LOL.
Haven't laughed so hard at a keyboard for ages. I was about to post the very same extract....
"Elvenising" my equipment.
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LOL.
Haven't laughed so hard at a keyboard for ages. I was about to post the very same extract....
You do know what elf shot are, don't you ? 
I know a fair number of people who blend in, belong, in the woods and hillsides, so well that if they don't want to be seen, you wouldn't see them.
They don't scream and shout about their skills, but quietly just live them.
They will share and teach but never claim to be the best, or the most successful.
The clothing, and the gear, they make and use are part of it all.
Good company in some beautiful places
I reckon that's as close to elves as we'll get this side of Kipling and Tolkien.
cheers,
Toddy
I know a fair number of people who blend in, belong, in the woods and hillsides, so well that if they don't want to be seen, you wouldn't see them.
They don't scream and shout about their skills, but quietly just live them.
They will share and teach but never claim to be the best, or the most successful.
The clothing, and the gear, they make and use are part of it all.
Good company in some beautiful places
I reckon that's as close to elves as we'll get this side of Kipling and Tolkien.
cheers,
Toddy
Interesting thread and one I've been watching with interest.
My attitude to kit has changed a lot since I got into living history. Like most people a while back I used all the technical gear and thought it was the best way to go.
Now?......I think it has it's place but sheep seem to manage OK without it.
I've seen a few people recommending the Buffalo gear and it's good, but like most synthetics, it starts to pong after a few days. The "original" idea that Hamish came up with, that was so revolutionary at that time, was that it didn't matter if you got a bit damp so long as you remained comfortable and not cold. Pile and Pertex was his approach but historically wool did the same job for centuries before.
I have worked on some truly wet sites in awful weather in my Viking kit but I can never really recall being uncomfortable in it. The worst occasion was falling overboard from a longship and getting completely soaked. (Don't ask!) I didn't have gear to change into at the time but an hour or so later I didn't really need it, my gear had more or less dried out in use.
I think the cotton thing depends where it is in your layer set up. I don't trust it as a base layer but as an outer layer it has it's uses. Ventile or canvas don't really keep you truly dry but the small amount of damp they do let through is not a problem if you've got wool underneath.
Of course the problem with non-synthetics is that they will get heavier when wet and that could be a problem, but hey, why not get out of the rain?
If the weather sets in really badly I tend to make camp until it dries up. Maybe that's just me but why make life hard for yourself.
My attitude to kit has changed a lot since I got into living history. Like most people a while back I used all the technical gear and thought it was the best way to go.
Now?......I think it has it's place but sheep seem to manage OK without it.
I've seen a few people recommending the Buffalo gear and it's good, but like most synthetics, it starts to pong after a few days. The "original" idea that Hamish came up with, that was so revolutionary at that time, was that it didn't matter if you got a bit damp so long as you remained comfortable and not cold. Pile and Pertex was his approach but historically wool did the same job for centuries before.
I have worked on some truly wet sites in awful weather in my Viking kit but I can never really recall being uncomfortable in it. The worst occasion was falling overboard from a longship and getting completely soaked. (Don't ask!) I didn't have gear to change into at the time but an hour or so later I didn't really need it, my gear had more or less dried out in use.
I think the cotton thing depends where it is in your layer set up. I don't trust it as a base layer but as an outer layer it has it's uses. Ventile or canvas don't really keep you truly dry but the small amount of damp they do let through is not a problem if you've got wool underneath.
Of course the problem with non-synthetics is that they will get heavier when wet and that could be a problem, but hey, why not get out of the rain?
If the weather sets in really badly I tend to make camp until it dries up. Maybe that's just me but why make life hard for yourself.
Toddy
I've not heard of the term elf shot would you mind explaining it please?
regards
Sam
ps apologies for digressing from the thread topic
I've not heard of the term elf shot would you mind explaining it please?
regards
Sam
ps apologies for digressing from the thread topic
My kit, when I started was heavy - I took everything. Then I pared it back seriously by getting into "ultralighting". Now it is heavier again, BUT not nearly so heavy as before. It is now a combination of synthetics and natural materials - more because each item does its particular job well than a loyalty to either "type" of material. I would recommend looking at ultra light kit, trying it if it is affordable (a lot you can make yourself) and reaching a balance.
