Baycon Review

[hrj]

I decided to take in a single day at Baycon, since I have a bunch of catching up around the house to do this weekend. One of my planned hanging-out buddies cancelled, so it was just me and scotica with occasional intersections with the downstairs tenant who had gotten a ride with me. I managed a small amount of bumping into folks and chatting. The programming was a bit disappointing though. It seemed like there were more program slots where there wasn't anything much of interest than there were where I had to make decisions between items. A few too many "generic con panel on standard topic X" and moderators who contributed to off-topicness rather than guiding things back on-topic. But at least the day ended up with a couple of unintentionally-amusing panels. (In the same way that historic-theme movies can be unintentionally amusing.) The panel on historic female pirates (the Baycon theme for this year was pirates) inspired scotica and I to review our "historic movie/fiction fallacies" checklist. We got as high as 21 checkbox items, although we invented some new pirate-specific ones. Just as a sampler:

* Pre-modern women couldn't own property
* Pre-Christian society was non-sexist with gender equality
* Because modern women set a premium on personal independence, historic women must have been attracted to occupations like piracy in order to pursue freedom from oppression and personal fulfillment.
* All historic societies considered it bad luck to have a woman on board ship.
* I know all about historic societies because I've worked Ren Faire.
* Oral tradition and folklore transmit historic data in a perfectly unaltered and unbiased form.
* There was a consistent and universal "pirate culture" across all of time and space.

I confess I allowed myself to be egged on to a leading question with side bets on the panel's answer. After the panelists had listed off a handful of anecdotes about "actual historic Viking women pirates" I asked about what sources I might use for further research into this topic if I wanted to dig deeper. You'd think that after we'd been told about some highly specific examples, the proposed reading list would be a bit less vague than "sagas and runestones". (I'm afraid it was about the level of specificity that the bet had predicted.) I'm all for people researching and educating about non-traditional women in history. Unfortunately you don't research and educate by rattling off a string of vague unsupported and unsourced claims.

We were hoping to bump into klwilliams at some point, but concluded she must have been hanging out in room parties somewhere with all her famous author friends. (pout)

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I duly bought my BayCon membership, bought a lot of books at the one of two book merchants, then decided that none of the panels were terribly interesting so I went and did other things. I really should have gone to Wiscon, but money and time were against me.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, as you can tell from my review, I generally concur with your conclusions. One of these years I'd like to make the trek to Wiscon -- the biggest problem being the logistics of doing it and Kalamazoo in the same month.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Your list... it is painful. Then again, the whole concept of 'viking pirates' seems a little dubious to start with...

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

"sagas and runestones"

Because, of course, your average American is perfectly capable of reading runestones.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

What I found (unintentionally) amusing was the notion that "sagas and runestones" was a useful answer.

We Showed Admirable Restraint

[scotica.livejournal.com]

I will note for the record that, despite the panelist recommending reading "several different translations, because they vary", hrj did not mention to anyone but me that she didn't need to use translations to read the sagas.

[zeborah]

If you're interested in anecdotes about "actual historic Viking women pirates" from a 16th century Swedish man, Olaus Magnus wrote a couple of pages in his "Description of the Northern People". (I can dig up precise references.) Of course, Olaus Magnus also wrote a couple of pages in the aforesaid about "actual real Lithuanian werewolves", among other things, so I'm inclined to take everything he says with several grains of salt, but still. (And the endnotes are invariably full of discussions about where he got his information and to what extent it appears to coincide with reality as we know it.)

Were the first two concepts on your checklist as given above espoused by the same person? The mind, she explodes.

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

"Viking" has a specific time/place that gioes with it. The time is 800-1100, so Olaus is too late.

I have seen references to a "Red Girl" or "Red Woman" as a pirate -- but not in reputable sources, so I don't know the context really. But she does get mentioned in all the bad references about the Vikings.

As you get into the late saga material there's more of the shield-maiden fantasy stuff anyway, so my guess is that IF there's evidence of lady pirates it comes from the most fictional documentation and furthest in time from the actual events that are purported to be described.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I've found Carol Clover's "Maiden Warriors and Other Sons" very useful in contextualizing the shield-maiden motifs. Given that, as it happens, one of my in-progress lesbian historic romances involves a "Viking pirate woman" I have a practical interest on the historic and literary context of the topic. But I confess that my question to the panel was more out of curiosity for how factually grounded the discussion was likely to be.

[zeborah]

Olaus is certainly not a primary source, but he does write about history to some extent, and this is one of those instances. Also about myths, and he's not always, as I said, clear of the distinctions, so cum grano salis. (I've mostly used him as a guide to what an educated man of his period might believe.) <checks quickly< According to the endnotes most of his information on the subject of Alvild is coming from Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo 7 VI 1-7"), who is also too late to be a primary source but could still be useful/interesting to someone wanting to know more.