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swordoaths · 2 years

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Breaking Down Highland Dress for Alasdair and Eilodh MacDonald

For a small refresher: Alasdair (born 1282) and Eilodh (born 1280) MacDonald are siblings born mortal, but given immortality from the enduring spirit-- the flower of Scotland-- after being slain during the Battle of Bannockburn. This enables them to fulfill Robert the Bruce’s words that the MacDonalds would always occupy the honoured position on the right wing of the Scottish army. They live on as the embodiment of the enduring Scotland in a world whereby the Britons continue their colonisation of the Scots and the vilifying of their culture.

So, in short, they live through many years. Over the course of their timeline, their manner of dress changes This is the first in a series of posts that will break down what the MacDonald siblings wear, lest your muse might interact with them in a particular period.

Middle Ages (covering only the active years of the MacDonalds’ lives from 1300s-1500)

Evidence of the kilt as we understand it is not around until the late 1500s at the earliest (there is a direct source from 1594, but that is for the next post). What was predominantly worn during this time is equivalent to a tunic, known as the léine, or kyrtil, or kyrtle. Both Alasdair and Eilodh would wear this garment. Length for the kyrtle varies, with shorter mid-thigh lengths, knee lengths, and ankle lengths. Generally, men wore the shorter variations as opposed to the women. The garments were open at the neck and put on/taken off over the head.

There was also upper garments, with a 14th century garment found in a grave in Sutherland. This upper garment is called the Rogart Shirt. The extant garment was described as a tunic with a slit at the neck. The slit was blanket stitched at the corners and hemmed along the edges. Its sleeves were of normal width and visibly pieced together with several pieces of cloth (no wasting any bits of fabric here!). The length of the extant Rogart Shirt was 45″ long.

In the Magnus Berfaet saga of 1093 in which Highlander dress was observed, there was a notation that they wore tunics and upper shirts and were barelegged. This is obviously earlier than the MacDonalds’ timeline, but I do want to point out that a 1521 account on Highland dress (again another source for the next post) also denotes that there was no covering from mid-thigh to the foot. Since this post is looking at 1300s-1500, which is right in the middle of the two previously noted dates, we can venture a guess that, the same can be found during this time.

Source: Old Highland Dress and Tartans

#&. alasdair headcanons #&. eilodh headcanons #as we proceed into the 1500s and forward there will be much more sources that enable us to go more in depth #but this is a general bits and pieces from what sources survive

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bromeliaddreams · 5 years

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i just fucking love the Magnus Archives

the way they just uhh

archive all those Magnuses

#Look this is probably only funny to me as someone who's done a lot of medieval Norwegian history #But i have no shame so im gonna maintag it anyway #the magnus archives #they've got Magnus Barelegs' missing trousers in artefact storage

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church-history · 3 years

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St Magnus Earl of Orkney

SAINT MAGNUS

Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney, sometimes known as Magnus the Martyr and later as Saint Magnus lived from 1080 to 16 April 1117. The year of his death is sometimes said to be 1115 or 1118, but 1117 seems to be most widely accepted. Magnus served jointly as Earl of Orkney with his cousin Håkon until the two fell out. Håkon subsequently betrayed and murdered Magnus, who was later canonized a saint in 1136 by Bishop William of Orkney, and was commemorated by the building of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.

Magnus's grandfather was Thorfinn Sigurdsson, also known as Thorfinn the Mighty and Earl Thorfinn. He had twin sons, Erlend and Paul, who after Thorfinn's death went on to serve as joint Earls of Orkney. In 1098, King Magnus Barelegs of Norway took possession of Orkney and replaced Erlend and Paul as earls with his illegitimate son Sigurd. Later that same year Magnus and his cousin Håkon accompanied King Magnus Barelegs on a Viking raid on Anglesey in Wales. Håkon appears to have acquitted himself well during the Battle of Anglesey Sound, but Magnus, by now a man of considerable piety, refused to fight, and instead remained on the ship praying and singing psalms, for which he was judged to be a coward by the Norwegian king.

As a result, Magnus had to take refuge in mainland Scotland. He returned to Orkney in 1105, where his cousin Håkon had been appointed Earl of Orkney. An appeal to King Eystein I of Norway, who had succeeded Magnus Barelegs in 1103, saw Magnus appointed as joint Earl of Orkney alongside his cousin Håkon. Things seem to have gone well until 1116, when the supporters of the two cousins fell out. The two sides met at the Thing (assembly) and it was agreed that in order to avoid all-out civil war the two earls would meet each other on the island of Egilsay after Easter, each bringing only two ships of supporters. The two sides would fight it out, and the winner would become the sole Earl of Orkney.

Magnus duly arrived on Egilsay with two ships, only for Håkon then to turn up with eight ships full of warriors prepared to support his cause. Magnus hid on the island overnight, but the following day was captured by Håkon's men. Magnus offered to accept exile or prison, but Håkon's supporters wanted to ensure that there was no chance he would ever return to challenge Håkon again. It was decided that Magnus should be killed. Håkon's standard bearer, Ofeigr, refused to execute Magnus, and Håkon made his cook Lifolf kill Magnus by striking him on the head with an axe, though only after Magnus had prayed for the souls of his executioners.

