The Weekend Warriors of the Crown Province of Ostgardr (Otherwise Known as New York City)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/nyregion/middle-ages-medieval-fighting-nj.html

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SPARTA TOWNSHIP, N.J. — The knights, squires and other armored combatants gathered near a snowy battlefield and prepared for a violent melee.

“Are you ready to kill things in the snow?” yelled Queen Vienna de la Mer, who with her husband, King Wilhelm von Ostenbrücke, addressed the loyal subjects of the East Kingdom.

The 170 fighters roared back, readied their armor and collected their swords, spears and battle-axes. They split into two armies for a clash that resembled a medieval battlefield in Europe, with a touch of surrealism worthy of “Game of Thrones.”

In reality, it was a recent Saturday on a former Girl Scouts campground in northern New Jersey — a township called Sparta, of all places.

The fighters were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a worldwide organization whose members share an affinity for pre-1600s life.

During the week, they lead conventional modern lives — “mundane” in members’ jargon — as techies, teachers, police officers, medical professionals, lawyers and the like.

But on weekends, they escape all that and come together to dress in period outfits and enjoy a recreated bygone world. Members take on a medieval name and identity as well as a position in courtly life.

Along with a general love for the honor, chivalry and romance of days of old, many members develop specialties in medieval arts, cooking, culture and other disciplines.

Then there are the fighters, who pursue knighthood and enjoy armored battle, such as this recent event called the 100 Minutes War, which was followed by a royal court presided over by the king and queen.

King Wilhelm and Queen Vienna — a Connecticut couple whose real names are Jackie and Brian Van Ostenbridge — reign over the East Kingdom, which encompasses the Northeast and parts of Canada.

It is one of the society’s 20 kingdoms in North America, each of which is subdivided into provinces, baronies and shires. There is the Crown Province of Ostgardr, which includes all five New York City boroughs and several surrounding counties, many of which also have their own medieval names.

Manhattan is known as Whyt Whey, a reference to Broadway’s White Way. Brooklyn is Brokenbridge, a reference to the Brooklyn Bridge. Westchester County is known as Northpas, and Nassau County is Lions End. Southwest Connecticut is the Barony of Dragonship Haven, while the rest of the state is the Barony Beyond the Mountain.

Ostgardr has about 200 members who pay annual dues and hundreds more who regularly attend events, said Piglet Evans, the province’s seneschal, or president. She makes her living as a computer programmer, but as Alienor Salton, an 11th-century Welsh woman, she helps run the Bardic Circle, a weekly singing gathering in Central Park.

There is a fighting group that practices, often in full body armor, in McCarren Park in Brooklyn, led by Zorikh Lequidre, who is known as Lord Ervald the Optimistic.

Practitioners of ancient archery gather on Staten Island for Sunday practices run by Gary Guarino, 45, whose persona is a 12th-century Mongolian warrior named Mungu Chinua.

Eugena Pechenaya, 34, of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, said she first discovered the society 14 years ago after coming across a fighting practice in Union Square.

“I found that there was a whole medieval alternative to the modern world, including the geography,” said Ms. Pechenaya, who now holds the title vicereine in Ostgardr and also attends events as a Mongolian archer named Lada Monguligin. “The mundane world falls away, and we create the Middle Ages.”

The interest in medieval sword fighting is so widespread among members that “there’s a different place to practice every night in the New York area,” said Zach Karabin, 29, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who works as a union glazier in Manhattan but on weekends dominates battlefields as Ozurr the Bootgiver, a fierce Viking warrior.

Many fighters spend years striving to become knights through battlefield valor and acts of chivalry. Some compete to capture the crown, a position with a six-month tenure attained by winning a special armored combat tournament.

While it is often a man fighting for his female “consort” to join him on the throne, women have also competed for the crown, as have same-sex couples.

Mr. Karabin won a series of sword-and-shield fights recently to become the next ruler of the East Kingdom; his reign begins in April.

For now, he is still the kingdom’s prince. And at the 100 Minutes War, he wore his princely crown, while the king and queen wore their gold-plated crowns, all of which are passed down within the society, which was founded by a group of history buffs and writers in Northern California in the mid-1960s.

Within the group, “there’s a sense of community that is lacking in society today,” said Mr. Van Ostenbridge, who met his wife at a Twelfth Night celebration in Kingston, N.Y.

Mr. Van Ostenbridge, an engineer for a technology firm and former Marine, said members shared a common background. “We were all nerds growing up,” he said. But they were also a diverse group.

“We are black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Buddhist, gay, transgender,” he said. “And we all beat the crap out of each other and then sit around the fire afterward and have a drink.”

Much of the armor is realistic — traditional chain mail, leather padding and steel helmets with visors — supplemented with modern baseball and football padding, or homemade protection, concealed under medieval clothing.

All the weapons are made with lightweight material and padded edges. So while the fighters laid into one another with gusto, injuries were relatively few, and “kills” were acknowledged based on the honor system between combatants. The team with the fewest deaths are the victors.

“This is our modern Middle Ages,” said Hank Salvacion, 56, who was helping oversee other battle marshals inspecting weapons to make sure, for example, that the thrusting spears did not exceed nine feet in length.

When he is not working as a medical assistant, Mr. Salvacion is often known as Tanaka Raiko, a 10th-century samurai with the Shire of Rusted Woodlands, a chapter of the society in northern New Jersey that was organizing the battle.

The shire’s seneschal, Aaron Cohen, 39, helped coordinate event logistics even while keeping his cellphone stashed away in a period-correct leather pouch.

Avoiding cellphone use, he said, helps keep the events “an escape from the everyday.”

Finally, a marshal shouted, “Lay on!” and the two armies faced off at a skirmish line, where various melee units charged and retreated.

“Allez!” yelled a coterie of knights visiting from the Barony of l’Ile du Dragon Dormant in Quebec.

On the periphery, archers armed with crossbows shot arrows with foam tips at the enemy, and some fighters threw axes with padded blades.

Numerous women fought among the men, including Andrea Glass, 29, a medieval historian known in the society as Beatrix Krieger.

“I love history and I love fighting, so this is a good way to get your aggression out,” she said. “With the adrenaline of battle, every once in a while, the mundane world falls away and the veil gets thinned between the present and the past.”