I am a tent maker, episode 01

Today I am leaving town to go with some of the other guys of Albrechts Bössor to the small town Kivik, which is located in the absolute south of Sweden. We are going to hand-stitch a new tent at Simon's place. The guys in the "northern section", around Stockholm, are going to do the same, which means that we will finally have lots of space when going on events.

I searched high and low for good fabric, and I finally found a sturdy, white linen. It is cloth for making sails, more or less, and will live through most weathers.

We will be making the same old tents that we alreday have three of. They are called bell-tents by some. They resemble a teepee, and they are the only tents, except for regular pavilions and some other tent types with a frame, that I have seen during our period. There are LOADS of pics of pavilion, but more or less NO pics of tents of smaller type - soldier's tents. We feel it would be inapropriate if common soldiers lived in a pavilion; lots of things point to that tents weren't very common at all during the 14th century, even for officers. It is more likely that soldiers took shelter where ever they could, and if they didn't find a roof, they would simply sleep under the sky, wrapped up in blankets. That is my opinion.

But. As most reenactors are utter weaklings (including me and most of my friends), we choose to have tents. And to make it credible, we only have tents that we could transport ourselves. This makes the teepee-tent ideal for our needs, as it is very easy to put up and to put down, and it is light to carry. There is no need to bring the center pole; as long as you know how tall it needs to be, you can simply grab the nearest fence pole of appropriate length and - voila!

I have been looking forward to this meeting a long time now, and it will be glorious to meet the guys again. I have a feeling it will be a great weekend, filled with good friends, laughter, stitches, hard work, sweating, snapping needles, swearing, cursing and at least five different "I hate this crap! I give up! I'm going home!". Then again - there will be pizza and beer... And I will be getting away from Växjö for a while :-)