Frequently Asked Questions
Tournament of the Golden Swan
Shire of Appledore
Frequently Asked Questions and Miscellaneous Information
What was the reason for creating Golden Swan?
The original intent of Golden Swan was
(1) To gather together a unique group of women who were talented, gifted and "doers."
(2) To promote the goals of the Society for Creative Anachronism and to participate in the creation of the Dream in the personae of women.
(3) The founders wanted to bring medievally cultured people to Appledore and to other isolated shires.
(From "Golden Apples" newsletter of the Golden Swans, October 1991, no author listed)
Are successful Golden Swan candidates part of an order, or what?
Technically, no, successful Swans are not part of any order. Some people refer to them as a sisterhood. Appledore refers to them as the Ladies of the Golden Swan, Golden Swans, or Swans. But the topic of whether successful Swans can be or should be part of an organized sisterhood or order has been a touchy subject for a number of years.
This matter came to a head around 1990 or so. Several Swans felt angry that there was no formal organization of successful Swans they could become a part of. They had expected to join a group of like-minded people within the SCA. Others felt equally strongly that there should be no pressure on a Swan to become part of a group. Some ladies feel that they came through it successfully, they got what they came for, and are content to leave with their accomplishment and their medallion.
There was concern that if such a group existed, it might act as an incentive for some prospective candidates, a deterrent for others. There has also been a policy in organizing the competition that all Swans are equal to all others. All voting tabulations and other notes are destroyed after the judges' meeting, and the content of the discussion about candidates remains confidential so that no-one can ever say that a Swan who had a higher score is somehow "better" than another Swan with a lower score.. The creation of a group or club for successful Swans might foster a sense of inequality, if some Swans are active in it while others are not or don't care to be.
There have been dinners organized by Swans to enjoy the company of other Swans and to discuss topics of mutual interest. The Shire of Appledore, as organizer of the Golden Swan event, neither encourages nor discourages such gatherings. But for the reasons cited above, it will continue to resist any formal organization of successful Swans beyond whatever might be mutually enjoyable for any who wish to participate.
How have the competition and the event changed over the years?
The most obvious change for most people came in 1994, when the Shire of Appledore moved the event from its original site at Camp Dunlop in Kelowna to Skunk Hollow in Oliver. Attendance at Golden Swan topped 100 around that time, and climbed to 200 by 1998. In October of 2008 the Tournament of the Golden Swan became the last event held at Skunk Hollow.
For judges and candidates, a number of changes have taken place. For the first 7 or 8 years of its existence, Golden Swan was judged using a system of ten points plus bonus points for extra effort. This was scrapped in 1992 in favour of a straightforward method in which each category is judged out of ten points. A candidate must achieve 7 or better in every category, for a minimum score of 84, to succeed.
Candidates were originally limited to Europe, but this was later opened up to include people from throughout the Known World. With recent changes to the policies of the SCA, Golden Swan is open to all female personas from pre-17th century cultures.
For a number of reasons, we now employ a two-stage application process. A preliminary application must be made by June 30th of the year in which the candidate wants to compete. It must include the application form (or the information requested on it) and a general bibliography. This allows the judges time to decide if the candidate has a strong entry. We will only accept someone who has a good chance of succeeding. There's always a possibility that someone who looks good at the start will fail. But if we believe someone has very little chance of succeeding, we would prefer to stop them early, than let them do all the work, psych themselves up, get to the event, then fail.
If the candidate is accepted, a complete application must be submitted by mid-August of the same year. This will include all documentation, a calligraphed persona introduction letter, and any other supporting documentation or bibliographic information the candidate wants to present. (See the criteria and categories pages for more information).
In 1997, after much discussion, it was decided to adjust the categories.Some categories force the applicant to make compromises in historical integrity for the sake of competition. While this was not much of an issue for applicants with European personas from the High Middle Ages or Renaissance, it was deemed too much of a stretch for others. As time has gone on, the SCA itself has become more sophisticated, with a greater concern for authenticity. Some aspects of Golden Swan had been based on the SCA rather than on historical research, and some details became even more of a stretch for certain personas. This conversation continued for several years and was revisited formally at Golden Swan 2011. There are now 11 categories in total. The applicant must choose 10.
Will I need to be in persona all the time?
Candidates are expected to be in persona at all times from Opening Assembly on Saturday morning (about 9 am) to the final judges meeting on Sunday afternoon (between noon and 2 pm). Any time when they are not in their own sleeping chamber or in the bathroom, they must expect to be observed. For candidates who are staying off-site, we strongly encourage them to set up a day pavilion or use a friend's tent or encampment as a safe haven for much needed down-time, changing, etc. Being someone else non-stop can be very draining. You may need a private area to recover or to regroup.
Is a support person required?
We don't require it in order to enter, but we strongly recommend it. In the past few years, the judges have become more aware of a number of issues that can detract from the experience of being in persona for the candidates. To overcome these, the judges do their best to stay in persona as much as they can when dealing directly with the candidate.
However, there are times when modern problems intrude. If you've left the lights on in your car, we can't tell you this as a twelfth century nun. So we'll go to your support person and get them to take care of it.
