 20 years ago, is Antonio Taglioferro. In keeping with that persona, Sebree has spent years researching the time period, learning about the food, crafts, jobs, culture and weaponry that would have informed Taglioferro’s world.

“It took four or five years to build the persona (of Taglioferro),” said Sebree. “Our whole purpose is to recreate a certain time period and learn about it. Anything that anyone did in the Middle Ages, someone in the SCA is researching it now.”

That research, Gagnon and Sebree agree, is one of the most fulfilling parts of being involved with the Society.

“It’s a lot of fun doing the research,” Gagnon said. “What’s really cool is when you see stuff in modern life and you can say, ‘I know why they do that,’ because I’ve researched that. At times, though, it can be awful. You get on the Internet and you’re researching something and it leads you to something else and then something else and on and on. But that’s also part of the fun.”

LIKEMINDED FRIENDS

What makes life in the Shire of Ravenwood even more fulfilling for the participants is the chance to put much of their research into practice.

At minimum, Shire members and their guests meet monthly, usually the third Sunday of the month, at Turtle Park, with that typically preceeded by a meal together on the prior Friday. These meetings give members a chance to meet potential newcomers and to discuss upcoming events within the SCA world.

Gagnon said there are events through the year at which SCA members for all over get together, usually for a weekend to a full week, and immerse themselves in Society culture.

Some events are regionalized. Members of shires within a kingdom get together in those. In larger events, members of many different kingdoms attend.

Once such event is the annual Gulf Wars, which takes place in Lumberton, Miss. SCA members from across the world spend a week in the Deep South re-enacting medieval times.

“There are all kinds of events we go to,” said Gagnon. “There are four of us going to Gulf Wars this year in March. It’s like the third largest event; it’s big. You go there and you’re a week without seeing your car or having radios or anything. It’s pretty cool.”

Another important annual gathering is Penzic, which was started in 1972 and is the SCA’s single largest event. Penzic lasts 17 days in late summer and will attract more than 10,000 Society members and guests.

While a huge draw for these events, as well as for the more localized ones, is taking a step into history, they are also very popular for featuring one of the SCA’s most cherished past-times: battles.

Engaging in unscripted mock battles is a favorite activity for many Society members. At large events like Gulf Wars and Penzic, mock battles often feature thousands of soldiers fighting across multiple acres, for multiple days.

In fact, it’s the thrill of battle that draws many to the world of SCA.

Shire of Ravenwood member Wilelmus Mann said he first heard about the Society and its battles from a childhood friend more than two decades ago.

“We used to beat each other with sticks in the backyard, me and my best friend, right,” Mann said. “Well, he goes over to Germany and he’s in the military and he finds a group of people over there that are making armor, dressing up in armor and stuff and he’s like, ‘Yeah! I found them!’

“He found this group of SCA people over in Germany just out in a field somewhere, just beating on each other in their homemade armor. He came back and said, ‘We’ve got to find a group.’ And sure enough they had a group in Albany.”

SAFETY FIRST

Battles — whether conducted on a grand scale, like those at Penzic and Gulf Wars, or locally with just a few combatants — usually feature a few different styles of combat, including archery, rapier fighting, and armored combat.

In fact, practicing and training for battles is the primary activity at Shire of Ravenwood monthly meetings. The two most common forms of combat for shire members are rapier combat and armored combat.

According to Gagnon and Sebree, rapier combat consists of using smaller, lighter swords (known as rapiers) that are typically made of metal with with blunt edges and a rubber tip to prevent serious injury.

Combatants fighting with rapiers wear approved protective clothing — usually thick, padded coats or gambesons or lighter, more rigid armor like chain mail. In addition to the protective torso and neck cover, combatants are also required to wear helmets with a face guard to prevent poking.

The other extremely popular combat type is armored combat. In this style, participants use heavier weapons — broad swords, axes and maces.

According to Shire members Mann and Wilelmus de Moulton, swords are the most common weapon used in armored combat and are made of rattan and light wood, usually wrapped in tape. The swords are heavy enough to jar an opponent when hit without it breaking. Other parts of the sword, such as the handles and hilt, can be made of a variety of materials, including metal.

In addition to the different types of weapons, combatants also wear protective armor, which many of them make themselves. Participants make everything from chest pieces (breastplates, plackarts, faulds, tassets and pauldrons), helms (helmets), neck covers (gorgets), arm and leg proctection (rerebraces, couters, vambraces, guantlets, cuisses, poleyns, fan-plates, sabatons and greeves) and body harness types of armor such as scale armor, splint armor, ring mail and chain mail.

De Moulton, who has been involved with the SCA since the early 1990s and is recognized as a laurel (master of the craft) of combat, also is recognized among SCA participants as a leading armor fabricator. De Moulton said he has been making various types of armor, as well as sword hilts, for some time, and even helps friends from all over the country make armor of their own.

While participants typically want to have armor like the kind de Moulton makes, many have to make do with whatever they can find.

Mann’s son Treval, who is relatively new to the world of the SCA, made his newest armor out of heavy-duty plastic that he cut and wove together to form a suit of armor. Even though fighters go after each other with full force, even the plastic armor offers solid protection.

Despite the various types and manufacture of armor, one piece must be made to certain specifications in order to be used in armored combat. Helmets with a face guard or visor must be made of metal and must meet thickness specifications to guard against injury.

Mann, who also trains members in combat, said that safety is of the utmost importance to SCA participants and is highly regulated.

“We’re not out here to hurt each other, we’re out here to ‘kill’ each other,” Mann quipped. “That’s one of the sayings. It’s a sport and we try to treat it as such. We come out here and we have rules and regulations. It’s an honor system.”

KINDRED SPIRITS

Despite that emphasis on safety, some minor injuries are inevitable, said Mann. He has experiences a few bumps and bruises, along with a twisted knee.

“Can you get hurt?” Mann asked rhetorically. “Yes. I’ve broken things out on the field. When you’ve got a 400-pound guy who’s 6 foot 2 in front of you and you’re pressing shields against him and your knee buckles, that’s going to hurt. But that could happen in touch football.”

Injuries aside, for most of the members of SCA, the chief draw of the organization is fellowship. The chance to meet kindred spirits and develop friendships is crucial to the SCA and its participants.

Sebree said friendship is the No. 1 reason he was drawn to the organization. No matter where he is, he said, he knows he can find others who share his interests and passions.

“I worked as a contract engineer in the past so I bounced around the country,” said Sebree. “Being in the SCA means that all I need to do is send an email message or pick up the phone and ask where’s the local practice, where’s the local group, and I can get in touch with people who have the same interests I do in five minutes instead of spending three months trying to find them.”

Since the SCA began in earnest in Berkeley on May Day in 1966 at the graduation party of U.C. Berekley medieval studies student and author Diana Paxson, it has continued to grow and shires around the world continue to recruit new members.

According to information provided by the Kingdom of Meridies, SCA boasts more than 100,000 members in countries around the world.

Anyone interested in learning more about the SCA is invited to visit the organization’s newcomers portal at welcome.sca.org. Those interested in learning more about the Shire of Ravenwood are encouraged to visit the Shire’s website shireofravenwood.org or to stop by a monthly meeting, usually held the third Sunday of each month at Turtle Park, behind the Welcome Center on Front Street in downtown Albany.