It means two things,
1) The tiny beautiful mesolithic flint or chert arrowheads that are sometimes found; like the San ones they are still incredibly effective.
2) Having been shot with one, the dwam that one falls into.
cheers,
Toddy
Elf shot can mean sudden sharp pain - or indeed wasting disease (common in both Northern England and Ireland).
Elf shot as a noun is also a reference to flint arrow heads.
As odd as it seems, there is a logical thread, bound up in the original peoples. If you trace many of the elf legends to small people living in mounds and woods and compare them to original pict houses and other ancient stone age dwellings (dug out and roofed in turf). there is a huge similarity. There are certainly references to the use of very small arrows - to be effective the use of poison is a logical inference.
Elf shot can therefore be the idea of a stinging pain followed by illness and or death...quite a logical thought to an invader hit by a sharp pain from a small arrow and then becoming very sick.
Not sure if thats what Toddy was referring to but the terms are quite common in folkloric research
Red
British Red and Toddy
thank you very much for clearing that up for me
i must admit that other than reading about elves in terry pratchett books i'm not really that knowlegdeable about them.
this thread has defiantely inspired me to try out some more lightweight/minimal kit camping and to leave some of the stuff i tell myself i need for a night out
thanks again
regards
Sam
thank you very much for clearing that up for me
i must admit that other than reading about elves in terry pratchett books i'm not really that knowlegdeable about them.
this thread has defiantely inspired me to try out some more lightweight/minimal kit camping and to leave some of the stuff i tell myself i need for a night out
thanks again
regards
Sam
I hadn't heard of it as a wasting disease, more a living dreaminess state.
We live and learn Makes sense though.
Dwam, in modern Scots, is generally used to describe a state of dreaminess or reverie, as in Anne Donovan's novel, Buddha Da (2003): "Ah was in such a dwam that ah'd nearly walked past him when ah realised he was staundin in front of me, wavin intae ma face". However, the earliest recorded uses of the word indicate that it originally denoted a fainting fit or swoon. In origin, dwam is related to Old English dwolma 'chaos, confusion' and Old Saxon dwalm 'delusion', and first appears in Scots in texts dating from the sixteenth century. The medieval makar William Dunbar writes of "deidlie dwawmes" and Robert Keith's History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland (a1568) reports that Mary Queen of Scots suffered from "dwaumes of swouning".
This use of the word to describe a state of unconsciousness is also found in Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality (1816): "He fell out o' ae dwam into another, and ne'er spake a word mair, unless it were something we cou'dna mak out". In Joseph Gray's Shetlandic tale, Lowrie (1949), falling asleep is described as "dwaamin ower". A person in a dwam might also be in a trance-like state, as in Kevin MacNeil's novel The Stornoway Way (2005): "I walk the rest of the way in a dwam, ideas shifting, finicky, melting like Dali-clockwork into wordless philosophies in my head".
Alternatively, being in a dwam could also relate to some form of enchantment, as in Neil Munro's Doom Castle (1901): "Few'll come to Mungo Byde's hostelry if his wife's to be eternally in a deevilish dwaam, concocting Hielan' spells". That said, the dwam described by a journalist in Scotland on Sunday in June this year is less a form of enchantment and more of a stupor: "When other guys start talking about 0-to-60 speeds and brake horsepower, I lapse into a dwam".
from
http://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/wordoftheweek/2007-10/611
We live and learn
Makes sense though.“dwam n. a daydream; a stupor; a swoon”
1st October 2007Dwam, in modern Scots, is generally used to describe a state of dreaminess or reverie, as in Anne Donovan's novel, Buddha Da (2003): "Ah was in such a dwam that ah'd nearly walked past him when ah realised he was staundin in front of me, wavin intae ma face". However, the earliest recorded uses of the word indicate that it originally denoted a fainting fit or swoon. In origin, dwam is related to Old English dwolma 'chaos, confusion' and Old Saxon dwalm 'delusion', and first appears in Scots in texts dating from the sixteenth century. The medieval makar William Dunbar writes of "deidlie dwawmes" and Robert Keith's History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland (a1568) reports that Mary Queen of Scots suffered from "dwaumes of swouning".
This use of the word to describe a state of unconsciousness is also found in Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality (1816): "He fell out o' ae dwam into another, and ne'er spake a word mair, unless it were something we cou'dna mak out". In Joseph Gray's Shetlandic tale, Lowrie (1949), falling asleep is described as "dwaamin ower". A person in a dwam might also be in a trance-like state, as in Kevin MacNeil's novel The Stornoway Way (2005): "I walk the rest of the way in a dwam, ideas shifting, finicky, melting like Dali-clockwork into wordless philosophies in my head".
Alternatively, being in a dwam could also relate to some form of enchantment, as in Neil Munro's Doom Castle (1901): "Few'll come to Mungo Byde's hostelry if his wife's to be eternally in a deevilish dwaam, concocting Hielan' spells". That said, the dwam described by a journalist in Scotland on Sunday in June this year is less a form of enchantment and more of a stupor: "When other guys start talking about 0-to-60 speeds and brake horsepower, I lapse into a dwam".
from
http://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/wordoftheweek/2007-10/611
We can all get serious about this bottle, that fabric and the like but we do have to keep in mind that we are doing all this to have a bit of fun.
Much as I like some of my space age kit, there are many bits and pieces I can easily do without or replace with lighter or better materials. I want to enjoy my time out and away and part of that is using some more traditional skills and equipment.
Earlier in the thread I posted about lightening up and embracing the new stuff but there are always a few bits that I won't give up and make no sense to use but I do have fun using them.
I constantly make trade-offs for practicality vs weight vs style and if I choose to use flint and tinder and a way too large wool Indiana Jones style hat and candles instead of flashlights, I try not to grump about the extra weight.
Generally what I do is not about long term wilderness survival but getting out there, mucking about and having a giggle.
FarPoint
All those who wander are not lost-JRR Tolkien
Much as I like some of my space age kit, there are many bits and pieces I can easily do without or replace with lighter or better materials. I want to enjoy my time out and away and part of that is using some more traditional skills and equipment.
Earlier in the thread I posted about lightening up and embracing the new stuff but there are always a few bits that I won't give up and make no sense to use but I do have fun using them.
I constantly make trade-offs for practicality vs weight vs style and if I choose to use flint and tinder and a way too large wool Indiana Jones style hat and candles instead of flashlights, I try not to grump about the extra weight.
Generally what I do is not about long term wilderness survival but getting out there, mucking about and having a giggle.
FarPoint
All those who wander are not lost-JRR Tolkien
Hi Toddy,
I suspect I'm coming from a different background - and indeed area. There are some great resources on the subject.
http://www.geocities.com/knappersanonymous/folklore.html
I have often heard of the "Elf stroke" being similar to the "Bolt of Apollo" from Romano medical terms - a major seizure with pain and sudden onset. Not hard to see how a shot from an "elf bolt" dipped in poison could produce symptoms similar to a stroke - sudden pain - clutching an area, collapse, slurred speeach, sometimes fatal.
All speculation on my part of course.......
I suspect I'm coming from a different background - and indeed area. There are some great resources on the subject.
http://www.geocities.com/knappersanonymous/folklore.html
I have often heard of the "Elf stroke" being similar to the "Bolt of Apollo" from Romano medical terms - a major seizure with pain and sudden onset. Not hard to see how a shot from an "elf bolt" dipped in poison could produce symptoms similar to a stroke - sudden pain - clutching an area, collapse, slurred speeach, sometimes fatal.
All speculation on my part of course.......
No, I can see your meaning too, while ours is more a dreamy state.....maybe drugged ? Some of the old flying ointment pastes on the arrowhead would certainly do that 
cheers,
M
cheers,
M
jojo's post and Toddy's both reminded me of something that I have thought about several times previously. Which is, we are so dependent on the global transportation grid. Particularly for our food.
We have all seen video on the news broadcast showing empty shelves in grocery stores when some major disaster happens or is just predicted.
If it really broke down for any length of time we would all be up against it in just a few days at best.
Yet if you think about the transportation grid of say 1870, and it had broken down, It wouldn't have mattered much as far as food was concerned. In the U.S., as late as 1900, 95 percent of the population was rural, and 5 percent was urban.
That means that 95 percent of the people had cows, chickens, pigs and grains. I'm sure the figures for the U.K. are comparable. It also means that 95 percent could have weathered any breakdown without hardly noticing that it was happening. Probably, sugar and coffee were the only two things that would have been really noticed.