We've recognized that, in persona, you're not in a contest. So for us to stay completely in character, we need to find some way of asking if you're ready for the next category, without actually saying that. So we'll go to your support person and ask them.
Some personas do not tell time the way we do in the twenty-first century, so remarking about the time or referring to the time when a certain discussion is scheduled might throw a candidate off. So we avoid that, too, by dealing with your support people.
Support people are also support in a very real sense. They make sure you eat, they fetch and run messages, and they provide a shoulder to cry on or pound on when you're frustrated with yourself, you're angry at a judge, or just can't take it.
Your support person does not have to be completely in persona, but you should dress them appropriately and brief them on correct behaviour. You need to give them a name and define, in some way, their relationship to you (sibling, fellow nun, servant, friend, etc.) And they should behave towards you, and you should behave towards them, in a manner appropriate to that relationship.
You can use them to illustrate aspects of your personality or persona that might not otherwise come out. But be careful that they don't try to "save" you when it's not necessary or appropriate. One unsuccessful candidate lost points when her support person provided incorrect answers. Creative faking in persona is fine. An incomplete answer, a vague stare, even "I don't know" might have been acceptable. Anyone can have an off-moment. Completely incorrect information from a person who wasn't even the candidate was a major problem.
Is period camping required?
Absolutely not! The event is held in mid-October, which is well into cold weather some years. Some people are not equipped for cold weather camping, while others can't do it due to age or health concerns. So requiring period camping would restrict entries, which we don't want to do.
What if I have a disability that won't allow me to do certain things that are required? For example, if I'm blind, how can I do the calligraphy portion?
Golden Swan is about creating a well-rounded persona, it's not about passing a test or fitting into pigeonholes. If you want to enter and you demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the information and understanding of how the challenge works, we'll do what we can to work with you. The categories are set up to provide a standardized framework for judging, and are not intended to restrict entries. This is also another reason we added extras, to create flexibility.
If you are interested in finding out if you can enter, contact our Golden Swan Steward or the Judging Co-ordinator. Yes, we want to maintain a high level of achievement, so the standards for Swan are high. But they're not intended to be barriers to anyone who has the ability to put together a plausible, historically accurate persona. Talk to us and we'll see what we can do, on a case by case basis.
The Shire of Appledore also has a very firm tradition that everyone is welcome. This is the SCA we knew when the shire was founded, and this is the SCA we still believe exists, or should exist. If that level of acceptance doesn't exist elsewhere, well, it does here. So if people with disabilities are interested in Swan, we'll do our best to help them enter, without compromising the high standards of the competition.
Why is Golden Swan only open to female personas?
In brief, the competition was originally designed to give women a venue in which to excel in an organization that often focusses on male-oriented activities. But as time has gone on, we have realized that there are many reasons to restrict it to female personas. Researching women's lives is, to a great extent, a specialized study. Having men in the same judging sessions would also create complications for certain personas, depending on their culture.
Golden Swan's focus on female personas was never intended as a statement on inequality or a feminist view of history. It was also not intended to discriminate against men, but to discriminate for women. As much as the word "discrimination" is viewed as a bad one these days, we must make choices. No-one can do everything or make everyone happy all the time. The shire of Appledore chose to create this event for women. It sees no compelling reason to change that decision, in spite of having examined it repeatedly over the years.
Appledore has said many times that we are quite happy to provide its expertise and experience to any branch who wishes to design its own male-only or coed competition. But Appledore is not willing to expand the existing event beyond what it is. The event runs 4 tracks of activities over 2 days, including heavy armoured tourneys, a rapier tourney, archery activities, childrens activities, and up to 11 judging sessions for Swan itself. This adds up to over 20 separate activities. Attendance climbed from 75 or so ten years ago to a steady 200 for a few years. This made it one of the largest annual events in the Kingdom off the I-5 or outside the Lower Mainland area. While the event has gotten smaller (as have events throughout the Kingdom) it is still as complex to run and organize as a Grand Ithra or many Crown or Coronet events.
To answer the call for a male persona challenge, Appledore created Scholars of St Thomas Aquinas. It ran for several years, but was discontinued. Organizers of Golden Swan have spent considerable amounts of time working with people who wanted to run similar events for male personas, or that were open to all. Appledore and the organizers of Golden Swan want to promote persona development for all. However, for a number fo reasons, Golden Swan itself remains for female personas.
For a more detailed discussion, see here:
Do I have to be some kind of genius to do all this research? What if I never went to college and don't know how to research or present documentation?
No question, you can't do Swan without doing research. This will mean reading books, browsing the Internet, maybe taking classes or corresponding with experts. But Golden Swan is not intended for hard-core scholars who live their lives in books. It's about creating a historically based persona. There is as much acting ability involved as there is research.
We don't expect you to do doctorate level research, although you may end up there once you're done. We expect you to read enough to have a good working knowledge of what you need to know to act as if you're a person living in that time and place. We also expect you to dig deeper than pretty picture books about the Middle Ages, or popular fiction. Sure, put the Mists of Avalon on your bibliography, but we also want to see some scholarly books on the Dark Ages in Britain.
