Thynghowe, 18th/19th May 2013

Thynghowe last month was a fantastic national Regia show, organised by the Friends of Thynghowe and held at Sherwood Pines. Sherwood is part of Conroi de Vey's land grant and so we had a really good turnout from the group, with about twenty adults and ten children on our wic alone.

The Regia camp (out of hours, hence the closed tents).

As Thynghowe is believed to be a Thyng site, a place where the local community gathered to settle disputes and discuss the law, the afternoon featured a Thyng, convened to settle a dispute over land between existing settlers and some of the remnants of the Viking Great Army.

The new settlers bid for their land in front of the lawspeaker (right). Photo by Rosemary Watson.

The local jarl, Toki, is not impressed with their claim. Photo by Rosemary Watson.

This was clearly never going to end well. Photo by Rosemary Watson.

Unfortunately, the parties concerned did not accept the Lawspeaker's decision and the disagreement ended in battle. Photo by Rosemary Watson.

After the battle, the warriors did a demonstration of weapons training, including one-on-one fighting. There is a penalty for winning this...

The Regia children form a spear-line.

They may be small, but there is strength in numbers.

The dateline for this show was 877 which is at the start of Regia's core period. You will notice many of the women wearing hangerocs and not covering their hair and neckline fully, as Viking women of this period did not necessarily do so, not being Christian.

Two ladies in hangerocs. Photo by Rosemary Watson.

There was a great deal going on outside the battle, but unfortunately I don't have photos of it all.

We ran an archery range both days, which was very popular with the public and which large numbers of De Vey used. Archery seems to be one of the most popular activities in our group at the moment, and four of us entered Sunday's archery competition. Toki won the men's competition, and young Arnbjorn came a very close second in the women and children's competition, narrowly pipped to the target by our friend Emma from Grantanbrycg.

Regia put together a great living history display, including a young hawk, the faering (a small boat), a boat burial, a moneyer, and a wide range of crafts from spinning to wood-working.

 For our younger visitors, there was also a mystery to solve. A silver cup had gone missing, and there was a lot of finger-pointing and a wide array of shady characters who might have been involved.

 You can see more photos on flickr and one of our visitors was even excited enough to blog about it!