The Great Northern Medieval Fayre?

Don't get me wrong, I had a great time. I know that I say that a lot. But I don't know that anyone else knew what they were getting into. I have been to some Ontario Medieval Fairs before, so I knew almost exactly what to expect from the Great Northern Medieval Fayre.

We arrived at the Fairgrounds just outside of Collingwood at about 1:30 in the afternoon on Friday. We realized as soon as we got there that we were joining the ranks of the school children, particularly Grade 4s whose curriculum includes medieval history.

It had rained all Thursday, so the field was largely muddy. I am sure it was not as bad as it would be on Saturday and Sunday, when it rained the whole time. The problem with the fairgrounds outside of Collingwood is that they don't feel very woodsy, they feel very agricultural. Though the Medieval Fair in Kitchener/Waterloo that is held in September is by and large the same thing, the surrounding woods gives the park more of the fairy tale feel.

The prices for entering the fair was $20 each. As I say, I had a great time. I got my french fries, wandered over to the Merlin the Magician show, where I saw that he was doing the trick with the rope of several different lengths. Since I already knew how this was done I moved on. I went over and spoke to the vendors about what they were selling, and why they liked medieval crafts so much. I saw the vendors from whom I had bought my purse several years previously at the Kitchener medieval Fair, and then went over to watch the joust, which was interesting. My dad then bought a wooden sword, so that he too could join in the ranks of the other fourth grade boys.

But I got the impression that the teachers that had brought their children for the day were disappointed that one of the biggest things to do was shop. They hadn't told all of the children to bring money. By the time that 2:00 had come it is clear that most had tried the archery and putting on the chainmail. From what it looked like it was largely a long recess. I think the teachers weren't thrilled.

The best part of the fair were the jousters. That is something that is missing from the Kitchener Fair, which also has shows, though they are usually scripted by one of the organizers, and are all kinds of cheesy.

The jousting was definitely worth something, though I wasn't sure it was worth twenty dollars. Even while I sat there a family was trying their best to cheer up their mother, who was feeling disappointed and ripped off. They spent most of the joust comparing the price to Medieval Times in Toronto, and the convenience of having that right in your backyard as opposed to having to go all the way down to the city.

I was watching the joust, but I have to admit I was distracted by the kids who were sitting in front of me. They were having their own mini joust, and I cringed every time their swords whacked together. It didn't help that I couldn't really hear the announcer.

In the end you did sort of have the impression that you were paying $20 to shop. I wasn't sure how they were going to attract large enough crowds on Saturday or Sunday with that kind of a deal. At the same time, it wasn't that large a fair, so it would probably fill up nicely without that many people. And you would always have people like me, who were going to come to the Medieval Fair no matter what.

All in all, it wasn't bad for their first time out, though I would have some suggestions for them. If possible I would choose a different venue, one with more trees, because Medieval Fairs are only very cursorily about medieval history or society. They are about the fantasy and romance which draws many of us, even academics at first, to the medieval period. It would be good to play this up more. If at all possible, reduce the price, perhaps by charging the vendors more to be there. The medieval fair that they used to have in southwestern Ontario that was a summer long, every weekend event, charged something like $20 (granted, without inflation) and was such an experience that by necessity all Medieval/Renaissance Fairs are compared to it. These two things are crucial. The adding of more vendors and activities will come, no doubt, as the Medieval Fair matures. But that is less important than giving people the impression that this is something that they want to come back to.

This is the interview conducted at the beginning of the Fair by Medievalists.net.

The Mongoliad and the Future of E-books

This is an article by Annalee Newitz that I came across recently. In it they discuss the future of publishing and the power of the e-book to be an entirely different format from the print book.

What was really interesting is the capacity that the book will have to be collaborative, especially when it comes to subjects that people are experts in, particularly things like sword fighting or martial arts. People who are experts on such things often find themselves disappointed by what they read or what they see in films. The author of the article talked about the ability to make the contributions of outsiders canon, so that people who really have something to contribute really can improve the quality of the piece.

What really interests me, and what really wasn't touched on in the article, was the suitability of the medieval period as a subject for these new formats. The project is being let by Neal Stephenson, among others. He is a science fiction author, but the title of this first work is going to be The Mongoliad. It is all going to be set in the Medieval period. At the end of the Annalee Newitz article it says:

Ready to download The Mongoliad and get medieval? Subutai plans to launch before the end of the year. Sign up for updates on the project via their official website.

It makes sense to have this project be an historical one because more people will have an expertise on the subject. And why not the medieval period, due to its inherent romanticism, and the plethora of people who are experts on medieval warfare. It really is a good subject for this project and I think as medievalists we should keep thinking about why.

Be sure to check it out.

Robin Hood Movie Review

As medievalists this year we have been treated to several films that build on a medieval theme, like How to Train your Dragon. Of course when we heard that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe were teaming up to do a Robin Hood movie we all waited with baited breath. Even the more cynical amongst us admitted we would probably watch it, even if we were determined not to like it.

Having seen it, I will freely admit that I loved it. Most who know me are not surprised by that statement. Even as a Public Historian, I loved it because if there is one thing you can say about the film is that it was committed to conveying a sense of history. The characters were likable, the plot I found to be engaging, and I came away entirely satisfied.