The best places to look for guidelines about what we want in terms of documentation are the category descriptions and judging criteria. You don't need to document your entire persona, only certain categories.
If you aren't sure how to document, take a class on research and documentation at an Ithra, Collegium or TUTR session (or whatever collegium classes are called in your part of the SCA). Talk to a Swan or someone you know in the SCA who does a lot of research or enters A&S contests. Talk to the Golden Swan Coordinator.
When you first apply, your documentation plays a big part in how the judges will determine if you should be accepted or not. But once you're in persona, you no longer have access to your documentation. You can keep your books in your tent if you like, but if a judge asks about something, you need to KNOW the answer, and you must phrase it in persona. You can't say, "well, I read it in a book about..." If you don't know or can't remember, fake it. As long as you're not out and out wrong, creative faking is part of it. If you go back and look it up or remember it later, you can always find some clever way of re-introducing the topic, and that kind of cleverness is appreciated. This is not a scripted play where you have to be letter perfect at all times. This is about creating someone who lives and breathes, forgets stuff, and reacts to things and people in her environment. And the judges don't stop judging the moment that session ends. If you think of something later and talk to a judge about it casually, the way you might think of something after a conversation, that's fine.
We're looking for a person who is flexible and has a thorough working knowledge of what they've learned, and can talk about it from a first-person viewpoint. Someone who has the presence of mind to evade questions or manipulate the conversation away from topics they don't know and onto topics they do know, will fare better than one who has tons of book-learning but can't present the information convincingly as a real person. So research skills count, but only for about half, possibly less, of the whole presentation.
How should I react to blatantly modern things or people when I'm in persona?
In a nutshell, ignore them, unless you can't. If the car isn't about to run over you, look the other way. Don't make cute remarks about the electric lights in the hall or the sunglasses on the guy in the eric. That makes your persona an anachronism, which is the opposite of what we want here. You're not a person from the tenth or the fifteenth century who's been picked up in a time machine and set down in an alien environment, you're a tenth or fifteenth century person functioning within their own environment. So ignore anything that wouldn't have existed in that time. Don't keep straining credulity by commenting on everything that's modern.
At the same time, some situations can be dealt with. If you're a tenth century Anglo-Saxon woman and somebody hands you a banana, what do you do? Would you know what it was? Would you know it was edible? Would you believe it was edible if someone told you it was? Would you try to eat it, or would you decide it was poisonous or a trick? You could have encountered strange foods in your life, and you would have some methods for dealing with it.
But if there are lights in the hall, assume they're merely a different type of torch or rush-light, and get on with being a fifteenth century person IN the fifteenth century, rather than a fifteenth century time traveller in the twenty-first century
If there are multiple entries in the same year, are they judged against one another?
No. Candidates are judged only on the information they present, and against the knowledge the judges have. Again, the policy is that no Swan is better or superior to another. If you succeed, you're exactly the same as every other Swan who has succeeded.
The words we use to describe Golden Swan are misleading: contest, competition. But it's not really a competition, except against oneself. But there are so few examples of this type of challenge around that the words we might use for it don't ring right in the ear: challenge. So we fall back on words like contest, even though they aren't accurate.
Is this going to be some gruelling interrogation where I'm grilled on my knowledge?
Definitely not! After a few false starts, the organizers determined that the atmosphere of Swan would be supportive and nurturing. Judges ask questions in a friendly, curious way, as any stranger might converse with another. They are not to interrogate a candidate.
Golden Swan judges are given explicit instructions about how to deal with the candidates. They need to ask questions in persona themselves as much as possible, even inventing a persona just for the day to facilitate this. They are also told that this is not adversarial.
The academic field is normally adversarial. As a graduate student or professor in university, my job is to construct an argument and make it as airtight as I can, using careful language and as much supporting evidence as I can muster. And as my professor or my colleague, you do your best to rip my argument to shreds, using the same tools. Golden Swan is the opposite of that process. The judges ask questions to help the candidates reveal the information they have so painstakingly acquired. The judges and the people who sit in on the discussions create the social environment in which the candidates can act out the parts they have created for themselves. In most cases, this takes the form of a round-table discussion, like a tea party or social gathering where women who have never met before chat, ask each other about their families and their lives, and sometimes argue about differences of opinion.
In the words of one early Swan, Appledore is the cradle of Golden Swan. It is also the hearth around which the ladies of Golden Swan, past and future, gather to do what women have always done, to tell stories, talk about their lives, help and support one another.
The one exception to the non-adversarial rule is if a glaring omission in the candidate's entry is discovered during the judging. This has only happened once in my twenty-plus years with the event. In this instance, the judges conferred and it was decided that the candidate would be given every opportunity, in persona, to come up with the correct information. This did not happen, but the creative faking was so superb she succeeded anyway.
To avoid this happening again, we try to be demanding in the early stages of application and ask as many questions as we need to, to feel satisfied that the person is ready to compete. Right up to the Friday night of the event itself, an applicant's documentation may be scrutinized, even questioned.
The policy for judges is that they judge based only on what IS presented, not on what's missing. They do not go "fishing" for specific information simply because they think the candidate should know it. I may have read a different book than you did.
