Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Tolkien Mailing Competition

The Tolkien Mailing Competition (TLV) is announced internationally for the second time this year, and I am personally very proud of this: the TLV, and especially the international category is one of the few things mentioned in this blog which is actually (partly) my doing and not only that of a society I belong to. I am part of the TLV organiser team since I joined the community, and I was the one who came up with the idea of the international category (originally it was a passing advice of a schoolmate to me when I felt being without goals, but it took me years to take it seriously).



What is the TLV? During the year it is mostly about tasks we send to the competitors in five rounds and solutions they send back: in the first years by traditional post, nowadays almost exclusively via e-mail. Among them there are quizzes, riddles, crosswords, odd-one-outs and creative tasks of drawing, writing or even composing. Originally it was a competition only for teams of schoolchildren, just like "normal" competitions of Chemistry or Literature. They had three categories for the different levels of knowledge in the world of Tolkien (and in the first year also a category for individuals who have seen the movies but haven't read the book, to make them do so). But surely life does not stop after high school? Or at the borders? So the possibility of participation shouldn't, either.


First in 2012 we started a category for Hungarian adults in English, called "Glaurung". Not many people were interested in it, but at least it proved we are able to do this in English. Next year we decided to dream big, launched the "Quendi" category, and wrote about it to all Tolkien society which we could find an e-mail address to. It was a success. The enthusiastic answers for these e-mails were already heart-warming, and afterwards we got 35 applications from 16 different countries. 17 competitors sent their solutions for the first round from Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Slovakia, Spain, Russia and Ukraine. 


But what have the pictures of all this food have to do with the competition? Though it is impossible for the international participants, for the traditional categories there is also a sixth round: a live final. Since 2009 it is held in the beautiful palace rooms of the Main Building of the City Library of Budapest. There are various challenges to face on the spot, like finding quotes and copying a picture only by the description of a team-mate, but competitors also expected to arrive in costumes and bring foods, both fitting to the world of Middle-Earth. This is the only day when the participants meet each other and the volunteers of our society, the glorious day which makes the children realise they are not alone with their daydreaming, and make a lot of the members of our community realise how great this Tolkien Mailing Competition is. I know. I was a participant in the very first one...

Sunday, August 10, 2014

The Glory of Gondor: Summer Camp 2014

So, summer camp happened. I told about the start earlier, that will now be continued. Sadly I missed the first three or four days, so could not put together all the details myself, but it turned out that added to the already mentioned goals we also wanted to find a mysterious sword for King Earnur. Who answered the challenge of the Witch-king and disappeared just while we stayed in "Thaliondor", our colony in Eregion. So, although we stole the sword from the local people, some kind of Dunlendings, we could not give it to the king. The Dunlendings kept the sword in a sanctuary, and their shaman was cursing us for quarter an hour without breathing when we got it from there in the middle of the night. Our task for the rest of the camp was to realise (mostly by transcripting tengwar texts received from NPCs) how dangerous and evil the sword was and try to deactivate it, while the Dunlendings threatened us with war because of the theft.


The other threatening thing was the weather: just after I arrived on Sunday, an exceptionally heavy rain followed me, including big pieces of ice. That was the part when I could not be too sorry that I ended up with such an indoor activity as writing. But organisers adapted professionally, one night we even had campfire-feeling with guitar and singing, but under a roof, without a fire. And although most of the days had some random showers of rain (sometimes with strong sunshine at the same time), it wasn't always like that, and the two necessarily outdoor programs, the big hike and the war-game, could happen all right. For the day of the hike everybody could choose for themselves how big they want it: the "baby tour" was only a walk of couple of hours, the "normal" version was of half a day, and the "real rangers" went up to the highest point of Hungary, which happened to be near.


Another striking characteristic of the camp was the increasing amount of the already mentioned babies (and complete families, for that: some people came with their children, some with their parents, and some with both, so we also had a grandmother of one of the babies in our team). When the teams had their performances, all but one could play the "cuteness factor" card, because they had at least one baby or very small child among their members. And the little ones also had the team-cloaks and all such thing in small size. Cuteness overload. I think, we also had the youngest tolkienist traveller of all times on board, as one of the babies came with his parents from the Czech Republic (his father, Petr, is an honorary member of ours, as he frequently visits our events for years).

