The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating pre-17th-century European history. . It doesn't matter if you're only interested in one single aspect of medieval life or all aspects. The SCA is a great way to vent you creative, analytical, or athletic side. The SCA offers everything from Medieval combat to medieval dance, from engineering to art, fencing to archery, and singing to poetry and everything in between. If they did it then, you can do it now in the SCA.
The local group of the SCA which I belong to is called the Shire of Silfren Mere (that's Celtic for "Town of Silver Lake") and we're located in Rochester MN. The things which I focus my time spent on SCA activities include heavy weapons fighting, armor making, leather working and Viking art. Believe it or not, these few things have provided me with a wide variety of activities and have taken a lot of time. There's so much to know and learn that I could just take one of these activities or topics and just focus on that and still be able to occupy much of my time. That being said, my wife tells me I spend too much time on that stuff so I'm forcing myself to drop couple of these and will be focusing here on out on the heavy weapons combat, and armor making (kind of makes sense since I will be wearing most of the armor I make). In the winter I will focus on the Viking art. If I have time after that, maybe I can research and even work on a siege engine or two (probably not).
Here are some pictures of the Fighting events I've been to. As I get other pictures of some of the other activities scanned in I will post them here as well. By the way, I'm not in any of these pictures.
Page last updated on 11/03/2003