But if it comes out that you don't know something you really should know as a general rule, this could present a problem. However, the judges may probe that area, but will usually not focus on it. This is usually in terms of general knowledge about the Middle Ages or your part of the world, not information specific to your persona. For example, one candidate, when asked about pigs, claimed she had none and they were shipped from some distance away. All of the judges knew that this woman didn't know enough about the Middle Ages, because everyone had pigs, and you didn't need to do any in-depth research about her culture to know that. Meanwhile, a candidate from a culture that had access to pigs but didn't have them as a rule was asked about them, and she was able to expound at length about pigs because she's had them in modern life. She knew that her persona wasn't likely to have them but could have had, and she said that, then went on to express her own opinions, veiled as her persona's, about the creatures. That was impressive.
Candidates often say afterwards that, if anything, they were frustrated that they were only able to present a small percentage of everything they had learned. They had to learn a wide range of material, in case they were asked. But there's only so much time to talk. Every candidate will probably know a hundred or more hours worth of information, but will only have ten to 14 hours total to present it.
How do I explain why I'm in Appledore? Where is Appledore when I'm in persona?
Appledore is any place you need it to be. Usually, it's some vague place of pilgrimage, or a waystation on a longer journey. Most candidates are on a pilgrimage or on their way to or from somewhere (a niece's wedding, a trading trip, to check on their other holdings, to meet their husband.) In their letters of introduction, they refer to Appledore as a pilgrimage site or a monastery, or just direct the letter to the Ladies (or Sisters) of the Golden Swan, with no further explanation.
The main thing is, you need to be away from home. Otherwise, you'd need all the normal stuff you'd have at home, and it's just way too much trouble to acquire or make that much stuff and haul it around. So everyone in the competition is travelling for some reason, so they have a good excuse to travel light and just describe their home to us.
If your persona is English, Appledore is in England or Wales, maybe Scotland. If you're French, it could be England or France or Spain or wherever makes sense for your persona. If you're Russian, maybe we're in the Ukraine or Poland. We speak the same language you do, so there's no need for translators, we eat more or less the same kind of food so you won't get sick, and things look fairly familiar. So you don't have to go around saying, "Oh my God, what's THAT?!", you can concentrate on telling us about your place and your family and your problems.
The convention is that you don't discuss where you are with anyone on-site, other than plain physical description. So if there's a Mongol lady and a Russian lady going for Swan the same year, or a Flemish nun and two English ladies, they all agree not to talk about where they are, because they're all someplace different within their realities. But they can certainly comment on the view, the birds, the plants, the weather. You're all in Appledore or on the holdings of a shire member or visiting the Ladies of the Golden Swan, but exactly what that is in your reality (monastery, convent, market town, hostelry, distant cousins' estate) is for you to know. It only exists to make your letter of introduction more plausible for you to write within a medieval context.
How do I apply for Golden Swan?
Please see the page on the Application Process for detailed information.
Have people attempted Golden Swan and failed?
Yes. Over the years, there have been ten or so applications that did not work. In some cases, the applicant has withdrawn their application at the last minute, for health or personal reasons. In a few cases, it's been suggested to an applicant that they withdraw, because one or more categories were so problematic they could not succeed overall (a successful Swan must get 7 out of 10 or better in EVERY category, it's not an average. So if even one category clearly cannot be scored a 7 or better, it's an automatic fail of the entire persona). A very few candidates have entered, gone through the event, and not succeeded.
While the organizers see the value in allowing people to try even if they are not guaranteed success with a given entry, all of us know how much work it is to create a Golden Swan entry, from research and development of the persona to creating all of the costume pieces, category entries or props needed to convey a convincing portrayal of someone from that time period. If we know that a person is not ready, we would rather tell them that before they go to all the trouble and expense.
Sometimes, an entry has been marginal. We've had concerns it wasn't up to par, but were not certain it would be unsuccessful. In those cases, we may let things unfold, or we may talk to the applicant and see what they want to do.
However, in my more than 20 years of involvement, we've never been surprised. All of the applicants we thought would succeed have succeeded, and those who have not, we had more than an inkling this might happen. We do everything in our power to be fair in the application process, we do everything we can to ask questions, encourage revision, suggest reworking of certain categories we see as potentially difficult. And during judging at the event, we all want every applicant to succeed. We try everything we can to make that happen, from conversations with support people, pointed requests for more information, inviting the candidate to revisit a certain topic. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the candidate is simply not ready, they've made a fundamental error in their research we didn't catch or could not have seen ahead of time, or they simply did not understand what was expected of them, despite all of our efforts.
This doesn't happen often. And in evaluating the chances of success for any given applicant, over the years our rate of accuracy has been 100%.
The point, though, is that if the Judging Co-ordinator or advising Swans suggest changes to an application or ask for revision, this is never done out of a spirit of criticism or peevishness. It's done to increase a candidate's chances of success. The more information an applicant shares with us, the greater the likelihood they will succeed. As we say about the Application Process, THERE IS NO ADVANTAGE TO SURPRISE!
The judges and the organizers are on the side of the applicants and candidates, they want them to succeed. At the same time, their job is to maintain the standard of excellence the competition is known for, that makes Golden Swan worth achieving.