This does not mean that the film was without its problems. In fact most critics have panned it. If we look at it from the point of view of a medievalist there are several things that it does quite well, and there are several things that I am not sure added to the plot.

*spoiler alert*

In terms of inaccuracies, I am sure others picked up on more than I did. The hardest thing I found to digest was the pyre funeral for Walter of Locksley. With Churchmen standing by. Part of the belief in the Middle Ages was that your body would be resurrected along with your soul, so it was not within church practices to burn bodies. This is not to say that it would have been uniform everywhere, or that this couldn't have happened, but it seemed to me to be unlikely, and not to add to the plot which elsewhere was being so careful with details.

The other part that I found myself somewhat incredulous about was Marian joining the charge. Not that I think it would be inaccurate for some women to be involved in the assault on the beach, but I hadn't really understood this to be part of the character they created for Marian, and so it felt a bit forced. I was entirely with them when she picked up a sword to defend her village, but I think a lot of people were taken out of the film by this addition. Again, not because it was necessarily inaccurate but seemed a bit of a stretch based on the rest of the film.

One of my favourite parts of the history that was in the film was the portrayal of King Richard and King John. Here they were truer to the history than to the conventions of the Robin Hood story, and I really liked that. Richard was brutal and John was pretty nasty, though his real fault was not having the same carriage or demeanour as his brother. As well, he was not pure evil, which I liked.

Perhaps the biggest fault of the movie was that the message was not elegantly placed within the plot, but instead the audience was hit over the head with it. Robin is part of the movement that would lead to the signing of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta is certainly a big deal, and I could be corrected, but the Magna Carta at the time was mostly for the nobles who objected to John coming back and trying to take back some of the local power that Richard had lost because of his absenteeism. It was certainly about taxes, but part of that was John was a better administrator on the home front than his brother, and was dealing with the tremendous debt left by Richard. The movement was not really about the rights of the people, at least not all the people, though later politicians would understand it that way. What they were saying in the film seemed to be phrased, not so that it would be historically inaccurate, but so that audiences would recognize the ideals they were espousing as democracy, even though that's not really really what it was. In some ways Robin's espousal of these ideals seems forced, and it means that we lack some of the bravado and cockiness which was an appeal for earlier incarnations of Robin Hood.

But what it does do is place the whole story in a wider historical context, and it really does explain in many ways the momentum of the Magna Carta movement, though they never actually say the words 'Magna Carta.'

This Robin Hood, like Robin Hoods before it, tried to be relevant to today by exploiting elements of the history to show ongoing trends of injustice and resistance. As I say, I loved the film, but in its devotion to its message it lacked a bit of the fun that is to be found in other incarnations. And while Russell Crowe is excellent, his Robin Hood lacks the personality of others, and so he is by no means my favourite Robin.

In some ways, the final scenes of the films, with the camp and the greenwood, you come away with the sense that you would really liked to have seen more of that, that classic Robin Hood aesthetic. Though, in the end that is what we have seen before. It is just that I never tire of it.



Final note: Because I am a fan of Great Big Sea I enjoyed Alan Doyle as Alan-a-Dale. It didn't take me out of the movie too much, and as not that many are big fans like myself, I think it was an excellent choice.

Complexity in Simplicity

I like to work to deadline. I like to be figuring it out right up until the last second. For some this only causes panic and anxiety. Some procrastinate to the point where it becomes so overwhelming they can't even contemplate doing it any more.

I hope that I don't make myself into one of their number.

But as I reach the end of the year, and most projects are finished, save for some loose ends, I have somehow made things that are perhaps simple a little complicated. Not to the point of un-doable, but to the point that if most people had left it to this point they would be panicking.

For instance, as there has been no deadline for Interactive Exhibit Design I am still working on the electronic portion and the write-up. I have outlined on my website all the aspects of the project I intend to write about, but it is alarmingly blank at the moment.

And since I am still working on this I will have to make sure that I make at least one more trip to London this summer to return all of the electronics (and book) that I am still working with.

I will finish, or get as far as I can before I get stuck, since I think this may be one of the more useful things in my portfolio whichever direction my future career takes, and because I would really love to see this work.

For my internship I am working with the Simcoe County Museum this year. This may be not all I am doing, but I will keep people posted about this (maybe something with the R.O.M - not internship-y really, or with L'Anse aux Meadows) but I have been waiting to solidify this internship for several months. I have come to the conclusion that the Simcoe County Museum has never had an intern before, at least not under the current administration, and so they just did not have the ability to confirm this. It is feeling a little more solid now, though I do get the impression that I am forging new territory.

In addition, adding a little more complexity, I went over today to make appointments to talk to people at the museum and it looks like they would like to do some oral histories. That is really exciting, but a lot of work. When I told my dad that oral histories were going to involve a lot of paperwork that made him laugh.

So, a few things I am working on at the last possible minute. Some of this is by design, like completing my IED write-up while I work on the project, and some is by accident as there was no way to speed up my work at the Simcoe County Museum. While it seems to all be very complex, I am happy to report that things seem to be sorting themselves out in a rather simple sort of way.