Magnus was buried where he had been killed. The place then miraculously turned into a green field. Magnus was subsequently reburied at Christchurch at Birsay, on Orkney's mainland, built by his grandfather Thorfinn. This has since been replaced by St Magnus Church. More miracles followed and a cult soon began to grow. In 1136 Bishop William of Orkney sanctified Earl Magnus, making him Saint Magnus. It is likely that St Magnus Church on Egilsay was built at this time near the site of the murder, probably as a replacement for an earlier church.

Magnus's nephew, Rognvald, became Earl of Orkney in 1137 and promised to build "a stone minster at Kirkwall" in memory of Saint Magnus. The original church comprised the choir of today's St Magnus Cathedral, and on its completion St Magnus's remains were brought from Birsay and interred in a column. After his death and subsequent sainthood, St Rognvald was also interred in the cathedral. During extensive restoration work in 1919 a skeleton was found behind stonework whose skull carried a wound consistent with the axe-blow said to have killed Magnus. Rognvald's bones had been found and re-interred during earlier work on the building in the 1800s.

#catholic #catholic history #christian #vikings #norse #st magnus #scotland #orkney #saints

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trans-cuchulainn · 6 years

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i probably find it disproportionately amusing when medieval sources are utterly incompetent with their terminology

like welsh sources claiming magnus barelegs is a king of germany

????

#welsh why are you like this #i'm in exam hell i have to get my laughs where i can

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dragontatoes · 5 years

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There was a king of Norway that wore Gaelic-style short tunics and/or rode without shoes like the Irish that became known as “Magnus Barelegs” like... he was basically 11th century Daisy Duke..... I love the old norse

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hermanwatts · 4 years

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Sensor Sweep: Year’s Best Horror, Blood Sundown, Al Williamson, Northworld

RPG (Modiphius Entertainment): Before Conan, there was Kull! DANGER BREEDS CAUTION, AND ONLY A WARY MAN LIVES LONG IN THAT WILD COUNTRY WHERE THE HOT VENDHYAN PLAINS MEET THE CRAGS OF THE HIMELIANS AN HOUR’S RIDE WESTWARD OR NORTHWARD AND ONE CROSSED THE BORDER AND WAS AMONG THE HILLS WHERE MEN LIVED BY THE LAW OF THE KNIFE. Here, for the first time in roleplaying gaming, Kull and his world are described in all their savage, dreamlike glory.

Writing (Larry Correia): Of course the article is trash. It comes from Buzzfeed. They get everything wrong. But worse, some of the quotes in there from certain writers are agenda driven garbage, which give aspiring writers a completely ass backwards view of how publishing works. I want to see writers be successful. I’m rooting for you guys. This crap right here? It is defeatist garbage, and if you buy into this pity party, you are going to artificially limit your career.

Fantasy (DMR Books): Lin Carter (1930-1988) blazed a trail in fantasy literary criticism, and for that we owe him a debt. Today on what would have been his 90th birthday I celebrate his pioneering efforts as a historian and guide, thank him for treating fantastic material with respect and enthusiasm—and also offer some critique I think he might have welcomed.

Science Fiction (Black Gate): First, it’s Heinlein’s first novel in that it’s the first one he wrote, way back in 1938 and 1939, when he hadn’t yet broken into print. But it didn’t sell, was never published at the time, and went unknown for decades. In fact the manuscript was thought lost; Heinlein and his wife had destroyed copies in their possession in the approach to Heinlein’s death. Yet another copy of the ms. was found years later, after Heinlein’s death in 1988, and, as Robert James explains in an afterword here, was published in 2004, with an introduction by Spider Robinson. (Spider Robinson would later publish Variable Star, based on a Heinlein outline, in 2006.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Edgar Rice Burroughs was a professional in the best sense of the word. This meant he worked hard at producing the best work he could. It also meant he knew you didn’t stop a successful franchise but always left a back door for more stories in the future. With Tarzan, Pellucidar and John Carter he used pretty much the same method (which I think was largely instinctual and certainly not planned).

REH and HPL (Westhunt): Just as Robert E. Howard’s take on prehistory was closer to the truth than the one promulgated by archaeologists in the past few decades, H.P. Lovecraft’s views on insanity were more realistic than the common ones in American popular culture – where people are thought to be driven insane by trauma, where your mum and dad fuck you up by their actions, rather than their genes.

Comic Books (Bleeding Cool): Robert E. Howard’s Conan is brought to life UNCENSORED! Discover the true Conan, unrestrained, violent, and sexual. Read the story as he intended!

In the kingdom of Vendhya, the king has just died, struck down by the spells of the black prophets of Yimsha.The king’s sister, Yasmina, decides to avenge him…and contacts Conan, then chief of the Afghuli tribe. But several of Conan’s warriors have just been killed by the men of the kingdom of Vendhya, further complicating the matter. The princess thought she could use the Cimmerian, but rather it is she who will serve his interests…

Fiction (Misha Burnett): I love it when a plan comes together! Yes, I do have a plan, although it may not be evident from my publishing schedule. Ever since I realized that short fiction is the ideal medium for me, I have been working towards building a body of work. As I’ve said several times in this blog, I am now writing stories with an eye not just to first publication, but to inclusion into a series of collections.