Shire of Appledore
Frequently Asked Questions and Miscellaneous Information
What was the reason for creating Golden Swan?
The original intent of Golden Swan was
(1) To gather together a unique group of women who were talented, gifted and "doers."
(2) To promote the goals of the Society for Creative Anachronism and to participate in the creation of the Dream in the personae of women.
(3) The founders wanted to bring medievally cultured people to Appledore and to other isolated shires.
(From "Golden Apples" newsletter of the Golden Swans, October 1991, no author listed)
Are successful Golden Swan candidates part of an order, or what?
Technically, no, successful Swans are not part of any order. Some people refer to them as a sisterhood. Appledore refers to them as the Ladies of the Golden Swan, Golden Swans, or Swans. But the topic of whether successful Swans can be or should be part of an organized sisterhood or order has been a touchy subject for a number of years.
This matter came to a head around 1990 or so. Several Swans felt angry that there was no formal organization of successful Swans they could become a part of. They had expected to join a group of like-minded people within the SCA. Others felt equally strongly that there should be no pressure on a Swan to become part of a group. Some ladies feel that they came through it successfully, they got what they came for, and are content to leave with their accomplishment and their medallion.
There was concern that if such a group existed, it might act as an incentive for some prospective candidates, a deterrent for others. There has also been a policy in organizing the competition that all Swans are equal to all others. All voting tabulations and other notes are destroyed after the judges' meeting, and the content of the discussion about candidates remains confidential so that no-one can ever say that a Swan who had a higher score is somehow "better" than another Swan with a lower score.. The creation of a group or club for successful Swans might foster a sense of inequality, if some Swans are active in it while others are not or don't care to be.
There have been dinners organized by Swans to enjoy the company of other Swans and to discuss topics of mutual interest. The Shire of Appledore, as organizer of the Golden Swan event, neither encourages nor discourages such gatherings. But for the reasons cited above, it will continue to resist any formal organization of successful Swans beyond whatever might be mutually enjoyable for any who wish to participate.
How have the competition and the event changed over the years?
The most obvious change for most people came in 1994, when the Shire of Appledore moved the event from its original site at Camp Dunlop in Kelowna to Skunk Hollow in Oliver. Attendance at Golden Swan topped 100 around that time, and climbed to 200 by 1998. In October of 2008 the Tournament of the Golden Swan became the last event held at Skunk Hollow.
For judges and candidates, a number of changes have taken place. For the first 7 or 8 years of its existence, Golden Swan was judged using a system of ten points plus bonus points for extra effort. This was scrapped in 1992 in favour of a straightforward method in which each category is judged out of ten points. A candidate must achieve 7 or better in every category, for a minimum score of 84, to succeed.
Candidates were originally limited to Europe, but this was later opened up to include people from throughout the Known World. With recent changes to the policies of the SCA, Golden Swan is open to all female personas from pre-17th century cultures.
For a number of reasons, we now employ a two-stage application process. A preliminary application must be made by June 30th of the year in which the candidate wants to compete. It must include the application form (or the information requested on it) and a general bibliography. This allows the judges time to decide if the candidate has a strong entry. We will only accept someone who has a good chance of succeeding. There's always a possibility that someone who looks good at the start will fail. But if we believe someone has very little chance of succeeding, we would prefer to stop them early, than let them do all the work, psych themselves up, get to the event, then fail.
If the candidate is accepted, a complete application must be submitted by mid-August of the same year. This will include all documentation, a calligraphed persona introduction letter, and any other supporting documentation or bibliographic information the candidate wants to present. (See the criteria and categories pages for more information).
In 1997, after much discussion, it was decided to adjust the categories.Some categories force the applicant to make compromises in historical integrity for the sake of competition. While this was not much of an issue for applicants with European personas from the High Middle Ages or Renaissance, it was deemed too much of a stretch for others. As time has gone on, the SCA itself has become more sophisticated, with a greater concern for authenticity. Some aspects of Golden Swan had been based on the SCA rather than on historical research, and some details became even more of a stretch for certain personas. This conversation continued for several years and was revisited formally at Golden Swan 2011. There are now 11 categories in total. The applicant must choose 10.
Will I need to be in persona all the time?
Candidates are expected to be in persona at all times from Opening Assembly on Saturday morning (about 9 am) to the final judges meeting on Sunday afternoon (between noon and 2 pm). Any time when they are not in their own sleeping chamber or in the bathroom, they must expect to be observed. For candidates who are staying off-site, we strongly encourage them to set up a day pavilion or use a friend's tent or encampment as a safe haven for much needed down-time, changing, etc. Being someone else non-stop can be very draining. You may need a private area to recover or to regroup.
Is a support person required?
We don't require it in order to enter, but we strongly recommend it. In the past few years, the judges have become more aware of a number of issues that can detract from the experience of being in persona for the candidates. To overcome these, the judges do their best to stay in persona as much as they can when dealing directly with the candidate.
However, there are times when modern problems intrude. If you've left the lights on in your car, we can't tell you this as a twelfth century nun. So we'll go to your support person and get them to take care of it.
