Tradition

In my last post, I talked about the fact that there are cultural differences between Northern and Southern fencers. I think part of the reason for this is the difference in traditions between the two regions. Fencing in Artemisia began in the south, that's pretty well accepted. Looking back, the first Rapier Marshal's Handbook for (then) Atenveldt was published in AS XXX. Fencing was fairly well established in the south by then as rules had previously been incorporated into the Knight Marshal's Handbook. And it was also getting a toe-hold in the north then, too. I should know. I was there.

I cannot say that I was the first northern Artemisian to fence in the SCA (to my knowledge, that was Lord Christian la Sable, whom I met in AS XXIII), nor can I say I was the first northerner to be authorized to fence (that was His Lordship Albion), but I had the honor of being Christian's first student (beginning in AS XXV) and helping Christian introduce Albion to fencing within the Society (in AS XXVIII, I believe). So I've been around for a while and I've had ample opportunity to watch the fencing community grow.

Now back then, most people hadn't heard of the internet, and fencers could not get information as easily as today. So we had to make due with what we had: the Knight Marshal's Handbook and the first-person accounts of how our southern kin did things. Of course, the SCA was fairly new in the north as well - there were only 4 groups north of One Thousand Eyes - and most of the northern SCAdians were young, poor college students. So we were fairly inbred. Not completely, though. We did have some older members who could afford to - and did - travel south of Monida Pass.

And it didn't help that for several years, fencing in the north was almost exclusively done in one group - Dun Braga. While many northern groups were struggling to find three or four fencers, Dun Braga was boasting fifteen fencers at its practices. And if we had that many fencers, we had to know what we were doing, right? Well...

For the most part, we were trying to build up fencing based on what we knew: the Knight Marshal's Handbook and individual's yearly pilgrimage to Uprising. So, as seen by our southern cousins, some of what we came up with might seem slightly askew. Our focus on melees, for example. It was not uncommon for us to have visitors from the south come up once or twice a year (usually in January and May) to teach regional fighter's practices. They'd come up and we'd work on melee tactics to get ready for war. And we would assume that whatever was important enough to bring teachers up north must be very important. And since nobody ever came up to teach us how to fight in a tournament, melee must be more important. And besides, playing war is fun. So we became war fighters.

And then somebody got the idea that if shires had armored champions, they should have fencing champions, too. But this was back when fencers thought they were better than armored fighters, and vice versa, so we never thought to ask the armored fighters how to do a tournament. After all, there was no need: it was all spelled out in the Knight Marshal's Handbook. So we set up our champion tourneys. And since it was supposed to be the shire champion, only members of the shire were allowed. Well, only shire members were allowed to win - anyone could enter. And since it was pretty common for groups to be short on fencers, the previous champion was also allowed to fight. No problem, really. Although it was annoying when you'd take first, but still weren't allowed the victory. And let me tell you - after you've won your third or fourth champion's tourney in a row, things got a little boring.

And really, that's where fencing stood until about ten years ago, when our young fencers began to age and were able to travel more. It was that exposure to how things were done elsewhere that made us begin to reexamine how we were doing things. And we've been slowly trying to adjust our traditions to match those of our neighbors, but traditions are hard things to change and some may never go away.