Fiction (Marzaat): My multi-part look at this John Buchan collection concludes. Buchan took a cruise to the Aegean in 1910 and that’s the setting of “Basilissa”. This 1914 story is my least favorite in the collection. It mixes precognitive dreams with a standard damsel-in-distress romantic plot. Every April since boyhood Vernon has had a dream where he enters a house with many rooms and senses a danger. On each repetition of the dream, the danger draws closer.

RPG (Tenkars Tavern): Using my Soapbox to “Discourage” a Problem at Some Tables… So I’m not 100% when this post will be, well posted, but I’m running with the assumption that this will be my 1st weekly entry here at the Tavern. There’s so many things I could write about, but one thing popped into my head, something I feel strongly about and something that has a back story. There are probably three things I’m passionate about, well maybe five things, or 50……..I really don’t keep track, but clearly I’m a passionate, passionate man…..

History (Brandywine Books): I’ve been doing a little translation lately (I’ll tell you more about it later) which reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla. This story involves King Eystein I, far from the most renowned of Norway’s kings, but very possibly the most likeable. He was part of a set, sharing a joint monarchy with his brother, Sigurd Magnusson. They were both the sons of King Magnus Bareleg, who never got the memo that the Viking Age was over, and died young and outnumbered in Ireland, declaring, “Kings were made for glory, not for long life.”

Pulp Magazines (Pulp Net): Adventure magazine was one of the “Big Four” of pulp magazines. For those not aware, the other three are Argosy, Blue Book, and Short Stories. Adventure existed from 1910 to 1971, though not always as a pulp fiction magazine. Ridgeway, which had been bought by Butterick Publishing, who published sewing patterns and related magazines, published Adventure, along with Everybody’s and Romance, until selling these to Popular Publications in 1934. I suspect Butterick basically sold Ridgeway to Popular, similar to Popular buying out Munsey in 1941.

Art (DMR Books): The great Al Williamson died on this date in 2010. Not to be confused with the equally cool Jack Williamson—wouldn’t it have been awesome if Al had adapted Jack’s “Legion of Space” tales to comics?—Al was the “kid brother” and child prodigy at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School which was run by the legendary Burne Hogarth. Al would fill the same role at EC Comics, where he worked with the likes of Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Wally Wood. Here’s an excellent bio from the Inkwell Awards website:

Science Fiction (Science fiction fantasy blog): The Northworld Trilogy, by David Drake. This trilogy was first published as three individual novels: Northworld (published 1990), Northworld Vengeance (1991) and Northworld Justice (1992), although I have all three in one paperback omnibus, published by Baen in 1999. The first novel (but not the others) has the distinction of its own Wikipedia page, so if you want a thorough plot summary – complete with spoilers – you can look it up. The principal character of the story is Nils Hansen, a classic SF hero; an intelligent and highly capable leader of a special police unit on the planet Annunciation, and exceptionally skilled in close combat.

RPG (Dr Bargle blogspot): I’ve been running the sample adventure in Blood Sundown for the past few nights for players who are relatively new to RPGs and it has worked a treat. Everywhen’s simple mechanics with little bookkeeping or arithmetic make it ideal for new or casual players, and the range of pregenerated characters included mean you can be up and running almost straight away. The sample adventure could probably be played in an evening if players most fast, but it’ll have taken us three sessions of 2(ish) hours.

Cartoons (Black Gate): The show’s setup couldn’t be simpler. Sometime in the near future – near enough for there to be no such thing as microwave ovens but future enough for personal hovercraft to be no big deal – Dr. Benton Quest (one of the world’s “top scientists”) roams the globe, troubleshooting various problems for the U.S. and other friendly governments. (We’re never told what Dr. Quest is a doctor of, and it’s impossible to pin down his specialty. Is it nuclear physics? Chemistry? Geology? Botany? Oceanography? Molecular biology? Who knows? He shows a deep knowledge of all of these fields and more, like that guy they had to retire from Jeopardy.)

Horror (Jayro Thermal): 8 stories from Year’s Best Horror Stories 1980 The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VIII, Edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1980, DAW) Volume VIII was the first edited by Karl Edward Wagner. In 1980 the boom was underway. When I first landed a copy of this paperback, I read the stories by Dennis Etchison, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Alan Ryan, and Charles L. Grant, but I left money on the table when I got distracted and picked up another book instead.

Publishing (Kairos): Imagine that you’re an artist of some sort desiring to make a living through your art. In the case of novelists, this used to mean seeking approval from an agent and then an editor before landing a book deal with one of the big New York publishers. That publishing model is on the way out, thanks to decades of literary malpractice on the big publishers’ part brought to a head by the Kindle revolution and finished off by Corona-chan. We can expect another round of mergers and mid list contract cancellations. When the dust settles, old pub will be reduced to pimping a handful of name authors at Costco.

Sensor Sweep: Year’s Best Horror, Blood Sundown, Al Williamson, Northworld published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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