ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1087 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1087 ************************************ From: "S Friedemann" 6 Sep 1998 Greetings, Here's the information we found on , which you wanted to use as a name for a Viking household with a lot of brewers, and about households in general. We use a number of conventions to depict Norse letters that can't be typed in ASCII text. represents an with a reversed-comma-like hook underneath it. represents the letter "edh," which looks something like a "d" with a crossed upper bar. It is pronounced like in . A slash following a letter represents an accent over that letter. You said that you were more interested in getting your name and badge passed than in historical accuracy. The Academy of S. Gabriel is concerned only with historical accuracy, and so in a way we're not the best people to advise you. However, we think that you may find the historical information about household and household names interesting and helpful, and so we're including it. SCA households can re-create almost any kind of medieval group, from a craft guild to the house of a medieval nobleman. The historical accuracy of a household name depends largely on the kind of group that the household is trying to re-create. >From the description of your house, it sounds like you're not really thinking about re-creating a medieval group. However, the description of your house made us think that you might want to think of yourselves as a Norse settlement. If you think of your house this way, Thorvald would be the head man of the village and the other members of the household would be inhabitants of the village. Although we are not experts on Norse village government, there were certainly habitations which were often led by one person, so this would be a reasonable analogy to your household. If you wanted to go a step farther, you could even create a sort of "persona story" for your household in which Thorvald leads a group of Vikings to the shores of Trimaris and founds a settlement there. Starting from that point, we looked at the names of Norse settlements to see if would be a reasonable name. We couldn't find examples of god's names, on their own, used as place names. However, we found the village name . We also found the following names for geographical features that a village could have been named from, but it's of course a lot better to choose the name that actually is known to have been a Viking age village name. [1] * AEgisfio,rdhr "AEgir's fjord" * AEgissida "AEgir's coast" * AEgisdyrr "AEgir's dyrr" (literally "door," referring to a narrow sea passage with islands on either side.) * AEgissnes "AEgir's headland" These examples show that it would be reasonable to combine the element (which means, "AEgir's") with Norse words for geographical features that are near the sea. in particular was specifically the name of a town, not just the name of a geographical feature. It would be reasonable to have a household called, for example, , meaning "AEgir's headland." [2] Because you're more interested in having arms that can be registered than in having arms which follow medieval style, we haven't commented on your design. However, at the bottom of this letter there is an email address of a herald who can help you with questions of SCA registration. We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you. Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, Charles O'Connor, Lindorm Eriksson, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Rouland Carre, Arval Benicoeur, and Giles Leabrook contributed research and/or commentary on this letter. In service, Alan Fairfax & Aryanhwy Prytydes merch Catmael Academy of S. Gabriel [1] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931). s.n. {AE}gir. [2] Rygh, Oluf, _Norske gaardnavne; oplysninger samlede til brug ved matrikelens revision, efter offentlig foranstaltning udgivne med tilfoiede forklaringer af O. Rygh ..._ (Kristiania) W. C. Fabritius & sonners bogtrikkeri, 1897-1924).