Hello everyone,
I know it's been a while since my last blog post but I hope this one reaches you well and in good health. It was requested by one of my readers to give an outline to help people interested in living history, create their first persona for participating in living history groups.
One of the first and funnest steps of the process of creating a persona is picking out a name. Once your name is picked out it can help get into the feelings and thoughts of your persona. Often the peoples of the Viking Age would name their children after heroes and heroines of their time. The Vikings were no exception. If you want to learn more about how Vikings decided on names and how to pick yours I recommend checking out the Vikings Answers Lady's article at this link. You can also check out Norse baby names here.
Once you have a name picked out you have to begin thinking about the Who, What and How. Who does your persona associate with? What is your personas roll in that society? Finally, How does your persona contribute to the group as a whole?
Who does you persona associate with? What country are you from? What king do you serve? What is the name of your clan or family? A lot of this information should be easily available if you are attempting to join an existing living history group. The group you are joining should have resources to help inform your decisions. Also you can check out two valuable articles by the people at Hurstwic, here to learn about the hierarchy and here for more on women's roles.
What is your personas roll in society? What is your profession? What is your station in your clan? what kind of tools or equipment would your profession or station require? Are you married? To learn more about Viking society worked check out this great article.
How does your persona contribute to the group? When joining a living history group, it is always wise to consider your skills. Can weave baskets? Can you speak well to groups of people? By figuring out what your good at and what you like to do, you will better learn how you can be of help to your living history group and how you can help fill in the gaps.
I hope this has helped those of you who were still struggling with starting out. To learn more about vikings in general (how they lived and their system of beliefs), I do have a recommended reading list. If you can, pick up a copy of The Prose Edda and The Story of the Volsungs (The Volsunga Saga). These two books are very useful in learning how and why the viking lived the way they did.
That is all for now. Thanks again for reading and feel free to offer comments and suggestions for future articles.
Skol!
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