It all began with a funeral for a bear...

Almost three years ago, in my kingdom of SCA, the Queen at the time came up with a most intriguing theme to determine her arts and science champion, and that is where it all began.

I have been in the SCA roughly 15 years now, and arts & sciences have always been a part of my journey. Like many of us I suffer from "Do ALL the things!" I have bounced around doing varying things, pewtering, weaving, some sewing. I enjoyed my projects, especially weaving, but it was starting to occur to me that none of those them inspired the kind of passion that drove me to teach classes or share what I was doing by entering A&S displays or making largess. Weaving is very cathartic to me, but it was becoming very clear that it was "me time" activity. My persona is Finnish, as a way to connect to my own Finnish ancestry, I would often research varying topics of ancient and medieval Finland. I am particularly fond of folklore, mythology, religion, rituals, things that show the worldview of a people. I find it fascinating to look at how our ancestors viewed the world. Well, on that fateful day the theme of her contest was announced "The Festival of the Dark Rose: Lavish Lore and Superstitions. Arts entries should endeavor to represent the dark, macabre, unusual, or superstitious side of history." A lightbulb went off. I LOVE spooky. I LOVE superstition and folklore! As it just so happened, I had recently come across a really interesting Finnish practice, a bear funeral. (I will do a post about the piece soon.) To briefly summarize, to the Finns, as some other Nordic culture, bears were sacred. The Finns considered bears the link between man and the gods. Thus, killing them could cause major problems, such as an angry bear spirit rampaging through your village causing illness and death. On the other hand, winters were harsh, and people had to eat. The solution was to hold a ritual funeral to appease the spirit of the bear.

So my crazy idea began to form. I was going to have a bear funeral. Well part of one. So I went about the research, created a bear feast table, then entered a bardic piece to present one of the poems from the rituals.

As it turns out, people really like bear funerals, especially the Queen, who granted me the honor of being her champion during her reign. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that I could be weird. On an Arts and Science level, that is, personally it's pretty undisputed. Until I saw that theme, it had never really occurred to take my personal passions for things like folklore, ritual, or herbalism and do THAT. My brain had been stuck in the tracks of what I saw other people doing, your well represented A&S tracks. I found my passion. The rest is history, and I have been weird ever since.