We've recognized that, in persona, you're not in a contest. So for us to stay completely in character, we need to find some way of asking if you're ready for the next category, without actually saying that. So we'll go to your support person and ask them.
Some personas do not tell time the way we do in the twenty-first century, so remarking about the time or referring to the time when a certain discussion is scheduled might throw a candidate off. So we avoid that, too, by dealing with your support people.
Support people are also support in a very real sense. They make sure you eat, they fetch and run messages, and they provide a shoulder to cry on or pound on when you're frustrated with yourself, you're angry at a judge, or just can't take it.
Your support person does not have to be completely in persona, but you should dress them appropriately and brief them on correct behaviour. You need to give them a name and define, in some way, their relationship to you (sibling, fellow nun, servant, friend, etc.) And they should behave towards you, and you should behave towards them, in a manner appropriate to that relationship.
You can use them to illustrate aspects of your personality or persona that might not otherwise come out. But be careful that they don't try to "save" you when it's not necessary or appropriate. One unsuccessful candidate lost points when her support person provided incorrect answers. Creative faking in persona is fine. An incomplete answer, a vague stare, even "I don't know" might have been acceptable. Anyone can have an off-moment. Completely incorrect information from a person who wasn't even the candidate was a major problem.
Is period camping required?
Absolutely not! The event is held in mid-October, which is well into cold weather some years. Some people are not equipped for cold weather camping, while others can't do it due to age or health concerns. So requiring period camping would restrict entries, which we don't want to do.
What if I have a disability that won't allow me to do certain things that are required? For example, if I'm blind, how can I do the calligraphy portion?
Golden Swan is about creating a well-rounded persona, it's not about passing a test or fitting into pigeonholes. If you want to enter and you demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the information and understanding of how the challenge works, we'll do what we can to work with you. The categories are set up to provide a standardized framework for judging, and are not intended to restrict entries. This is also another reason we added extras, to create flexibility.
If you are interested in finding out if you can enter, contact our Golden Swan Steward or the Judging Co-ordinator. Yes, we want to maintain a high level of achievement, so the standards for Swan are high. But they're not intended to be barriers to anyone who has the ability to put together a plausible, historically accurate persona. Talk to us and we'll see what we can do, on a case by case basis.
The Shire of Appledore also has a very firm tradition that everyone is welcome. This is the SCA we knew when the shire was founded, and this is the SCA we still believe exists, or should exist. If that level of acceptance doesn't exist elsewhere, well, it does here. So if people with disabilities are interested in Swan, we'll do our best to help them enter, without compromising the high standards of the competition.
Why is Golden Swan only open to female personas?
In brief, the competition was originally designed to give women a venue in which to excel in an organization that often focusses on male-oriented activities. But as time has gone on, we have realized that there are many reasons to restrict it to female personas. Researching women's lives is, to a great extent, a specialized study. Having men in the same judging sessions would also create complications for certain personas, depending on their culture.
Golden Swan's focus on female personas was never intended as a statement on inequality or a feminist view of history. It was also not intended to discriminate against men, but to discriminate for women. As much as the word "discrimination" is viewed as a bad one these days, we must make choices. No-one can do everything or make everyone happy all the time. The shire of Appledore chose to create this event for women. It sees no compelling reason to change that decision, in spite of having examined it repeatedly over the years.
Appledore has said many times that we are quite happy to provide its expertise and experience to any branch who wishes to design its own male-only or coed competition. But Appledore is not willing to expand the existing event beyond what it is. The event runs 4 tracks of activities over 2 days, including heavy armoured tourneys, a rapier tourney, archery activities, childrens activities, and up to 11 judging sessions for Swan itself. This adds up to over 20 separate activities. Attendance climbed from 75 or so ten years ago to a steady 200 for a few years. This made it one of the largest annual events in the Kingdom off the I-5 or outside the Lower Mainland area. While the event has gotten smaller (as have events throughout the Kingdom) it is still as complex to run and organize as a Grand Ithra or many Crown or Coronet events.
To answer the call for a male persona challenge, Appledore created Scholars of St Thomas Aquinas. It ran for several years, but was discontinued. Organizers of Golden Swan have spent considerable amounts of time working with people who wanted to run similar events for male personas, or that were open to all. Appledore and the organizers of Golden Swan want to promote persona development for all. However, for a number fo reasons, Golden Swan itself remains for female personas.
For a more detailed discussion, see here:
Do I have to be some kind of genius to do all this research? What if I never went to college and don't know how to research or present documentation?
No question, you can't do Swan without doing research. This will mean reading books, browsing the Internet, maybe taking classes or corresponding with experts. But Golden Swan is not intended for hard-core scholars who live their lives in books. It's about creating a historically based persona. There is as much acting ability involved as there is research.
We don't expect you to do doctorate level research, although you may end up there once you're done. We expect you to read enough to have a good working knowledge of what you need to know to act as if you're a person living in that time and place. We also expect you to dig deeper than pretty picture books about the Middle Ages, or popular fiction. Sure, put the Mists of Avalon on your bibliography, but we also want to see some scholarly books on the Dark Ages in Britain.
The best places to look for guidelines about what we want in terms of documentation are the category descriptions and judging criteria. You don't need to document your entire persona, only certain categories.
