Was Hael!
Indeed, Be Whole—healthy, happy and all that the greeting implies. Welcome to all who have come to investigate this site. Though I have told the story often, to many, I could be the rest of my life explaining the why and how of the Pennsic Tribute Ship. Far better to have it printed up in this manner.
I share membership in a world-wide organization known as the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group dedicated to re-creating that period of history which loosely falls between 600 and 1600 AD—often referred to as the “Middle Ages”. We are world-wide, and have been around for more than forty years.
It was in the one of the last years of the 1990’s that a terrible tragedy struck the people of our Kingdom of Ealdormere. Our reigning King, Thorbjorn Osis, a rogue well-loved by all, was killed when the vehicle that he was driving flipped and rolled on Highway 401. Making the accident all the worse, a dear young lady who had the misfortune to be riding with him, died as well. Her given name was Bernadette Steinhauser, but we all knew and loved her as little Lady Lauren. It was a sombre year for all of us, and put a cloud of mourning over the annual gathering which we call the Pennsic Wars. At that event, I happened to mention to one good gentle that it was a shame that no one had had the time to build a small longship to be burned in memory of them both. This was an ancient custom amongst the Vikings, the people from whom Osis took his “persona”, or character, within the S.C.A. It was pointed out that it certainly wasn’t too late, and there would never be a better place as the campground where we gather each year. Realizing that he was totally right, I set to work, and in six days was able to produce a totally crude, but recognizable, model of a Viking ship.
In the falling darkness one night, we placed this tiny (three feet long) vessel in the waters of the lake that is the centre of the camp, and set it sailing with lighted candles nesting in clumps of waxed shavings. A crude rubber-band motor drove a hand-carved wooden propeller, to make sure that the craft went far enough out into the water. Once the candles burned down far enough, everything on deck rose in flames, and the ship was consumed in a great tower of fire, fed by four pounds of wax used in the boat’s construction. It was a dramatic catharsis of grief—I heard grown men sobbing openly. Though we had attended their funerals, that farewell was for people from the modern world. This ceremony gave us the chance to say our own good-byes to two good friends who had “shared the Dream” with us.
Once the little ship had burned to the waterline, the fragment of hull that remained was drawn back onto shore by a line that had been attached to the keel, and everything remaining was fed into a campfire on shore. Nothing but ashes were to be left—the entire construction was a gift of memory to those whom we had lost.
That should have been the end of it, but I was informed that it couldn’t stop at that. The shared feeling was too intense, the closeness of memory too deep, for it to be lost in days following. So was born the annual observance of memory and tribute to lost friends and loved ones. What began as a rite of memory for the folk of Ealdormere quickly spread to encompass many from all kingdoms of North America. As the ship was built anew, a new custom arose—small notes of love, and momentoes ranging from gifts of coffee or tobacco or oblations of fine drink, were placed within the hull of the ship. Small shields began to be painted with coats of arms by people who wished to make special momentoes of loved ones, and these were fastened to the sides of the ship, to burn with it. I know of at least three occasions when small phials of cremation ashes were quietly placed aboard, to be part of the boat’s final pyre. It was initially my hope that it could be a small, quiet observance of memory, warm and bittersweet—but each year, there are those with grief too fresh, loss too recent, for it to be anything less than painfully emotional. And the tales I hear from some can bring me to tears, as well. I often think of the couple who asked to be allowed to place notes and small items into the ship, in memory of their twin sons. They were stillborn.
So, each year, people with heavy grief come to the shores of the lake, to make their own memorials and prayers for those whom they have lost. It has grown into a very desired service, filling a need that has become far more than I could ever have imagined when I first decided to burn a boat. The SCA is now more than 40 years old—as should be expected, many of the founding members are gone, and a great number of people who joined in their advancing years now near the ends of their lives. Myself included. Much as I would like to deny it, the call for the Pennsic Tribute Ship is never going to disappear, and I must train others to take up its construction, against the day when I am no longer able to produce one for the annual rite.
For the memory of all lost friends and loves.
Requiescat In Pace.
