Society for Creative Anachronism College of Arms 1702 Sea Ventures Ln Hampton, VA 23665-2429 +1-757-848-5813 laurel@heraldry.sca.org For the June 2010 meetings, printed September 24, 2010 To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from Olwyn Laurel, Istvan Wreath, Mari Outgoing Pelican, and Juliana Incoming Pelican, greetings. Items listed below in square brackets have not been scheduled yet. For information about future scheduling, please review the status table located on the Web at http://oscar.sca.org/index.php?action=137. The June Laurel decisions were made at the Pelican meeting held on Saturday, June 26, 2010, the Wreath meeting held on Sunday, June 6, 2010, and at the KWHSS Roadshow on Sunday, June 13, 2010. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: West (31 Jan, 2010) (pushed due to lack of payment and packet), Laurel (05 Mar, 2010), Artemisia (15 Mar, 2010), Atenveldt (15 Mar, 2010), East (20 Mar, 2010), An Tir (22 Mar, 2010), Drachenwald (29 Mar, 2010), Gleann Abhann (29 Mar, 2010), Caid (30 Mar, 2010), Trimaris (30 Mar, 2010), Ansteorra (31 Mar, 2010), Atlantia (31 Mar, 2010), Lochac (31 Mar, 2010), Middle (31 Mar, 2010), and Outlands (31 Mar, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Monday, May 31, 2010.* The July Laurel decisions were made at the Pelican meeting held on Saturday, July 3, 2010 and the Wreath meeting held on Sunday, July 11, 2010. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: Northshield (26 Mar, 2010) (pushed due to lack of packet), Ealdormere (31 Mar, 2010) (pushed due to lack of packet), West (31 Mar, 2010) (pushed due to lack of payment), {AE}thelmearc (06 Apr, 2010), Ansteorra (12 Apr, 2010), Atenveldt (15 Apr, 2010), Laurel LoPaD (19 Apr, 2010), Calontir (20 Apr, 2010), An Tir (29 Apr, 2010), Atlantia (29 Apr, 2010), Caid (30 Apr, 2010), East (30 Apr, 2010), Gleann Abhann (30 Apr, 2010), Lochac (30 Apr, 2010), Meridies (30 Apr, 2010), and Outlands (30 Apr, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Wednesday, June 30, 2010.* The August Laurel decisions were made at the Wreath meeting held on Wednesday, August 4, 2010, the Pennsic road show held on Monday, August 9, 2010, and the Pelican meeting held on Saturday, August 21, 2010. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: {AE}thelmearc (01 May, 2010), An Tir (12 May, 2010), East (14 May, 2010), Northshield (16 May, 2010), Atenveldt (20 May, 2010), Ansteorra (26 May, 2010), Atlantia (28 May, 2010), West (30 May, 2010), Caid (31 May, 2010), Drachenwald (31 May, 2010), Gleann Abhann (31 May, 2010), Meridies (31 May, 2010), Middle (31 May, 2010), Outlands (31 May, 2010), Trimaris (31 May, 2010), and West (31 May, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Saturday, July 31, 2010.* The September Laurel decisions will be made at the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, September 4, 2010 and the Pelican meeting held on Saturday, September 25, 2010. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: Laurel LoPaD (15 May, 2010), {AE}thelmearc (31 May, 2010), Northshield (20 Jun, 2010), Laurel LoPaD (21 Jun, 2010), Gleann Abhann (23 Jun, 2010), Atenveldt (25 Jun, 2010), Artemisia (26 Jun, 2010), East (26 Jun, 2010), An Tir (27 Jun, 2010), Atlantia (28 Jun, 2010), Calontir (28 Jun, 2010), Ansteorra (29 Jun, 2010), Drachenwald (29 Jun, 2010), Outlands (29 Jun, 2010), and Meridies (30 Jun, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Tuesday, August 31, 2010.* The October Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican and Wreath meetings held in October 2010. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: {AE}thelmearc (09 Jul, 2010), Meridies (21 Jul, 2010), Gleann Abhann (22 Jul, 2010), East (26 Jul, 2010), Meridies (26 Jul, 2010), Ansteorra (27 Jul, 2010), An Tir (28 Jul, 2010), Atlantia (28 Jul, 2010), Trimaris (29 Jul, 2010), West (29 Jul, 2010), Atenveldt (30 Jul, 2010), Laurel LoPaD (30 Jul, 2010), Drachenwald (31 Jul, 2010), Middle (31 Jul, 2010), and Outlands (31 Jul, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Thursday, September 30, 2010.* The November Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican and Wreath meetings held in November 2010. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: [Caid (29 Jun, 2010)] (pushed due to lack of payment and packet), [Caid (31 Jul, 2010)] (pushed due to lack of packet), [Lochac (31 Jul, 2010)] (pushed due to lack of packet), [Ansteorra (17 Aug, 2010)], Gleann Abhann (17 Aug, 2010), Atenveldt (20 Aug, 2010), Lochac (29 Aug, 2010), [Artemisia (30 Aug, 2010)], Atlantia (30 Aug, 2010), An Tir (31 Aug, 2010), East (31 Aug, 2010), [Meridies (31 Aug, 2010)], Middle (31 Aug, 2010), and West (31 Aug, 2010). *All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Sunday, October 31, 2010.* _Not all letters of intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this cover letter. The date of posting of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of certain letters of intent. Additionally, some letters of intent received may not have been scheduled because the administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, et cetera) have not yet been met._ REMINDER: Until all administrative requirements are met, the letter may not be scheduled. **** Greetings from (Yet Another) Pelican! **** Hi, I'm Juliana. (Hi, Juliana.) I suspect that most of you have met me once or twice. For those who haven't, I currently live in the Kingdom of An Tir, but started out in the part of the East Kingdom that became {AE}thelmearc. I've been around the College of Arms for just over a decade (Elsbeth recruited me for her staff, and the rest was history). I've been a submissions herald (for {AE}thelmearc), and just before I stepped up as Pelican I finished my last job as Palimpsest, writing the new draft rules. I've also been drop-dead for a couple of previous Pelicans. I'm really looking forward to working with everyone in my new job. I want everyone to feel free to contact me about issues and concerns; the Laurel team is here to help you. **** From Pelican: Some Name Resources **** There is an enormous (and growing) number of resources online that can be useful to heralds and to submitters. Each month, I'm going to post information about some that I think might be useful. If I miss some interesting ones, let me know, because I don't know everything. Since I've asked for commentary about Old Norse transliterations, I thought I'd start there. I'm going to assume that everyone knows about the many great articles at http://www.s-gabriel.org/scandinavian. In considering this issue, you might look at standardized Old Norse forms, documentary forms in the Latin alphabet, and runic forms. Standardized Old Norse forms may be found in places like Geirr Bassi Haraldsson's _The Old Norse Name_ and Lindorm Eriksson's "The Bynames of the Viking Age Runic Inscriptions" http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/lindorm/runicbynames/. Latin alphabet documentary forms may be found in published sources like E. H. Lind, _Norsk-Isl{a:}ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fr{ao}n Medeltiden_; a few forms from c. 1100 can be found in the _Sveriges medeltida personnamn_ http://www.sofi.se/5187. Runic forms may be found in places like Gunnvor silfraharr's "Names of Scandinavians in the Byzantine Varangian Guard and in Russia" http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/gunnvor/varangian/ and in Lena Peterson's _Nordiskt runnamnslexikon_, at http://www.sofi.se/images/runor/pdf/lexikon.pdf. Also useful in dealing with Old Norse are the two important dictionaries of Old Norse, both found online. The more complete and useful is _An Icelandic-English Dictionary_, by Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson (also known as Cleasby Vigfusson); it includes many specific citations which illustrate usage. I like the copy at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html. The other dictionary is _A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic_, by Geir T. Zo{e:}ga. I use the copy at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oi_zoega_about.html. Dictionaries, of course, must be used with caution, because the majority of words cannot be used as given names or bynames. I hope that sections like this will be useful; in future months, I plan to discuss resources for other languages and issues. **** Society pages **** Congratulations are due to Einarr Grimsson, Gold Falcon Principal Herald. On September 18, at Coronation, he was inducted into the Order of the Calon Cross by Ostwald and Kay. The Calon Cross is Calontir's grant level service award. Einarr was inducted for his ten years of work in various kingdom and local heraldic offices. **** From Pelican: Transliteration and Old Norse **** This month, two different submissions raised the issue of the sorts of spellings we should allow in Old Norse. This is a thorny issue, with a few complications, and so we'd like