 

The team performances happened on Monday. The only given thing about them was a bunch of costumes and other materials recommended to use: the first one we recognised was a nice dress, which somebody instantly wanted to be tried on one of the guys. It fitted nicely, so we created the story of the warrior of Lebennin who goes to the harem of a lord of Harad disguised as a beautiful woman, to free from the evil lord the stolen girls of his hometown. I think, it turned out well, though some people complained about seeing the oversized lord of Harad without a shirt. Éothéods presented a movie trailer; Dol Amroth was following Mithrellas all over Gondor; the Rangers' story was about an artefact of the frame-story, the Medallion of Bravery. The most modern show was presented by the people of Minas Tirith: the story of the kings of Gondor in rap and short movie clips.

 

Orders also could have their performances. We decided to write Dunlending stories, each of their own style and taste: history, legends, myths or children tales in prose or verse. We were a bit worried, as the showing of these were set in the frame-story of the camp and on that night we were decided enemies with the Dunlendings, but our leader explained to the audience our performance only being a show of how primitive the enemy is, so nobody called us traitors in the end. Why would anybody do that, anyway: on the other day everybody had to choose their sides and most of the camp decided to be a bit of a traitor, who wanted to get back the sword from the captain of the camp against his will. We did so, and buried the sword in the forest magically bounded (during the night, the faithful stalking around us in the dark), but Dunlendings still were not contented, so we had the war-game against them (which means half of the camp chosen to be in that team for the game), which they slightly won, so in the end we agreed on acceptable terms. Our team-heroes went to live with the Dunlendings as hostages, but nobody could really see the tragedy of this. After that, party.


Thursday, July 31, 2014

Summer Camp 2014 is starting today!

They are already there. The organisers went yesterday, the participants today. Still one day of work and one of waiting before I can join.
I told a few basic things about our camps in general in my last summercamp-post, so won't repeat those now. The camp of this year is called "The Glory of Gondor" and its story is happening in T.A. 2050. We (the five teams of the campers) will be colonists from Minas Tirith, Dol Amroth, Lebennin, Arnor and also some Éothéod sent by King Earnur to the southern region of Eregion to civilise the local people and keep an eye on the evil things around.
I am one of the noble people of Lebennin, and cannot wait to find out the final version of our coat-of-arms: all teams and orders has a secret topic on our online forum to discuss things in advance, but of course, not all participants read the forum, so it is better not to decide every detail there. It was my idea to take the device of the House of Haleth as an example and transform the branches of the tree into the five rivers of Lebennin. Also we tried to use only our team-colours: white, green and gold. But what symbols will they choose in the end? Sun, fish, apple, flower, wheatear? I'm afraid I have to wait until Sunday to find out.


I am not good in geography and never knew much about Lebennin, but this is an advantage of these camp-identities: I did my research and now I will remember that one of our rivers, Gilrain, was named after Nimrodel, who slept on its bank so long that she could not reach Belfalas in time to meet Amroth. Also I found an error even in the (by our society) revised version of the Hungarian translation of The Lord of the Rings: in the sentence about the people of Lebennin, the mention of the "short and swarthy folk among them" is missing, and their sires from the shadow of the hills are said to be the sires of the people of Lebennin in general.
The orders of this year are about dancing, adventures and exploring, cooking and lifestyle, written and oral texts, arts and crafts, and hiking in nature. Actually I would be interested in all of them but dancing and cooking. So I applied for adventures and my secondary choices were the other three left. I was quite late with my application, perhaps that's why I ended up in the order of writers, just like in my very first camp (where my primer choice was the theatre group). Oh, and there is another order for the babies!
Every order has a leader, and every team has two leaders and one hero. The hero is a character from that folk with a background story and a role in the upcoming events (an NPC in role-playing terms, but I think the other organisers also have NPC roles). The story-section was quite active this year, so all team-heros has their own facebook page and some short stories about them were published online or in the upcoming Lassi Laurië. (Something that they, down there in the camp, already can have. Not that it can surprise me a lot, as I read the almost-final version in pdf to find mistakes in time, but I want to have it in my hands, now.) Among the organisers there is also a team to care about the team-leaders. Another for all other programs of the camp. (For example there is a card-game of competition for the individual participants and another game of strategy for the teams, and an article about the development of these games in the Lassi.) And of course the logistics. And the kitchen staff. And the main organisers to care about all these. You can see their pictures in the "camp blog".

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Tolkien Day 2014

Our Tolkien Day of this year was held in another, much more beautiful, but unfortunately also a bit too small cinema building compared to the previous year: the Urania National Filmtheatre. The only point of the programme which was internationally advertised by the organisers was the art workshop by Ted Nasmith—only this could you find also on the international event-list of The Tolkienist. Although this was truly the most special extra of the program, it is still only two hours and one venue of a full-day event in a big building full of people: elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, nazguls and other tolkienites.


