The Battle of Agincourt in 2011

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From 22.06. till 25.06., Froedhi and I were in Agincourt to take part in the reenactment of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. But first things first.

Friday night, exactly at midnight, we left here with a fullpacked car and three people in it; 8 hours later we stood on the field in Agincourt. After the other participants from our camp had arrived a little bit later, we built our camp consisting of 5 tents and three awnings in between. The awnings had a length of approximately 15 meters alltogether. So we had a kitchen, a dining-room and a ball-and-working-room.

Part of our kitchen

Our "knife"-block

On Saturday, we were woken by two shoots of a musket. After an ample breakfast, Froedhi and I went to scout the market, sadly, it wasn't as big as I expected. Among others, Bernie the Bolt was there, so I just couldn't resist and had to buy some cloth, a really stiff linen cloth for an inlay between outer cloth and lining and some soft linen for a lining of my next doublet. Besides, I bought a new wooden bowl for me. On sunday, we had boiled plums, since I didn't have the time to oil my bowl, it now has a red blotch in its middle - reminds me of the Japanese National Flag... I also could finally buy a pilgrim badge for my hat and a handfull of aglets, not to mention fudge of diverse varieties.

Towards afternoon, there was the rehearsal for the battle on Sunday. The archers' regiment was really impressive to me, it is a great view, many many many arrows crossing the skies. As in 1415, the battle field was not equally distributed, but this time, there were much more English than French on the field. There were also some French, fighting for the English side...

The day went out with some whistle, fiddle and lute music and a bit of gambling.

Sunday was the visitors day in the camp. It was my first time reenacting, so it also was a strange feeling being watched and filmed chopping wood and cooking pottage, as if these were activities one has forgotten about nowadays. But some people were really interested, so I could explain a few things to them. It pays off being able to speak different languages. I also used some spare time to decorate my belt with some buckles.

After the bulk of visitors had passed, we went to Agincourt's museum. Agincourt is really astonishing, it has about five  streets, a café and - a museum. This museum is finely arranged, through the whole exhibition the Hundred Years' War and its beginnings are explained, also the role that Agincourt played in it. There was also an area where one could experience things for oneself: How much do you see, looking through a visor? How much force is needed to pull up 40kg (so, how much force do you need to pull a 80-pounds-bow)? How heavy are the weapons of this time? I really liked the front half of an armour with its helmet, one could step behind it, a camera made a picture of it and showed it on a little display, so one could see oneself in this armour.

Of course, this day also went out with some gambling.

On Monday, we broke down our camp and went back home. After a short stop at the next Carrefour to buy enough cheese for the next two months, we were on the road to Germany.

All in all, it was a very pleasant an interesting weekend. I didn't know what to expect, how it would feel like to be part of a living history camp. Now I know it's fun and I'm looking forward to the next battle of Agincourt and the next camp. Last weekend, Froedhi and I went to a medieval market at Sulz am Neckar (Germany), at the moated castle of Glatt. See the post concerning it, if you like to.

Now, I only need time to realize all the ideas I got in Agincourt (a belt pouch, finishing the clothing, two stools, a chest, and so on, and so on, and so on...).

100 Books in 2011 - Number 10

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So, the report on it starts now a little bit delayed.

In february or march this year, I read somewhere about a project to read 100 books in 2011. I thought, that's it, I'm in, but I had to acknowledge that reading a book in three days isn't as easy as it sounds. So, I'm a bit behind my schedule, but perhaps I will read 10 more books till the end of the year.

010: Sean Crandall & Ted Thompson (Ed.) - Pathfinder Chronicler Anthology Vol 1. (02.08.2011)

This is, as the title suggests, an anthology of some short stories, all of them placed insidie the Pathfinder roleplaying game universe; Pathfinder is an offspring of the well-known Dungeons & Dragons. The stories all have different themes, as far as I know, none of them was written by a professional author, but fans took their time to write a story about their hobby. Should you find an interest in fantasy stories, you should look into this book. At the moment, it is only available as free eBook download on Paizo.com.

How to Build a Rope Bed - Construction Tutorial

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So, as announced on the german version of this blog, here's an how-to for constructing a rope bed.

First, the drawings:

Head End and Foot End

Sides

Bedposts

A click on the images will enlarge them, the scale is 1:10 (1cm on the drawing corresponds to 10cm in reality).

As you can see, the sides are getting two pins per side for plugging them into the posts, head end and foot end each only one per side. I thought the tension on the sides disperses better, if it is fixed in two spots. The pins each are 14cm long, 9cm for the post and 5cm in excess. The holes for the rope are 15cm apart from each other, between the first and last hole and the posts, there is a gap of 10cm. The diameter of the holes is directed to the diameter of the rope used, we used a 8mm hemp rope, so the diameter of the holes would be 10mm.

The drawing of the post is in a way that you are looking directly onto one of the edges of the post, so the middle line corresponds to an edge and the faces above and below it each correspond to adjacent edges of the post. Between two opposing faces, there is a hole through the post with the dimensions 14cm x 5cm with a gap of 2cm to the edges of the post, the head end and foot end are plugged into this hole. Between the other two opposing sides, there are two holes with the dimensions 6cm x 5cm, in these holes are plugged the sides of the bed, here is also a gap of 2cm to the edge of the post.

All in all, we used about 40m of hemp rope, a bit less than 20m between head end and foot end and a bit more than 20m between the sides. The rope is woven and not just swivelled, this way, it cannot come losse while threading it into the holes.

Once set up, it looks like this:

As you can roughly see, the ropes are interwoven. First, the rope between the sides has been threaded through the holes and put on tension, then, the rope between head end and foot end has been threaded through, once getting above, once getting below the already threaded ropes - interwoven. As hemp is a material that stretches in time, one has to put new tension on the ropes. In three nights, Froedhi and I remarked a slight hollow in our mattress.

Finally, we put a felt mat, some furs, pillows and blankets onto it and then cuddled ourselves up in our bed:

The posts on this image are slightly larger than in the drawing, we will shorten them a bit in the coming days.

The setting up takes about 20minutes to thread and tighten the ropes, the bed is disassembled in about the same amount of time, a bit faster perhaps, as you'll have to just remove the ropes. In fact, it is sufficient to remove the rope between head end and foot end, the rope between the sides of the bed can stay in place, this way, it is already cleaned up.

Good luck constructing your own rope bed!

New english version

Ok, for all of you folks who don't speak this very beautiful language of mine, I'll try to come up with an english version of some (I'm pretty sure I won't be able to make it an "all") of my posts over at Froedhis Gefährte. I hope you enjoy it.

Sophus.