SCA Camping 101: Our Home Away from Home

Introduction

In my last post, I went over the basics of SCA camping and provided a quick-start guide. For this one, I want to get into the specifics of what I have been using as well as share some of the advice and responses that I received from readers of the other post. A couple of things first: these images are a couple of years old and they are from before our canvas tent was destroyed. Our furnishings are essentially the same, but we have a modern tent again (something I will be remedying in the near future, ancestors willing). Secondly, it took us 3-4 years, during which the SCA was our primary hobby and where we were spending our extra money, to get our tent to this point. There isn’t a rush or a race to get to any step; take your time, build at your own pace, and have fun. Finally, this tent was less a period accurate encampment than either my wife or I wanted when we first started, but because of financial limitations and the differences in personas, this is the direction we were going. To follow Taka’s example, it’s neither one period nor the other, it’s an SCA camp.

Furnishings

As I said before and likely will say again, the details are what make things come together. In the case of your camp, it’s your furnishings and decorations. When picking furnishings, you also need to consider function as well as form. It is important to have things that you like the look of, but they need to serve a purpose, otherwise they are a lot of work to be transported without need. All that being said, sometimes looking good is its own purpose.

At the time of these pictures, we were still using a queen-sized air mattress of the extra thick variety. This worked great because it gave us enough height to sit on the bed and put on shoes, but sleeping on a giant cushion of air was murder for my wife on cold nights. To make up for this, we had a ton of blankets including a faux fur to try and stay warm. The changes in temperature also meant that no matter what we did, the bed would deflate somewhat through the night. We changed the mattress to a full-size futon, both to save space inside the tent and to keep us a little warmer. Getting an actual camp bed frame is now high on the list, since the futon is on the floor. These camp frames are also useful because, if planned right, you can store things underneath them.

A lovely friend of ours, Lady Sabine de Saintes, built us this amazing closet. It flat-packs and gives us shelvings. This was a huge step in organizing our space and having our clothing readily available. The closet also worked really well to split the space up, essentially giving us a front room and a bedroom.

In our front room, we used a plastic folding table as our main flat surface. Usually, this had snacks and drinks on it, but inevitably it also gathered baskets and purchases throughout war. The good thing
about these tables is that they are tall, so we could easily tuck our plastic drawers underneath. Our
plan had been to get a large table cloth to cover the table and drawers which would have helped the overall look somewhat. In the bedroom we have small folding tables, serving as valets to hold our accessories and what not when we were not wearing them. We also had two more of the same type of tables that acted as nightstands.

Seating is one of those things that, no matter what you do, it always feels like you do not have enough. At the time of the pictures, we were still using folding camp chairs; these chairs have served us well for years and we still take two with us to events. However, our big upgrade was that Southkeep’s own carpenter extraordinaire Cian Mac Cullough helped us out by making us each a chair accurate to our personas. For Bea, that was a very pretty Tudor-style chair (it folds for easy transport!), and for me it was a nice low three legged stool. These chairs are amazing, doing a great job of showing who we are and gussying up our living spaces nicely. Both chairs were built so they could pack easier, which is also really important when trying to get to events.

Decorations

You will see that nearly every inch of floor in the pictures is covered with a rug. This is because the floor is plastic, and rugs are pretty. Having a fully appointed tent with rugs, to me at least, is immediately transportative. It's a small touch so different from modern camping, and in many cases
even modern homes. It's one of my favourite things that we were able to acquire, through luck at Goodwill and family gifts. The only other decorations we wanted to add were coverings for all the modern furniture as I said above, and some lanterns to hide modern lamps.

Tips from Readers

1. Make sure the stakes you have are for the ground you are going to be camping on. Tents usually don’t come with good stakes; in Trimaris with our sandy ground and windy weather, this is particularly important. Also be sure to drive the stakes deep enough.
2. Always lay down a ground tarp underneath your tent. Even if it doesn’t rain it helps keep down the wear on the tent itself. It's much easier to replace tarps than to replace a tent. This is actually something I do that I forgot to mention in the other article. The ground tarp also has the added benefit of being the tarp I use to cover the cargo in the bed of the pickup.
3. Here is a great source for more information on packing: http://caidwiki.org/index.php?title=Packing_for_Events
4. Extension cord. If you need electricity, never assume that it will be close to you. This is particularly true of people who need CPAP machines and similar. 
5. Take into consideration the incline of the area when choosing tent facing and bed placement. It sucks to get into your tent after the first day of an event and realize you have set your bed up at an angle. 
6. The SCA subreddit r/sca is a great resource with plenty of people happy to answer questions. Many of the tips on this list came from there.

Conclusion

By reader request, I’ll be going more in-depth in the near future on specific items for Norse campsites. Things like chairs, six board boxes, and even kitchen set-ups. If there are any topics you would like me to touch on in particular, let me know! I am always looking for requests.