[Ansteorra] A whole Ansteorra ! ! !

[Chris Zakes]

At 01:30 PM 3/23/2008, you wrote:
>I also support a whole Ansteorra, though my small opinion matters 
>little. I would counsel, however, for those who think otherwise that 
>right now, perhaps some time for healing and strengthening would be 
>prudent. The last several months have been difficult, and a little 
>time would be a salve and opportunity for all.
>
>Reading Lord Malcom's post, I am reminded of a chat I had a few 
>weeks ago, as my group's Historian, with a gentleman who witnessed 
>the early days of both my group and the Kingdom.
>
>Before Ansteorra made the break from Atenveldt, Ansteorra was strong 
>and growing stronger quite rapidly. The problem that led to 
>independence, however, was not necessarily her strength, but that 
>Atenveldt was essentially, no longer answering her mail. The mother 
>kingdom was not communicating with its growing offspring on a 
>regular basis. Requests for guidance on several issues were ignored 
>or disregarded. Part of the reason that our own customs are 
>different sometimes from societal norms and traditions grew out of 
>this issue. Marshallate questions were unanswered. Seneschalate 
>issues were unanswered, so we or our forbearers created their own 
>standards and traditions. Ansteorra was forced to stand almost 
>before she was ready to walk. At least that is the story I was told.


A couple of things to remember: "central" Atenveldt (the 
Phoenix/Tucson area) is a thousand miles away from most of Ansteorra, 
so any kind of face-to-face communication was difficult at best. I 
don't know if lack of communication between central Atenveldt and 
Ansteorra was as big a problem as the fact that we were just so far 
apart. It's difficult enough to drive from, say, Bjornsborg to 
Northkeep. Imagine having to go twice that distance to get to Crown 
Tourney or Coronation.

Also this was twenty years or more before email was developed. If you 
wanted to communicate with someone in, say, the Barony of the Sun 
(Phoenix) it was either a paper letter, a long distance phone call or 
waiting until you were both at an event (which *might* happen once a 
year if you were lucky.)

Another factor is that there were fewer rules about how the SCA 
operated. Most folks in Ansteorra had never even *seen* a copy of 
Corpora or the By-Laws, much less read them[1] so a lot of what we 
did was made up, based on equal parts of hearsay and guesswork.



1. The first mass-mailing of Corpora was being put together at Duke 
Siegfried's house the weekend I was out in California for the Board 
meeting that decided the fate of Rapier in the SCA (September of AS 
14/1979.) Since I was staying with His Grace, I helped with the 
labelling and sorting. This was about three months *after* Ansteorra 
became a kingdom.

         -Tivar Moondragon