Other Eastern European classes at Pennsic 38

I'm certainly not the only Pennsic University teacher who will be teaching about Eastern Europe. The summer 2009 issue of Slovo, the newsletter of the Slavic Interest Group (SIG), lists all sorts of cool classes on clothing, iconography, bardic arts, history, and material culture. You could even brush up on your conversational Russian.

Now, time for some Pennsic prep work!

My Pennsic class on Lithuania!

If you are going to Pennsic War 38 this year, you're invited to my Pennsic University class, titled "Lithuania: The Biggest Medieval Country of Which You May Not Have Heard." I will hold the class on Wednesday, August 5 (middle of "War Week"), at 2 p.m. in A&S tent #1.

Summary from the Pennsic book: "In 1400 CE, Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. I will discuss its history from ancient tribes to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, plus clothing, names, culture, and more as time permits."

I hope to have a lot more copies of my handout this year than I did last year. I'm also considering putting up a cardboard display of various maps and pictures, so that people can browse them. I'm even hoping to display a few photos that I took at the local Lithuanian Festival in May:

These are some "prehistoric" artifacts in a display case at the Lithuanian Festival. But remember, in Lithuania, "prehistoric" tends to mean "prior to 1200 CE."

I also hope to attend the Slavic Interest Group (SIG) gathering on Tuesday, August 4, from noon to 3 p.m. in A&S tent #12. It's a great networking event for SCAdians interested in all parts of Eastern Europe.

Happy Rasos, Kupolės and/or Joninės!

Happy St. John's Day, Saint Jonas' Festival, or Fête St-Jean-Baptiste! Or maybe I should call it by one of its other, more Lithuanian Pagan names: Rasos, Kupolės, Joninės. So many names for a single day celebrated by so many cultures.

Yes, the summer solstice actually occurred on June 21 this year, but June 24 is the traditional date of Midsummer Day festivities -- a blending of Pagan and Christian sensibilities, or one or the other, depending on where you are and what you believe it. (Personally, I think it's cool that the day is important to both Lithuanians and French Canadians -- that takes care of all my ancestors.)

While poking around on the Web, I found this Vimeo video of a modern-day Rasos-Kupolės Pagan festival in Lithuania. At first the participants look as if they're getting ready for Pennsic, but shortly the techno music starts up and the festivities look like a cross between an urban rave and Burning Man. :-)

I'm starting to get my act together for my Pennsic University class, which will be held Wednesday, August 5, at 2 p.m. in A&S Tent #1. That's the day after the Slavic Interest Group (SIG) gathering on Tuesday, August 4, at noon in A&S Tent #12. If there's anything that you, my loyal readers, would like me to discuss on the general topic of medieval Lithuania, please let me know. However, please remember that I'll have only 50-55 minutes to talk.

It's festival time!

For the past several years I've been happy to attend the annual Lithuanian Festival held at the National Guard armory in Catonsville, Maryland (a suburb of Baltimore). The 2009 festival -- One Thousand Years of Culture! -- is coming up this weekend; the press release is here (PDF).

This is my annual opportunity to chow down on cepelinai and kopustai and kugelis and wash it down with Utenis or another imported beer from the native land. Then there is viryta -- a honey liqueur a bit more concentrated than regular mead, and flavored with a combination of spices that seems to have been dreamed up by Lithuanian immigrants to the New World (*sigh*).

I enjoy watching the dance group Malunas, even though the music and dances probably aren't medieval and the costumes certainly are not. The shopping is good, too; I've picked up a few decent books at past festivals, plus some amber earrings, which, sadly, I always manage to lose.

On Saturday, look for me in the red, gold and green tie-dyed shirt with the drawing of two skeletons dressed in Lithuanian national costumes. Bonus points if you know the story behind that picture!

Pennsic University Class

I have submitted my class to Pennsic University for Pennsic War XXXVIII.

Just like last year, the class will be titled, "Lithuania: The Biggest Medieval Country Of Which You May Not Have Heard." This year there's a strict character limit on class descriptions in the Pennsic book, so I wrote simply: "Survey of Lithuanian history from ancient tribes to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, plus clothing, names, culture, and more as time permits." Note those last three words. :-)

Last year I went to Pennsic wondering if anybody was going to show up for my class. As it turned out, every seat in the A&S tent was taken, and people were standing in the opening to the tent until the rain arrived just as I was wrapping things up. Granted, I don't know how many of the attendees are interested in the Baltic lands and how many just saw the class title and thought, "Holy [expletive deleted]! I've been in the SCA for 20 years and there's still a country I haven't heard about!" Nevertheless, I was gratified for the turnout.

Looking forward to another successful class in early August!

Question for my readers

Last year I taught "Lithuania: The Biggest Medieval Country Of Which You Might Not Have Heard" at Pennsic University. The link to the class handout is here (and it's also linked to the first post in this blog).

The deadline for getting courses listed in the Pennsic XXXVIII book is coming up FAST (a week from tomorrow, I think). Do you think I should teach this course again? Should I change the focus at all? I'm not sure that I have enough material to stretch into two separate one-hour classes, although I will try to work on that for Pennsic XXXIX in 2010.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Margutis time!