If you aren't sure how to document, take a class on research and documentation at an Ithra, Collegium or TUTR session (or whatever collegium classes are called in your part of the SCA). Talk to a Swan or someone you know in the SCA who does a lot of research or enters A&S contests. Talk to the Golden Swan Coordinator.
When you first apply, your documentation plays a big part in how the judges will determine if you should be accepted or not. But once you're in persona, you no longer have access to your documentation. You can keep your books in your tent if you like, but if a judge asks about something, you need to KNOW the answer, and you must phrase it in persona. You can't say, "well, I read it in a book about..." If you don't know or can't remember, fake it. As long as you're not out and out wrong, creative faking is part of it. If you go back and look it up or remember it later, you can always find some clever way of re-introducing the topic, and that kind of cleverness is appreciated. This is not a scripted play where you have to be letter perfect at all times. This is about creating someone who lives and breathes, forgets stuff, and reacts to things and people in her environment. And the judges don't stop judging the moment that session ends. If you think of something later and talk to a judge about it casually, the way you might think of something after a conversation, that's fine.
We're looking for a person who is flexible and has a thorough working knowledge of what they've learned, and can talk about it from a first-person viewpoint. Someone who has the presence of mind to evade questions or manipulate the conversation away from topics they don't know and onto topics they do know, will fare better than one who has tons of book-learning but can't present the information convincingly as a real person. So research skills count, but only for about half, possibly less, of the whole presentation.
How should I react to blatantly modern things or people when I'm in persona?
In a nutshell, ignore them, unless you can't. If the car isn't about to run over you, look the other way. Don't make cute remarks about the electric lights in the hall or the sunglasses on the guy in the eric. That makes your persona an anachronism, which is the opposite of what we want here. You're not a person from the tenth or the fifteenth century who's been picked up in a time machine and set down in an alien environment, you're a tenth or fifteenth century person functioning within their own environment. So ignore anything that wouldn't have existed in that time. Don't keep straining credulity by commenting on everything that's modern.
At the same time, some situations can be dealt with. If you're a tenth century Anglo-Saxon woman and somebody hands you a banana, what do you do? Would you know what it was? Would you know it was edible? Would you believe it was edible if someone told you it was? Would you try to eat it, or would you decide it was poisonous or a trick? You could have encountered strange foods in your life, and you would have some methods for dealing with it.
But if there are lights in the hall, assume they're merely a different type of torch or rush-light, and get on with being a fifteenth century person IN the fifteenth century, rather than a fifteenth century time traveller in the twenty-first century
If there are multiple entries in the same year, are they judged against one another?
No. Candidates are judged only on the information they present, and against the knowledge the judges have. Again, the policy is that no Swan is better or superior to another. If you succeed, you're exactly the same as every other Swan who has succeeded.
The words we use to describe Golden Swan are misleading: contest, competition. But it's not really a competition, except against oneself. But there are so few examples of this type of challenge around that the words we might use for it don't ring right in the ear: challenge. So we fall back on words like contest, even though they aren't accurate.
Is this going to be some gruelling interrogation where I'm grilled on my knowledge?
Definitely not! After a few false starts, the organizers determined that the atmosphere of Swan would be supportive and nurturing. Judges ask questions in a friendly, curious way, as any stranger might converse with another. They are not to interrogate a candidate.
Golden Swan judges are given explicit instructions about how to deal with the candidates. They need to ask questions in persona themselves as much as possible, even inventing a persona just for the day to facilitate this. They are also told that this is not adversarial.
The academic field is normally adversarial. As a graduate student or professor in university, my job is to construct an argument and make it as airtight as I can, using careful language and as much supporting evidence as I can muster. And as my professor or my colleague, you do your best to rip my argument to shreds, using the same tools. Golden Swan is the opposite of that process. The judges ask questions to help the candidates reveal the information they have so painstakingly acquired. The judges and the people who sit in on the discussions create the social environment in which the candidates can act out the parts they have created for themselves. In most cases, this takes the form of a round-table discussion, like a tea party or social gathering where women who have never met before chat, ask each other about their families and their lives, and sometimes argue about differences of opinion.
In the words of one early Swan, Appledore is the cradle of Golden Swan. It is also the hearth around which the ladies of Golden Swan, past and future, gather to do what women have always done, to tell stories, talk about their lives, help and support one another.
The one exception to the non-adversarial rule is if a glaring omission in the candidate's entry is discovered during the judging. This has only happened once in my twenty-plus years with the event. In this instance, the judges conferred and it was decided that the candidate would be given every opportunity, in persona, to come up with the correct information. This did not happen, but the creative faking was so superb she succeeded anyway.
To avoid this happening again, we try to be demanding in the early stages of application and ask as many questions as we need to, to feel satisfied that the person is ready to compete. Right up to the Friday night of the event itself, an applicant's documentation may be scrutinized, even questioned.
The policy for judges is that they judge based only on what IS presented, not on what's missing. They do not go "fishing" for specific information simply because they think the candidate should know it. I may have read a different book than you did.