P.S. Thanks to Devon for pointing out that IED also means Improvised Explosive Device, I had completely forgotten that acronym ... I mean, yay news!

Public History Everywhere

Last night I was indulging in a little bit of SNL.

Do you know how once you learn a name, or a trend, you start seeing it everywhere. I have determined that I got to that point with my Public History classes, and I couldn't help but notice the relevance that SNL episode had to my classes.

The first, most obvious thing was during Weekend Update Seth Meyers talked about the Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum in Plano Texas: "A man in Texas has opened the cockroach hall of fame museum that features collections of the dead bugs in tutus and sunglasses, though just because you call it a museum inside your head doesn't mean you're not just a crazy son of a bitch with a gluegun."

I couldn't help but go back in my head to our discussions in class about what constitutes a museum. I actually came to the conclusion that yes, I would consider this a museum in my mind. Here is some of the information about that museum:



The second reference was to something that I came across in interactive exhibit design, about interactive physical computing. We looked at the 40 top arduino projects on the web, and the top one was this interactive laser harp. The musical guest, Kesha, actually used this harp in her first number. I probably felt cooler than I should have at that. Check out the video. The harp is used at the 3 minute mark.



Here is the video of the original laser harp:



It's official. I will now look for Public History in everything.

For all the people in my mapping medievalism seminar ...

... the BBC and the British Library have been taking a look at the history of maps. Incredibly relevant to our undertaking, particularly to Trista's paper.

For those who are not in that seminar, it is still interesting, and relevant to the work I have been undertaking with this seminar.

Further equally true, yet mutually exclusive truths

This week in Public History we looked at the issue of Repatriation in Canada and the United States. I am very much pro repatriation. The whole concept of a museum, and the preservation of historical material culture as it supposedly was in the time period, is, of course, a construct, and not the only way to celebrate heritage and culture.

Last week our speaker was James Cullingham, a documentary filmmaker who specializes in issues of social justice. The subjects he has covered in his films include Native rights in Manitoba as compared to the rights allotted to Blacks during Apartheid in South Africa, as well as how Jews and Palestinians interpret the conflict in their education systems. In class he said something along the lines of he believes that cultures should absolutely represent the culture of others, and to set up boundaries in art is ludicrous. And I wholeheartedly agree with this.

But of course, that is part of the problem that led to the need for repatriation, one culture imposing their epistemology upon that of another, and deciding how culture is to be represented.

However, James Cullingham, and the speaker that we had this week after our discussion about Repatriation, Neal Ferris, are both people who use tools that are arguably from the White Middle Class epistemology, namely documentary film and archaeology, in a culturally sensitive way. Neal Ferris holds the Lawson Chair of Archaeology, and is cross appointed to the Museum of Ontario Archaeology and the University of Western Ontario.

In an earlier post I was talking about how Public History is full of irresolvable equally true, and mutually exclusive truths. This is another one of those.

I fully support the rights of nations and cultures to define themselves, and that certainly means control over how their culture gets disseminated. This is particularly true for those cultures who have not always had that right, though really it should be true for all cultures. But the trouble is, if a culture has ultimate control over their own cultural legacies then that means that each country or nation will only be allowed to investigate cultural artefacts specific to their own history. Which in part means that there will be nothing left in the British Museum, and also will mean that somewhat arbitrary definitions based on modern culture will have to be made on the past. To whom would the history of the Norse landings in Canada belong? Canadians, though the Vikings probably did not respect the Canadian border when they were sailing about? Natives, whose ancestors may have had contact with those people, and are the only peoples who now live in those traditional locations? Scandinavians exclusively? Anyone whose country may have had contact with the Medieval Norse culture? My inclination is that it is now so old that perhaps it doesn't matter, but that is not a valid argument when discussing the heritage of several cultures, and so it becomes dangerous to apply that haphazardly to the ones that are not as linked to current politics.

An extreme, one that practically is unlikely to come to fruition, but should be considered nonetheless, is the danger of cultural segregation. Another extreme would be where people are expected to have cultural sensitivity without having any exterior cultural understanding, as a true knowledge of a culture is limited to the confines of that culture.

This issue is also related to what was said in earlier classes about the accuracy of living history. Who gets to play a settler, if the ethnicity of the modern employee does not match the ethnicity of the original historical persona. This is very much related to who gets to decide how the culture is represented. And it is interesting, because while I fall on the side of repatriation I think, with some cultural sensitivity attached to the interpretation, that living history should make an effort to be accurate in their portrayals, but that ultimately the employees should be more representative of the modern culture that they are serving, rather than the historical culture they are representing.

And I guess that is what guides my views on repatriation, that I think history should serve our current communities rather than the other way around. Still, that does not mean that it should be manipulated any way one wants. And representation of a culture through art is not the same as the preservation of heritage through material culture, though they are very closely linked. And so, it is another issue that is unresolvable, but is made better by an awareness of the inherent problems. Who ultimately gets to represent a culture, and are the representations from outside of that culture invalid, or do they also bring something to the discussion?

(Wholly overuse of the word culture Batman).