25 October 2005
The Leafsta Time-Line Background
Establishing an accurate timeline for Leafsta and its survivors is problematic, as several reckoning systems have been used down the ages. I have tried to regularise the time-line by converting all previous reckonings (including
Leafsta Reckoning into
Stratics Reckoning, in which 381 LR approximates to 351 SR (see footnote to part 21 of
Smaed’s Story). One Gregorian calendar year equals five stratics years (see earlier entries for the link to the Stratics Reckoning calendar). All dates in the recent entries for both
Smaed’s Story and
Jern’s Journal – and indeed all other Leafsta survivors - are now in Stratics Reckoning.
The time-line begins with the earliest surviving records (as far as the Leafstans were aware) of the Norse Isles refugees in Minoc. This is a period of 30 years between the birth of Anvel ”Loosefoot” Fretting and the last Norsefolk Council of 267 SR, where the Fretting decision was made to migrate west as a separate community.
The true Leafsta survivors are, of course, the Fiskdotter clan, who, thanks to their matriarchal organisation, are the only remaining viable group of settlers of the original Norse Isles refugees- and who, of course, brought the refugees to the safety of Minoc in the first place! It is among the Fiskdotters, then, that the timeline is most likely to be successfully extended back – perhaps even to the date of the cataclysm that destroyed the Norse Isles. One day,when I have time, I will make a thorough search of the documents and folklore of the remarkable Fiskdotter clan.
Meanwhile,my own geneological records of the Leafsta families disappeared when the core journal known as Angst’s Journal was lost in a first time of
f4g chaos (the one before this more cataclysmic time of
f4g chaos). But one day I will try to reconstruct these from scattered notes. Any discrepancies, gaps or irregularities in the timeline are likely to be due to the first time of
f4g chaos.
The Timeline 235 Birth in Minoc of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting.
255: Marriage of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting and Millie Millster. The mayoral/Mastersmith line of the Leafsta Frettings begins with its founder, Loosefoot, who became Leafsta’s First Mastersmith-Mayor in 268.
256 birth of Anvel’s son, Smaed of Minoc, who became the Second Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta and who married Heraxa Treefeller, architect of Leafsta.
267: The last Norsefolk Council
Held in Minoc, leading to the kin-sundering and the Fretting-led woegn-migration to the Deep Forest, under Loosefoot. With hindsight this was, indeed, the unmitigated disaster that the Fiskdotters feared and that they argued vehemently against, contemptuously dismissing it as "the lemming-trek". It decimated the Minoc settlers, whose greatly reduced numbers were insufficient to sustain their Norse identity as a refugee colony as a result of intermarriage with Minocans. For a while the migrants prospered, building their village, but they, too were destroyed, leaving a scattered handful of Leafsta survivors, a kind of diaspora. The only branch of the migrants to survive as a viable kinship network were the Fiskdotters on whose ships the refugees fled the natural disaster in which the Norse Isles were destroyed. They only survived thanks to their matriarchal family system, which only became centralised after the kin-sundering when the first Arch-Matriarch took office.
268: Founding of the village of Leafsta in the foothills of the Serpentspine Mountains overlooking the Yew Forest. Founding in Minoc of the Fiskdotter Matriarchy under Yedda, its first Arch-Matriarch.
278 Birth of Bellows, eldest son of Smaed "of Minoc" (Footloose's son). Bellows became third Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, and the first to be born in Leafsta. Married Tama Husbond (the herder Tyg Husbond, who witnessed the destruction of Leafsta is Tama’s younger brother).
303 Birth of Tongs, Fourth Mastersmith-Mayor of Leafsta, married Canif Whittler of the Leafstan carpenter family.
326 September 1st: birth of Jern Fretting, great-great grandson of Anvel “Loosefoot” Fretting. Had Leafsta survived he would have become its Fifth Mastersmith-Mayor.
328 March 21st: birth of Smaed Fretting “Halfelven” to Agnes Fretting and the elf Thalandor of Silverleaf. Smaed “Halfelven”, born out of wedlock to Agnes Fretting was switched for the stillbirthed child of Millie Millster (named after Loosefoot’s wife), and Smaed was adopted as the natural-born son of Millie and her husband Smaed, younger brother of Tongs Fretting, Jern’s father (as described in the extract from Agnes' diary).
336 Flight of Agnes from Leafstato Trinsic guided by Talis (Thalandor) and taking Jern and Smaed with her. She settles outside Trinsic with the retired Leafstan miner Digs Delver.
337 The destruction of Leafsta (based on Tyg Husbond’s account)
340 Death of Digs Delver, without issue. Agnes inherits his croft.
It is at this point in time that the purely background history ends and Jern and Smaed become independent characters (Agnes some time later). 341 Jern goes to Leafsta, finds the ruins, and visits Stonekeep on the return journey. Becomes a serf of the Duchy on his return to Trinsic in autumn 342. Begins the long training to become a blacksmith.
343 Smaed goes to Stonekeep, and enlists as a trainee with the Yew Militia.
348 Footman Smaed takes furlough, visits Trinsic, where he learns of his parentage. Returns to Yew, resigns from the Yew Militia, and begins the search for his father.
348 SR is the date of the last journal entry before the start of the 350s, which I have called The Elven Decade. At time of writing it is April 359 SR. The timeline will be continued when Stratics Reckoning reaches the year 360.