The Tolkien Day is the one of our yearly events which is really planned for the general public, advertised in newspapers, visited by total strangers and most of our community is contributing on the organiser side somehow, if only by walking around in costumes and smiling on photographs. I did so—I spent the day as a dark-haired Elf in a dress designed for Galadriel (I suppose I could be Arwen borrowing granny's clothes, at least that was the only answer I could tell to a little girl who asked me whether I am Galadriel or not). I made Elvish hairstyle for visitors, even for a nazgûl, and guarded the small modell exhibition, checked tickets, and then the day was almost over and we could join the evening programme, so I cannot say much of the details of the day. I only went upstairs for a few minutes, where the café offered special foods like chocolate Erebor and lectures could be heard about the role of The Hobbit in the mithology, the love life of the Elves, the Elvish languages and writing systems, the movie adaptations and the Gift of Ilúvatar. There were also a talk with a guest who became known in Hungary with his special styled filmcritics on youtube. This proved to be a bit too popular, the crowd did not left much space for any air there. Also upstairs were the corner for children and the board games for grown-up children, and an exhibition of the works received in our Tolkien Art Competition.


I think it is useless to list more details of a program which I could not really see myself, but I hope most of the very lot of people who were all around the place could enjoy it, otherwise why would they stay? We also had a few international guests: I was glad to meet the Austrians (and suggested them the screening of the video about our Lithuanian camp as an English-speaking program) but only heard about the presence of Slovak TLV-participants. In the evening everybody still there gathered for the theatre program: songs, dances and a musical play about the forgotten heroes of Gondor. And in the end, as always, we made the traditional birthday toast to the Professor. So, that's about it—I don't have many pictures of my own, since the Galadriel costume do not have any pockets for camera, but on this facebook page there supposed to be collected all available pictures of the event.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Nan Thurin: Summer Camp 2013

Besides the Tolkien Day for the general public, our main event for every year is the Great Summer Camp of about ten days, with 100-150 participants, most of them more-or-less members of our community, but of course, there are newcomers, too.


These summer camps are not actually LARPs, but they always have a LARPish setting and story, which is presented in scenes and is a framefork for the everyday program, and those who are interested also can affect the story. Everybody belongs to a team which has a role in the story as a special group of people, for example the Men of Dale or the Elves of Lothlórien. Mostly the participants are also members of an "order" of their chosen activity, i.e. martial arts, hiking, dance, music. And there are other tasks and programs, guards, team plays etc.


In 2013, the summer camp took place at Városlőd. I never heard about the place earlier, but it is surpisingly easy to get there by train (this is fortunate and unfortunate at the same time), compared to other totally out-of-the-civilisation campsites we normally choose. The setting was in Beleriand, just after the end of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and the groups were wandering people of Bór and Maedhros, Men of Dor-lómin, Elves from Gondolin, Nargothrond and Mithrim. The organisers formed another group, the Sindar of Doriath, who welcomed the others in the valley of Nan Thurin. Although they tried to keep this secret, but in the end it turned out that they escaped from Sauron after Lúthien destroyed his dungeons to help Beren, and they were not totally cleared from the evil influence, so one of the other of them sometimes became possessed by the evil spirit of Sauron. The story contained several details known or not known from the books, for example the wedding of Brodda.


Unfortunately, I do not know much more either, as I haven't been there. All my holiday time was spent in the Lithuanian Mirkwood, so I spent less than two days in Nan Thurin. Most of this time was spent by sitting somewhere unable to walk around, as I spained my ankle in two hours after my arrival. So, instead of further details, I simply insert a nice video which can tell more of this camp as I could, and if anybody have questions about it, I am sure I know people who will have the answers. :)


One more of my few experiences there. Just before I left, the people of Maedhros came in to the lunch area, and theatrically burned a few ships made of paper. I suppose they had an argument with the other Noldor...


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Journey through Mirkwood 2.

In the morning we had some free time, supposed to work on the yet not cancelled team projects and the still not ready flags. It wasn't raining contstantly, we dried random bits of clothes and baked random bits of food around the campfire, and expected to start the daily march in dry weather.


We were wrong in this, but later on that day the weather became definitely sunny and was quite hot when we stopped for spiderweb hunt. The area for this programme was really beautiful, especially with the sun shining through the leaves, small mushrooms, tangled branches and a lot of moss everywherestill not everybody felt really motivated to run (in the middle of the tiring daily hike) all around a little bit of forest bordered with a little river with swampy banks. The drunken mirkwooder spiders left around webs in different shapes and colours, with small bags on them, and pieces of paper in the bags. On the papers we could find directions for the next spiderweb and also some words with tengwarif we could find the webs in the first place, of course.