to ask the College to provide feedback. "Old Norse" is a problematic term. Linguistically and culturally it is used to refer to three things. First, it is used generically to refer to the cultures and languages used throughout the Scandinavian world before about 1000 AD. Second, it is used to refer to Old West Scandinavian (spoken in Iceland and Norway), as opposed to Old East Scandinavian (spoken in Sweden and Denmark). Documents and names from this range of languages are found both in runic forms and later in the Latin alphabet (that is the alphabet broadly used across Europe). Finally, "Old Norse" refers to (as Talan Gwynek put it in his "A Very Brief History of the Scandinavian Languages," which can be found at http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/talan/scandinavianlang.html) "a scholarly abstraction, a standardized and regularized version of 13th century written Old Icelandic." In other words, nineteenth century scholars created a system that standardized spelling conventions and invented at least one distinction that was not used in period: the distinction between the vowel _i_ and the consonantal _j_. So, again to borrow from Talan: " the [standardized] Old Norse name "Herj{o'}lfr" actually appears in Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian as "Heriolfr", "Heriulfr", "Heri{o'}lfr", "Heriolbr", and "Heriulfuer"." At the moment, we only register documentary forms found in the Latin alphabet and standardized Old Norse forms. We do not register spellings transliterated from runic forms, for example, except in their standardized Old Norse spelling (which means in standardized Old Icelandic). Likewise, we do not register relatively casual transcriptions of Old Norse names like "Bjorn", requiring instead that it be registered as the standardized Old Norse "Bj{o,}rn" or the documentary "Biorn". Similarly , a name that appears in a runic inscription as "{TH}urstain" (reflecting Old East Scandinavian pronunciation) will be registered as the standardized Old Norse "{TH}orsteinn". The ways in which we deal with other languages not usually written in the Latin alphabet, like Arabic, is far more flexible: we allow several systems of transliteration with varying levels of formality in whether they indicate long marks, emphatic consonants, and even letters like `ayn and hamza, which are written as ` and ' respectively. The situation with Old Norse is a little different; some of the names are runic and are truly transliterated from another alphabet to the Latin alphabet, but others are in Latin alphabet documentary forms. Our rules and precedents are less clear about how to deal with these normalized forms when they are altered from documentary forms in the Latin alphabet. Given this, should we allow the registration of simplified forms of standardized Old Norse, like "Bjorn", that retain the i/j separation but writes both o and{o,} with a single letter? Additionally, should we register spellings that reflect runic spellings more directly than those standardized forms, like "{TH}urstain"? **** Send What to Whom **** Letters of Intent, Comment, Response, Correction, et cetera are to be posted to the OSCAR online system. No paper copies need be sent. Submission packets (one copy of each name form plus documentation, including petitions; two colored copies of each armory form plus two copies of any associated documentation, including petitions) to the SCA College of Arms, PO Box 31755, Billings, MT 59107-1755. Cheques or money orders for submissions, payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms" are to be sent to David Duggar, Attn: Laurel Chancellor of Exchequer, 1705 Holiday Pl, Bossier City, LA 71112-3706. Send roster changes and corrections to Laurel. College of Arms members may also request a copy of the current roster from Laurel. For a paper copy of a LoAR, please contact Laurel at the address above. The cost for one LoAR is $3. Please make all checks or money orders payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms". The electronic copy of the LoAR is available free of charge. To subscribe to the mailings of the electronic copy, please see the bottom of http://heraldry.sca.org/heraldry/lists.html#lists for more instructions. For all administrative matters, please contact Laurel. Pray know that I remain, In service, Olwynn ni Chinnedigh Laurel Principal Queen of Arms =============================================================================== Created at 2010-09-24T00:16:11