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| Tournament of the Golden Swan |
| Shire of Appledore |
| This is an excerpt from a letter written by HL Olwen Pen Aur, co-ordinator of the Golden Swan competition on behalf of the Shire of Appledore, to the Ladies of the Golden Swan, January 15, 1998. It outlines a number of changes made to the categories of the competiiton and the reasons for those changes. |
| Issues and Changes to Categories in Golden Swan |
| At the latest Tournament of the Golden Swan (October 1997), a meeting was held to discuss a number of issues. (There are) several areas in which the competition forces a compromise between a historically authentic persona and the SCA. Specifically, these areas are: Games, in which specific games are required even of personas who would not have known of them; also, documentation may not be available for a specific time period or culture, forcing the candidate to rely on SCA-specific games and information. Dance: documentation for any form of dance can be completely unavailable for many time periods and cultures, even within the normal mainstream of European culture. Pre-Norman Ireland is one example. We currently require candidates to do specific dances, which may not be appropriate for their personas. Survival Skills: While this was never intended as a completely serious category, a sense of humour among the judges has not been particularly evident in recent years. If this is a serious historically based category, we need to recognize that there are many personas, especially female, for whom self-defense in any form would simply never arise for various cultural, geographical or social reasons. Or for whom any form of combat might be forbidden for similar reasons. Poisoning may be personally objectionable or not appropriate to a specific persona. There are also several categories that would be challenging or impossible for some Middle Eastern or Oriental personas, due to social restrictions within their cultures. These would include dance and bardic. If we insist on retaining these categories, we thereby restrict the entry of a number of cultures, or force the candidates into serious compromises between the competition and the historical and social accuracy of their personas. We spent a great deal of time discussing what should be done to accommodate those women whose persona would allow for no contact with males outside of their own families. In opening up the competition to any female persona from anywhere in the Known World, we have also opened up necessary avenues of debate about how flexible the competition is or should be. It was decided at this meeting that we should create new categories that could be substituted for the problematic ones. The structure of the competition and judging would remain roughly the same. The total scores and required scores would also remain the same. We would create two new categories. Eight categories would be mandatory, while a candidate would need to choose 4 of the 6 optional categories. This would still leave each candidate with 12 categories, and would allow the point system to remain the same. The proposal is that we will retain the following eight categories as mandatory: Persona Creation, Calligraphy, Everyday Life, Costuming, Courtesy and Etiquette, Inspirational Behaviour, Needlework. Ethnic Pursuits would also be mandatory, but will be renamed Skills and Technologies. This category would specifically require a hands-on skill, the results of which can be displayed and/or the skill demonstrated to the judges. The categories that are optional: Dance, Survival Skills, Bardic, Games which we also chose to revise to Games and Pastimes, to allow for those cultures or individuals who did not have have games that can be documented, but do have pastimes, such as string games, riddles, word games, that can be documented. This may require special judging. Inclusion of both indoor and outdoor pastimes would still be required. The two new optional categories are: Food: what you ate, where it came from, where and how it was grown, shipping of non-local items, trade, storage, preparation, restrictions such as fast and feast days, other religious restrictions. It would not require cooking or actual preparation of food, but if a candidate wishes to use cooking as a skill, it can be entered in the Skills and Technologies category or in this category. The second new category is Habitat: what your dwelling(s) are like, what they're made of, where they are, description of furnshings, geography of the local area, climate, who lives with or near you, waste disposal, transportation, crops, etc. As with any of the categories, we're not looking for detailed comprehensive knowledge, but realistic knowledge appropriate to the persona. A noblewoman may not know in detail how her castle was built, but she would know how thick the walls are, how big the windows are, and so on, just as we know these things about our houses today. Both of these categories overlap Persona Creation and Everyday Life. By setting up a sample schedule, I was able to see that adding these two additional categories would not add much to the typical schedule as it stands. At most, we will add two more categories even if we have two candidates who choose different optional categories. |
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