Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 734

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 734

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/734

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 an "unlidded eye" in medieval heraldry, plus some background information on heraldry in general and your name.

Heraldry didn't come into wide use in Europe until the mid-1200's, and there is no evidence that it was used in Iceland until modern times. Therefore, your persona would not have had a coat of arms. However, because arms are popular in the SCA, many people whose personas would not have used heraldry choose to use arms. In these cases (such as yours) we base our recommendations on the "core style" of heraldry which could have been found in most places where heraldry was used. For more information, you can read our Web page on the topic at

http://www.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/faq/nonheraldic.html

We found a number of coats of arms (mainly late-period) which include eyes. One source says, "The Human Eye appears as a charge (usually in armes parlantes) in more coats than might have been expected." (1) "Armes parlantes" are arms in which the name of a main charge sounds similar to the family name of the person who carries them; they are also called "canting arms."

There is no evidence that anyone used an unlidded eye in heraldry. The eyelid of an open eye is small detail that would generally not be recorded in the blazon of a coat of arms.

Finally, your design "an eye between three mountains" is very unusual for most medieval heraldry. When there are two different types of charges in medieval heraldry, one of them is almost always a simple geometric shape (called an "ordinary"). Although your design isn't impossible, we would recommend using either mountains or eyes. A design like "Sable, three eyes argent" would be more consistent with medieval heraldic design.

We also looked up your name, and we found several ways to say "Gorm of Barra" in Old Norse, including: (2)

You could use any of these, or keep the English translation "Gorm of Barra."

Zenobia Naphtali, Arval D'Espas Nord, Talan Gwynek, and Maryn Grey contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel

(1) Woodward, John and George Burnett, _A Treatise on Heraldry British and Foreign_ (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1969).

(2) Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21).