Today, even the 5 percent that farm, don't butcher their own animals, don't make butter, seldom "can" food, etc. Many of these skills are not "lost", but are "lost" as far as most people are concerned.
All of this just illustrates how dependent, and inter-dependent we have become.
We have all seen video on the news broadcast showing empty shelves in grocery stores when some major disaster happens or is just predicted.
If it really broke down for any length of time we would all be up against it in just a few days at best.
Yet if you think about the transportation grid of say 1870, and it had broken down, It wouldn't have mattered much as far as food was concerned. In the U.S., as late as 1900, 95 percent of the population was rural, and 5 percent was urban.
That means that 95 percent of the people had cows, chickens, pigs and grains. I'm sure the figures for the U.K. are comparable. It also means that 95 percent could have weathered any breakdown without hardly noticing that it was happening. Probably, sugar and coffee were the only two things that would have been really noticed.
Today, even the 5 percent that farm, don't butcher their own animals, don't make butter, seldom "can" food, etc. Many of these skills are not "lost", but are "lost" as far as most people are concerned.
All of this just illustrates how dependent, and inter-dependent we have become.
And that global transportation grid is dependent on one thing: cheap oil, and the days of that are coming to an end.
Because we've moved away from regional farms (and because we expect to have any fruit in any season, etc.) the carbon footprint of the typical item of food in the store is astonishingly high. In the United States, the average item of food eaten by the average American traveled 1,400 miles to get there. Amazing.
So it won't take a natural disaster to make those shelves bare... Sustained prices of oil in the $150 per barrel range (and we'll be back there soon enough) will bring their own disaster...
So we should do what we can to eat local, buy local, live local. It matters. Plus, it's good for the soul...
Not sure what that has to do with Elvenising our gear though....
KInd of off topic true, but.....
The Industrial Revolution kicked off really early here and by the 1800's Britain was already more urbanised than rural.
That's why the divide between traditional knowledge of plant and animals and modern people is so profound.
We are the first industrialised nation, arguably the first post industrialised one too
From the mid 1700's industrialisation and the population shift, aided by the improvements in agriculture and the introduction of mechanisation changed the UK's economy entirely and incidentally also tripled the population numbers as well.
If push comes to shove, and people accept that out of season imported foods are not going to be cheaply available then the country 'could' feed itself. It would need a tremendous change in agricultural practices (we even pay our farmers to 'set aside' land here, i.e. not use if for crops or grazing, at present) and an even bigger change in diet, but with modern crops, better animal husbandry techniques now available, it isn't impossible.
It's all down to cost. If it becomes cost effective for our own farmers to grow food instead of importing it........and if the climate warms up......I know that when the climate was a couple of degrees warmer in the past, then land that is now sub marginal was productive arable farmland. Any archaeologist knows that.
Back to Elves.........what about Ents ? Forest folks, and Ent wives, who grew fruit trees and gardens
cheers,
Toddy
The Industrial Revolution kicked off really early here and by the 1800's Britain was already more urbanised than rural.
That's why the divide between traditional knowledge of plant and animals and modern people is so profound.
We are the first industrialised nation, arguably the first post industrialised one too
From the mid 1700's industrialisation and the population shift, aided by the improvements in agriculture and the introduction of mechanisation changed the UK's economy entirely and incidentally also tripled the population numbers as well.
If push comes to shove, and people accept that out of season imported foods are not going to be cheaply available then the country 'could' feed itself. It would need a tremendous change in agricultural practices (we even pay our farmers to 'set aside' land here, i.e. not use if for crops or grazing, at present) and an even bigger change in diet, but with modern crops, better animal husbandry techniques now available, it isn't impossible.
It's all down to cost. If it becomes cost effective for our own farmers to grow food instead of importing it........and if the climate warms up......I know that when the climate was a couple of degrees warmer in the past, then land that is now sub marginal was productive arable farmland. Any archaeologist knows that.
Back to Elves.........what about Ents ? Forest folks, and Ent wives, who grew fruit trees and gardens
cheers,
Toddy
Just loving this thread... So, does anyone fancy assembling a kit list for the 21st century British elf? I'd be particularly interested to see one that starts with a 'traditional' hiking kit list and then shows what you can a) live without and b) use for another purpose to do away with the need for another item.