Easter Sunday hasn't started yet where I live, but I'm sure the preparations have been going on for a while now. For many of us, the preparation involves coloring eggs.

A month ago, at Atlantia's Kingdom Arts & Sciences Festival, a woman was running a demonstration of making pysanky, or Ukranian Easter eggs. I had the opportunity to make one myself. I can't say I'm the world's greatest artist, but here's how mine turned out:

I enjoyed doing this pysanka, certainly. But how would it fit in with my Lithuanian persona?

Well, as you might suspect, pysanky are part of a lot of Eastern European cultures. The Lithuanians use the word margutis for this type of artwork; it doesn't sound much like pysanky, but there you have it. Lithuanian eggs tend to be a little more muted than their Ukrainian counterparts, with more earth tones, and different patterns too. Right after the Kingdom Arts & Sciences Festival, I found this example. I also found a page describing Lithuanian Easter customs. It's interesting to read through the customs and tease out the old Pagan traditions mingled in with the Christianity. The essay also explains why, for years, I could never find other people who did "egg fights" with hard-boiled eggs on Easter Sunday, the way my family did. It's a Lithuanian custom! My father must have gotten it from his Lithuanian-immigrant parents.

By searching around a bit, I found more examples of Lithuanian decorated eggs. You can probably find more, especially if you search on the word margutis. Finally, through the Web site of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago, I found an online tribute to Ramute Plioplys, a folk artist in the Lithuanian tradition.

Enjoy!

The Millennium Odyssey

I can't believe I haven't already mentioned that this year is the millennial year of Lithuania! Well, specifically, it's the 1000th anniversary of the first mention of Lithuania in a manuscript (the Quedlinburg Annals). Of course, the nation is commemorating the round number in typical fashion.

One thing I think is cool is the Millennium Odyssey -- the voyage of the yacht Ambersail around the world to visit "Lithuanian communities" on five continents. The ship arrived in Miami just two days ago. Sad to say, although Baltimore has a thriving Lithuanian American community, the Ambersail won't be sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to the Inner Harbor. It's bypassing Maryland and Washington, D.C., and going straight to New York. :-(

Ah, well, next month the annual Lithuanian festival will still take place in the Baltimore suburbs, and I'll have my fill of culture for another year.

Just a quick update

I've created a "syndicated feed" for this blog over at LiveJournal, where I have been active for many years. Mostly I'm doing this post as a test to make sure the feed is working.

If you're new to this blog, please feel free to check out the older entries and also my Pennsic 37 class handout.

Topics I would like to cover in the not-so-distant future include period Lithuanian documents and my upcoming adventures in the world of SCA tents.

Finding stuff in the "missing" book

Last weekend I purchased my second copy of "Women's Garb in Northern Europe, 450-1000 C.E.: Frisians, Angles, Franks, Balts, Vikings, and Finns" by Christina Krupp and Carolyn A. Priest-Dorman. It is #59 in the Compleat Anachronist publication series of the SCA. (To buy back issues of this fine quarterly publication yourself, go here.) I had bought my first copy of CA #15 from Poison Pen Press a few years back, but it's gotten lost somewhere, and I didn't have it in front of me when I taught my Pennsic course last summer.

I vaguely recalled that I'd noticed something wrong with the booklet the first time I read it, but I couldn't remember what it was until I read the section on Baltic garb again. It turns out that not all the sources mentioned in the Baltic garb section are actually listed in the bibliography in the back of the booklet. One of them was "Moora, 1932" and the other was "Kulikauskiene & Rimaniene, 1958, Abb. 567, reproduced in Ginteus."

Thanks to Worldcat.org, I think I've tracked down the former. It's a book called Die Vorzeit Estlands ("The Prehistory of Estonia") by H. Moora, published in Tartu, Estonia, by Akadeemiline Kooperatiiv. Fortunately for me, the Library of Congress has a copy, so I might actually get to see it someday.

I'm having more trouble with the second search. "Ginteus" doesn't even exist in Google. Through BookFinder.com I noticed a volume called Senoves Lietuviu Drabuziai Ir Ju Papuosalai: (I-XVI A.) ["Ancient Lithuanian Clothing and Ornaments: (I-XVI century)"] by R. Volkaite-Kulikauskiene, published by the Lietuvos Istorijos Institutas (Lithuanian Historical Institute) in 1997. Again, the Library of Congress has this and other works by this author. (If she's the same person as in the 1958 reference, then she's had quite a long career!)

I wonder if "Ginteus" is a typo for "Ginters," as in the bibliographical listing for Tracht und Schmuck in Birka und im Ostbaltischen Raum ("Costume and Jewelry in Birka and the East Baltic Area") by Valdemars Ginters (also at the Library of Congress).

I suppose I could e-mail the co-author of CA #59 for the identity of "Ginteus," although since it's been 17 years since the booklet was published, she probably doesn't have the answer at her fingertips.

To summarize, I'm really glad I got myself another copy of this CA issue, because it's very handy for getting some plausible female garb together. However, I have to remind myself that this booklet was published in 1992, just months after the Soviet Union fell apart and the Baltic republics got their full identity back. I'm sure that much new research has been done in the last 17 years, and it would be great to pull it together so that it could be of use in the SCA.