The question naturally comes up; why decide to play as a Svan persona? I have said that I imprinted on the photos taken by friends who hiked in Georgia not too long before I started looking at the SCA. That’s a good simple answer but it really isn’t complete. A Georgian persona satisfies different sides of my personality at different times and all of these reasons are true.
The Researcher - Georgia is a niche. It has a different alphabet and a history that makes information on archaeological finds difficult to get for the amateur. The flip side is that art history covering Georgia is fairly strong. All personas can be puzzles if you want to dive into putting your fictitious construct into a place, time, and social environment but a Georgian persona is a puzzle with more pieces and no picture on the box. It feels terrific when you fit a bunch of bits together even if you haven't solved the entire puzzle.
The Hipster - Georgia is not Viking, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, or late period. It’s not Eastern Roman or Middle Eastern. Even within the SCA it’s a niche.
The Dilettante Maker - If you look at it in one way Georgia has everything! It has all the panoply of knights in shining (lamellar) armor. It has influences from both the Eastern Roman empire and the Turko-Persian world. Food, ceramics, fiber arts, metalwork and more. As an A&S geek it is a great area. Playing Georgian can allow for finding deep cuts to satisfy the hipster but it also means that you aren’t Viking man #1001 so there is more room for experimental recreation of some things that otherwise might be considered settled.
Svaneti, a province within the Kingdom of Georgia, is of course taking the hipster cred one step farther. On the other hand it is an oddly well documented region. The remoteness of Svaneti has allowed more art and artifacts to survive from the medieval period. Early on in my creation of a persona I ran accross some documents about names and clothing in Svaneti that jump started my thinking. Since then I've seen no reason to change.. Plus, to return to the pictures again, it is a beautiful region that showed up in everyone’s hiking photos.
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