The tengwar things turned out to be lines of the Ring-verse in Quenya, and if you collected all of them, you could tell which one is missing, and that was the task. But in the end, I think, we were more interested in the arriving watermelons and the opportunity to ask beer for the night. Half of the daily walk was still waiting for us. In the end, being the very last ones in the scattered group of tired hikers, we became unsure of the directions, but fortunately the lake was downwards, as you could expect. It is the deepest lake in Lithuania, called Tauragnas, beautiful and fast deepening, and the sun still shone when we arrived, so finally we could go for a real swim in the icy cold water. After that, at the same time with the very spectacular sunset, a beautiful rainbow arrived, triple and fully mirrored, and not much later also the heavy rain which it predicted. The rain (which officially never existed) held on for quite a long time, cancelling any planned programme, making almost everybody coming together under the big common tent, where the food was prepared, beer and cider were drank, and Hungarian folk songs taught. In the shallow water leeches danced over the shells.


On the day of the last camp-moving hike the rain finally decided to leave us alone, and we went to visit Beorn through long forest roads. The house of Beorn was actually a museum of bee-keeping, which, as we were informed, is a really important thing in Lithuania, even has its own god. The place was really nice, but the same could not be told about the guide, who apparently also said false things with bad grammarof course we would have no idea about this without the complaints of the Lithuanians, because the guide spoke in Lithuanian, and we got the information corrected by the translation by Laiqualasse.


After some rest in the park which was actually the museum, there was only a surprisingly short and comfortable walk left until we arrived to our last campsite amongst tall pine trees on the shore of Lake Almajas. With a nice and cold welcome-swim and some archery training in the darkening forest there came the night, and we read parts of Tolkien's books in English, Lithuanian and Hungaria (helped and slowed in this by modern technique, because the Hungarian and most of the English texts were only available on e-readersbut then, not everybody needs a book for reciting the Ring verse, the poem about Aragorn or Gil-galad). Later on, when half of the camp already went to sleep, we still tried to read in each others languages, Laiqua spelling the Hungarian translation of the song-fight of Felagund and Sauron almost perfectly, then modestly smiling on us trying to read aloud the same in Lithuanian.


Our last comfortably whole day started with swordsmanhip and archery tournamentthe later was quite popular, but only eight competitors  appeared for the first, exactly half of them from each nation, and I have to confess, all Hungarians had a bit more practice (and still some of us were beaten, not only by each other)but to be equal, the archery was won by Lithuania (hmm, you know, we need horse, and shoot backwards, with shorter bow, and things like that).


For the afternoon programme, each of us had to pick a stone, and we went for a last, easy hike to Ladakalnis, and seen height differences really not expected in Lithuania. This "mountainhill", as we all called it after the copyright of Tomas, is 176 metres high, and from the top you are supposed to be able to see six different lakes. There is also a big oak tree, and below that you could place your stone with your sincere wish, in the hope it will be fulfilled. The sun was at last shining in its full, we sat in a circle near the big tree and listened to Kostas and Tomas about local paganism and had a drink together with the gods.


On our way back we got some ice-cream in Ginučiai, and again some wild berries in the forest and still got back to the camp before sunset. Laiqua and Éogil gave a lecture about castles of Arda and Europe, while Felagund and Tibor competed in gulyás-cooking. They being also the experts for the given tasks in their groups, the group members gathered around the cauldrons for their advice. We also got the opportunity at last to learn the "filksingas" about Beren not being a shepherd, miruvor not being water and poor Necromancer having lame nazgûl apprentices. And chat and sing in different groups until late night, when only five or six of us remained awake, and of course those who listened to our chat while trying to sleep in their tents.


We still had Dol Guldur to besiege for the last day, which was some kind of capture the flag wargame, where a group had to defend their own flag and that of another group in Dol Guldur for half a minute to gain a point. Everybody had a piece of paper as life attached to their forearms, and each team had four soldiers for the quest. Some groups held together near Dol Guldur waiting for others to approach, others sent their flag far away with only one protector. Agreements were made and broken between the different groups, and sometimes we just waited eating wild raspberries from the bushes we were hiding in. In the end three teams out of four gained a point and we ran to the lake to "have a bath" and swim in real sunshine at last.


After this refreshing programme the heroic deeds of the war and other interesting parts of the week were praised in bard songs in the style of The Fall of Arthur by each group, folk dances were taught, learned and performed and, instead of the cancelled group plays, we hurriedly put together mostly improvised scenes based on The Silmarillion. The sun of our last day in Mirkwood was already very low and the official closing could not compete with the sight of the sunset, so we made it on the pier, together with the group photo from which we have to miss three people who already left us in the morning.

