Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 206

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 206

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/206

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on sources for 13th-century German history, and on creating a persona in general.

There are two new books just released about the Hanseatic League, a trade organization which included cities throughout the Baltic Sea region, including Northern German. They are "Cargoes, Embargoes, and Emissaries" and "England and the German Hanse." A good book on Flanders for that period is "The Making of the Dutch Landscape" by Audrey Lambert.

The best book for German Names is "German Names" by Hans Bahlow. This book is more widely available in the German original (called "Deustche Namenlexicon,") but the English translation does exist. These books are not in most bookstores, but a large library or ILL might well be able to find them for you.

We would advise that you not decide on your persona based on your first set of garb. Although this might work well (it did for me), you might want to do some research to see what's out there. There are many options other than the common Scandinavian, British Isles, or Italian personae which are most common in the SCA. For more help in researching a persona, you can read "Under-Represented SCA Cultures," which is on the Academy Web page at

http://www.us.itd.umich.edú~ximenez/s.gabriel/docs/

Walraven van Nijmege, Pedro de Alcazar, Zenobia Naphtali, and Arval D'Espas Nord contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel