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Lia or Ottilia


The name Lia came after looking through The Academy of St. Gabriel's website documenting medieval names and naming customs. Simply browsing through the most interesting time-frames I found an entry that listed Lia as a female given name dating to a record in Bristow made in 1191.
Lia This has the appearance of being a hyp. of some Lat name, but itremains obscure.

Lia 1191 Bristow

I had also toyed with the name Ottilia, which I found documentation for on a site for French Norman names.
OTTILIA (franc) - 14 décembre - « l'héritière » - usuel en France : Odile.
Ottilia has the charm of ending in Lia, and also being the middle-name of my paternal grandmother (also of my cousin's daughter). It means, in Old French, "heiress" and was sometimes also spelled Odile. That was a side-track however, Lia is a very good name: short, easy to pronounce in almost any language, and memorable. Plus, I like it.

de Thornegge


As for the surname, de Thornegge, I did some research, looking through the links provided on the official SCA site. I found a site listing the names of civic officers, Mayor and Chamberlain, of the English town of Lynn. On there, I found John de Thornegge, who served as Mayor for several terms. The first term started in 1313, and his last term ended in 1331. It had a nice ring to it, so I adopted it for my own.

For a long time I did not know what exactly Thornegge was. I guessed it to be the name of a place from which this John came from, but did not know until quite by accident I found on the same site a search-engine on Medieval English Towns. Searching on "Thornegge" I found the will of Joan de Thornegge, widow of the Mayor, John. In the commentary there it stated that it was believed he came from the town of Thornage, Norfolk some 25 miles west-north-west of Lynn.

On the same site I found a wealth of other information, for example a map of Lynne as it would have appeared in Medieval times along with a biography of the town. In the day it was known as Bishop's Lynn, while today it is know as King's Lynn.

The Persona


Lia de Thornegge seemed at first to be a Norman woman somewhere in the 11th or 12th centuries. I arrived at this by a very scientific method (I watched a movie when I was a very little girl). Later ponderings have moved the time period somewhat to the turn of the 15th Century, in the span 1390 - 1420. With the surname of de Thornegge I'm imagining a (great?) grandchild of the mayor John, making her contemporary of Margery Kempe, famous for being one of the first women to publish a biography (as well as being a religios zealot).

Lia de Thornegge's registered device In May 2004 I paid the fee and submitted my registration for name (Lia de Thornegge) and arms through the Nordmark Herald. My name was passed through to Laurel and registered in December 2004, but my arms were returned to me at Kingdom level. Finally, after receiving a Grant of Arms at Double Wars 2010 I pulled myself together and organized a new submission for a device, and this time it passed in January 2011, and my device is Per pall inverted sable, vert and argent, three seeblatter inverted argent, argent and sable.

At Visby Medieval Week, my Laurel and I had done some thinking and with collaborative effort we finally came up with a name and armoury for the little household that we de-facto are a part of. House Three Scissors and Duck. This household sometimes camps at Visby, in which case we might invite guests to stay with us, and that encampment is called Mallard Manor. At Medieval Week in Visby we had the big unveiling of Helwig and Johann's new pavilion as well as the presentation of this new household with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting which the Prince of Nordmark, SvartulvR, graciously agreed to perform.



SCA Awards

SCA Jobs

Other Achievements


Classes Taught:
  1. Sture Shirts, Double Wars XXI (2008). 3 students attending. No handout.
  2. Practical Blackwork workshop, Glötagillet (2008). Short theoretical overview, pattern handout and materials for making an embroidered roll for pins and needles given.
    1. Repeat of practical blackwork workshop at Aros Microevent November 29, 2008. 2 students.
  3. Scribal workshop, batarde ductus, Aros Fencing Camp (2009). 7 students. No handout
  4. Blackwork workshop, Glötagillet (2009). Basic repeat of last year's class, slightly expanded for fill patterns.
  5. Basic Embroidery workshop, Nordmark Coronet Tourney and Winter Games (March 2010). Providing three patterns for populace badges for both Nordmark and Drachenwald and fabric for working on, Mistress Helwig provided the thread, and together we held an embroidery workshop. A dozen or so students. Handout of the three patterns.
  6. How to learn a new calligraphy style, Double Wars XXIII (2010). A simple class on what to look at in a new style, how to decipher it and how to start learning the new hand. Basically a repeat of the Workshop at Aros Fencing Camp. 6 students. Handout of practice sheet for the batarde hand.
  7. Elizabethan Metal Thread Embroidery, Aarnimetsä Academy (November 2010). A workshop with demonstration of four different metal thread stitches, and half a dozen students. Handout of brief history and stitch diagrams linked off the embroidery page.
    1. Class repeated at Double Wars XXIV (June 2011).
  8. Doublet Fitting workshop, Double Wars XXIV (2011). Mistress Helwig and apprentices fit gentlemen for doublet patterns. Lord Knut, Lord Axel Jäderholme, Lord Fardäng Skvaldre, Lord Thomas Drake and Mistress Katheryn all came away with patterns.

Competitions:

Retinue:

A&S 50 Challenge:
I am participating in the SCA Wide challenge to create 50 items before the SCA's 50th birthday. Read more about it on my A&S 50 page.

Lia's Progress


It is not uncommon for Royalty of The Known World to keep a diary of their progress, i.e. those events which they have, or will, visit. I bring photos from all events I have visited.

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