<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>Wesað ge hal, Ulsted cyning, Eoforgeard cwen, and þæt folc Ansteorralandes!</DIV>
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<DIV>Wihtric hlafard Wihtmunding does greet everyone and hopes that the chill in the air turns ones mind to the Yuletide and a yearning for merriment with friends.</DIV>
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<DIV> If so then we hope you will turn your minds, hearts, and feet the direction of Steppes for our Twelfth Night. This year is an an Anglo-Saxon theme and with that I wanted to answer a question or two I have received privately and address one or two other things.</DIV>
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<DIV>Though this is an Anglo-Saxon theme, it is not so in a microcasm, as in just on single moment in Anglo-Saxon times or a solely of that ethnicity and culture. Instead it is set up as a hall representing the scope and variety of the period from roughly 450 or the <EM>Adventus Saxonum</EM> to 1066 and even a bit just thereafter. Within these bookends we have British post-Romanism, the Heptarchy of England, the Danelaw, the various Anglo-Danish dynasties, and of course (regrettably) even Normans. It was a time where many influences were coming together to make what would become England. In the earlier period Late Roman and Merovingian styles and culture were, at various times, in vogue in addition to more native looks as well as even some inluence in Anglia from Vendel Sweden. In the Middle Period we of course have significant influence from the Danes but also again Frankish/Carolingian exports of culture and court habits.
Of course towards the end, even a good bit before 1066, the Normans were already influencing practices as well.</DIV>
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<DIV> In short though, we want you to come in fellowship with us and that is more important. If Middle Eastern is your thing or Elizabethan, then come as you are. We are anarchronistic as it is. Might as well embrace it. Sure we would ask that people try even for a simple T-tunic, but it is the people who make these events rock. For the Middle Eastern sort, it should actually be noted that there was at elast some contact between the Middle East and England from almost the get at least in some trade sense. An eastern unit of the late Roman period was made up of Angle men and Byzantines certainly had diplomatic contact thorugh most of the period.</DIV>
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<DIV>Gódspéde!</DIV>
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<DIV>Wihtric</DIV></div></body></html>