ANST - New Question

[Leslie Miller]

> Most of us chose our personas fairly early in our SCA life, before
> we knew a lot about the various time periods and cultures.  My
> question is this:  if you had it all to do over again, would you
> choose the same time and culture?
>  Would you choose a different one?  Why?

When I first joined, I chose a Viking persona because I knew more 
about Viking history than anything else (which isn't saying a lot). 
That was what I was interested in at the time, and it wasn't a 
difficult choice at all.  I knew that I wanted to fight, so 
"Gunhild/Gunhilde/Gunhildr" (with a modern pronunciation of 
"Gunhilda"), meaning "noble battle maid" seemed a very appropriate 
name.  

If I could do it all again, I would choose Gunhilde for spelling, and 
I would happily drop the "Amberstar" for "Hakonsdottir" or something 
else entirely. Otherwise, I would probably do the same thing, 
because it was right for me at that time.  

However, if I were to join today, with 13 more years of research and 
reading under my belt, I would probably do it differently.  After 
having read Christine de Pizan's _A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor_ 
and _Book of the City of Ladies_ in translation, I think I would 
probably choose to be a French persona of late 1300's/early 1400's.  
These books (which were written in period) provide a great guide, and 
in my mind, I could *be* the type of Lady she was writing about... 
probably more so than a 10th century Viking woman.  

I'm pretty well established as Gunhilda now, though... I think it 
would just be too odd to switch to a later period French persona.   
It might be tempting to try if I ever moved to another Kingdom, but 
it's hard to say if I would or not.

Gunhilda

-------------------------------
HL Gunhilda Amberstar
Northern Regional Seneschal
Kingdom of Ansteorra
-------------------------------
============================================================================

To be removed from the Ansteorra mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe ansteorra".