Pennsylvania, US | Cultures and Civilizations
It all began rather innocuously in 1966, at a party in a backyard, for a group of graduating medieval studies graduates. In a celebration of all things medieval the grad-students, dressed up and whacked at each other with fake swords, culminating in an impromptu parade down Telegraph Avenue in a Oakland, California.
From this modest party would come the Society for Creative Anachronism, and the Pennsic War, a two week ‘war’ in which 10,000 – 15,000 knights, maidens, and other creatively anachronistic people descend on Pennsic, Pennsylvania breifly turning the town into the 3rd largest city in Butler County, PA. Campers dress in medieval clothing, often camp in period pavilions, and organize huge fights with thousands of knights wearing armor and armed with wooden swords and maces. So large is the medieval themed event that has its own postal zip code for those particular 2 weeks.
The Pennsic wars, are named after a combination of Pennsylvania and Punic War, it on its 39th year in 2010, or in Pennsic War numbers
XXXVIIII. The ‘war’ is held between two groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the Kingdom of the East and the Middle Kingdom.
The challenge for the Pennsic war was begun when King Irial and Queen Morna (the kingdoms elect royals) of the Middle Kingdom delivered an arrow of war to King Rakkuri and Queen Maureen of the East. The cause of the war was double both over the Debatable Lands, also known as Pittsburgh, and “an earnest desire to have fun and engage in chivalric combat of the highest.”