After the last words we still had some silent moments to say goodbye to the sun across the water, then the night of our departure came, and we went. For a long midnight walk beneath the moon, surrounded by mist, to the bus which took the Hungarians back to Warsaw. End of the event, but not the end of our story... or at least we really hope so.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Journey through Mirkwood 1.

There was a ten days long Lithuanian-Hungarian tolkienist summer camp last week in north-eastern Lithuania, and I really want to tell you about it, but don't know, how... because it is really not about the things which happened and can be told, but the feelings and experiences. Let's try. To "begin with the beginning", though our Lithuanian friends already planned this for more than a year before that, for us it all started with an invitation posted in our forum in mid-October, and my part in December, when I warned our official people not to neglect this opportunity and was asked to do something about it. So I did, started to collect participants, helped to write our part in the application for funding with Pillangó (our international relations secretary), and then waited for the results. The results came, the organising started and the two of us travelled for a meeting to Lithuania in the very end of May. And seven weeks later we arrived to the same place again, with sixteen other Hungarians, to meet approximately the same number of Lithuanians and spend with them a long week in Mirkwood. So we did, but the week turned out not to be long enough.


We started near Salakas, camping on the shore of lake Luodis. At first the groups from the two nations were just standing separately, while the fire was started with some difficulity and a Hungarian newspaper. Then one of the groups started to sing. After them the other, and so on. Lithuanian songs seemed to be long and sad compaired to ours, of which most of us knew only the first few verses. The meat slowly became edible, the experts discussed the local tengwar modes preparing for their presentation, and one after the other we went to sleep.


Morning came and we made a run to the lake needing to get clean. It was great, but the weather changed constantly, a little rain, some sunshine, an amazing double (or triple?) rainbow mirrored in the lake, a lot of rain again, towels once used seemed never to be dry again. Taking advantage of the sunny bits, we announced the four groups (red, yellow, green, blue - and the white council of organisers) and their leaders, then introduced the members to each other by ice-breaking games, making knots and torpedos of them. Then in the first hours of the night we started to learn more of each others languages, expalining our "gy" to the Lithuanians and hopelessly trying to pronounce their diphthongs,  but at least learn understandable versions of the basic greetings.


The weather continued to be unpredictable on Sunday, when in the middle of a very interesting tengwar lecture half of the Hungarians ran away to the local church for mass. Being there we also climbed up some stairs to the tower checking whether the bells are feeling well amongst all the dead pigeons. They seemed so.


After a lecture about weapons of Medieval Europe and Middle-Earth, we started to work on our own swords, which being quite long and for the hikes of the following days attached to the backpacks by most of us gave a special style to our wanderer group. The first bit of archery training already lead us to the night, so the first try of local folk dances found us in complete darkness on the uneven shore of the lake. Still, it was fun, and nobody fell into the water. There was something about making pancakes in the lyrics. And of course the amazing sounds of the hornpipe by Tomas to lead the dance.


Next morning we listened to Laiqua's lecture about architecture of Arda and Europe sitting in the sun on the shore (some of us still in raincoats), eating our breakfast rice, while in the background members of the team on duty standing in the lake still fought the cauldrons which did not want to become clean enough. After that followed another lecture about heraldic devices, already around the campfire, then we had to pack our tents and stuff to get ready for the first hike, mixed with spontaneus swordmanship trainings for those who still had their swords at hand.


We folded our tents in rain and unfolded them again in rain, and between the two had a long walk in the changing weather, through village, near lake, and here and there near the road there were big crosses with little Jesus figures or suns on pillars or the combinations of the two. The second camping place was around an old school building (in Švedriškė), which contained a badly tuned piano and enough place for all four teams to paint their flags till late after midnight. There was a well of ice cold water for washing the dishes, because this place was a little walk from the nearest lake, and they said we should beware of the snakes, although none of us have seen any.


During next days hike we arrived to the woods of Aukštaitija National Park, and realised that food is all around us. Experienced finders started to collect blueberries, rapsberries and I don't know what berries all along the forest roads. And the rain was nice enough to stop sometimes. Still the sentence "The strange glowing object in the sky scares me." became popular.


Blueberries were all around and below the next campsite (above the shore of Lake Utenas), too, even visiting some of us in the not best situated tents. We were also late with the program, continued to work on the flags, learned about ranger lore and were still introducing the history and present of our societies one hour after midnight.

So, this was half of the story. To be continued.