Back from the eternal city and the season of medieval markets

After a long break I'm writing again about my life and SCA-hobby also in English. I have spent two amazing weeks in the eternal city of Rome staying in the Finnish Cultural instute of Rome in Villa Lante from 16th century. Villa Lante is located in the Gianicolo hill in it's solitude outside the city center and it's said to have the best view over the roof tops in the entire city. I had been for short tourist presentation in the villa couple of years back, but the fact of living in this fabulous house for free was more marvelous than I could ever have expected.

The excursion was done with our department of classics and we were mainly going through ancient archeological sites and museums with our assistant or professor acting as guide. And after the long days walking these sites and museums we had also seminar presentations in the evenings. So the schedule was very hectic, even though I managed to get some time oof my own. I would like to go some day to Rome just to go through all the medieval curches and renessaince palaces of the city, because during the scholarly trips the focus is obiviously on the ancient times.

Before heading to Rome we had a lovely demo wiith Kaukameeli and Humalasalo's dancers and fighters in my ex-home town Jyväskylä located in central Finland. The demo was on little part of the annual festival of arts in the city centre. We had our place in the National Museum of Handicrafts were we had build a small exhibition of medieval and renessaince clothing. The fighters and dancers had their show in the middle of Jyväskylä's main street and had over 200 viewers. I was very proud to show my childhood town how funny and exiting hobby medieval re-enactment actually is.

For a couple weeks we will be having also an another demo in Central Finland, this time in Laukaa medieval market, in the same village than my eldest brother lives. The market is held for a second time and I'm very proud to see how interest towars Middle Ages grows in my childhood province. We are trying to even re-found the once-buried Village of Hirvenkylä (my former SCA-group) with Kaukameeli and some new members.

Laukaa is also the begining for the season of medieval markets in Finland. This year we are having an info table in the Turku medieval market with our Canton of Unikankare and I'm planning to attend some other medieval markets too during the summer if I can only aford it. Medieval things act as a balancing effect for writing a Master's thesis for the entire summer.

The Beginning

I actually founded this blog couple of days ago, but some other tasks kept busy until now. After a lond consideration I decided to try to write something in English to make my almost nonexistent English skills a little better. I'm used to read research litterature in English almost daily, but I have had an irrationial fear of trying to write something in English since school years. I had a similar fear for talking Englis aswell, but the SCA seems to have cured it quite well.

The international aspect of the Society is a blessing. Many courts held in English and many new international acquitances make even shyest and unsecurest person try to talk something. Nowadays I don't have any problems with talking even though my pronaunciation is not very sofisticated. I pretty much hated sudying English at school even though I loved studying other languages at school (Swedish, Latin and Italian). I think that my attitude towards English is because of me not starting to study it in the same age that children normallly do in Finland. My parents decided to put me in the Swedish class instead. For a very long time I felt I was more comfortable of talking Swedish than English but now it seems to be turned up side down, even though living in a bilingual environment. (I spent my childhood in strictly Finnish speaking region of Finland)

In this blog I thought I could deal mostly with SCA-stuff in a more abreviated way than in my Finnish blog, which is also about some very personal stuff. I have another Finnish blog too and it's about me trying to complete my Master's thesis in Classics. The thesis is about Roman agricultural slaves and bailiffs and how Collumella described them in his agricultural manual. Right now I'm actually not doing anything spesific SCA-stuff, because I'm tryig concentrate on my scool stuff instead and trying to graduate within a year.

But I have on lovely turquoise wool fabric, still uncut, waiting for to be a lovely 14th century gown with silk embroidery for the Baronial Investiture in September. This year it seems like that am actually going to the Investiture. In previous two times I have been moving out exactly the same weekend. But I think that the start for a new sewing project is not untill I have came back from Rome. I'm leaving to a excursion in Rome for the two last weeks of May and have plenty of school stuff and other arrangements to do before that. In example, I'm having a home flea market tomorrow with a friend arriving from Tampere in my flat. It's kind of Student Village version of an american style yard sale. I'm trying to get rid of my old clothes ( both mundane and SCA) and unnecessary neeedle work accesories.