But if it comes out that you don't know something you really should know as a general rule, this could present a problem. However, the judges may probe that area, but will usually not focus on it. This is usually in terms of general knowledge about the Middle Ages or your part of the world, not information specific to your persona. For example, one candidate, when asked about pigs, claimed she had none and they were shipped from some distance away. All of the judges knew that this woman didn't know enough about the Middle Ages, because everyone had pigs, and you didn't need to do any in-depth research about her culture to know that. Meanwhile, a candidate from a culture that had access to pigs but didn't have them as a rule was asked about them, and she was able to expound at length about pigs because she's had them in modern life. She knew that her persona wasn't likely to have them but could have had, and she said that, then went on to express her own opinions, veiled as her persona's, about the creatures. That was impressive.
Candidates often say afterwards that, if anything, they were frustrated that they were only able to present a small percentage of everything they had learned. They had to learn a wide range of material, in case they were asked. But there's only so much time to talk. Every candidate will probably know a hundred or more hours worth of information, but will only have ten to 14 hours total to present it.
How do I explain why I'm in Appledore? Where is Appledore when I'm in persona?
Appledore is any place you need it to be. Usually, it's some vague place of pilgrimage, or a waystation on a longer journey. Most candidates are on a pilgrimage or on their way to or from somewhere (a niece's wedding, a trading trip, to check on their other holdings, to meet their husband.) In their letters of introduction, they refer to Appledore as a pilgrimage site or a monastery, or just direct the letter to the Ladies (or Sisters) of the Golden Swan, with no further explanation.
The main thing is, you need to be away from home. Otherwise, you'd need all the normal stuff you'd have at home, and it's just way too much trouble to acquire or make that much stuff and haul it around. So everyone in the competition is travelling for some reason, so they have a good excuse to travel light and just describe their home to us.
If your persona is English, Appledore is in England or Wales, maybe Scotland. If you're French, it could be England or France or Spain or wherever makes sense for your persona. If you're Russian, maybe we're in the Ukraine or Poland. We speak the same language you do, so there's no need for translators, we eat more or less the same kind of food so you won't get sick, and things look fairly familiar. So you don't have to go around saying, "Oh my God, what's THAT?!", you can concentrate on telling us about your place and your family and your problems.
The convention is that you don't discuss where you are with anyone on-site, other than plain physical description. So if there's a Mongol lady and a Russian lady going for Swan the same year, or a Flemish nun and two English ladies, they all agree not to talk about where they are, because they're all someplace different within their realities. But they can certainly comment on the view, the birds, the plants, the weather. You're all in Appledore or on the holdings of a shire member or visiting the Ladies of the Golden Swan, but exactly what that is in your reality (monastery, convent, market town, hostelry, distant cousins' estate) is for you to know. It only exists to make your letter of introduction more plausible for you to write within a medieval context.
How do I apply for Golden Swan?
Please see the page on the Application Process for detailed information.
Have people attempted Golden Swan and failed?
Yes. Over the years, there have been ten or so applications that did not work. In some cases, the applicant has withdrawn their application at the last minute, for health or personal reasons. In a few cases, it's been suggested to an applicant that they withdraw, because one or more categories were so problematic they could not succeed overall (a successful Swan must get 7 out of 10 or better in EVERY category, it's not an average. So if even one category clearly cannot be scored a 7 or better, it's an automatic fail of the entire persona). A very few candidates have entered, gone through the event, and not succeeded.
While the organizers see the value in allowing people to try even if they are not guaranteed success with a given entry, all of us know how much work it is to create a Golden Swan entry, from research and development of the persona to creating all of the costume pieces, category entries or props needed to convey a convincing portrayal of someone from that time period. If we know that a person is not ready, we would rather tell them that before they go to all the trouble and expense.
Sometimes, an entry has been marginal. We've had concerns it wasn't up to par, but were not certain it would be unsuccessful. In those cases, we may let things unfold, or we may talk to the applicant and see what they want to do.
However, in my more than 20 years of involvement, we've never been surprised. All of the applicants we thought would succeed have succeeded, and those who have not, we had more than an inkling this might happen. We do everything in our power to be fair in the application process, we do everything we can to ask questions, encourage revision, suggest reworking of certain categories we see as potentially difficult. And during judging at the event, we all want every applicant to succeed. We try everything we can to make that happen, from conversations with support people, pointed requests for more information, inviting the candidate to revisit a certain topic. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the candidate is simply not ready, they've made a fundamental error in their research we didn't catch or could not have seen ahead of time, or they simply did not understand what was expected of them, despite all of our efforts.
This doesn't happen often. And in evaluating the chances of success for any given applicant, over the years our rate of accuracy has been 100%.
The point, though, is that if the Judging Co-ordinator or advising Swans suggest changes to an application or ask for revision, this is never done out of a spirit of criticism or peevishness. It's done to increase a candidate's chances of success. The more information an applicant shares with us, the greater the likelihood they will succeed. As we say about the Application Process, THERE IS NO ADVANTAGE TO SURPRISE!
The judges and the organizers are on the side of the applicants and candidates, they want them to succeed. At the same time, their job is to maintain the standard of excellence the competition is known for, that makes Golden Swan worth achieving.
