Remembering Toki the Skald-maker

Toki Redbeard, also known as Toki Skaldagorvir (Toki the Skald-maker), passed from this life last Monday night. This is one of those seismic unexpected losses that shakes the SCA to its foundations. As far as we all knew, his cancer treatments were going well and about to wrap up.

This week has been a welling up of grief, stories, and remembrances across social media. Toki fostered and encouraged so many people, in the SCA and out of it, that his legacy is impossible to measure in this moment.

I am finally finding and putting these words down, after a week of being blocked, while I listen to the celebration of his life being live-streamed from Ithaca NY.

He was known, rightly, as one of the great storytellers of the East Kingdom, then Æthelmearc, and the Society overall. He encouraged people to try performing, to stretch and grow, and to seek out and embrace detailed constructive feedback to improve. He organized workshops, immersive performance events, and the occasional competition (including my first Winter Nights where I fell in love with East Kingdom bardic). I remember the warmth and enthusiasm of his greeting that day, the day I met him and so many of the bards who would become crucial to my life.

Toki was a force of nature. He was a big teddy bear of a man with a powerful baritone voice that he could project across any field, or bring down to a gentle intimate tone for just one listener. As a community leader, he played a key role in the bond Jess and I forged with Concordia of the Snows, and certainly you’ll see his name throughout this blog if you search, so I don’t need to rehash every reminiscence of him that is now coming to me.

Since I wasn’t local to Concordia, our paths crossed less frequently as I grew and branched out to find my path. But all along the way he had the occasional word of recognition or praise. When I was honing my performance and flexing a particular muscle to develop in a deeper direction, he always spotted it and got it right away, and took the time to let me know he appreciated it.

Still, we didn’t become close for a long time. We shared certain traits that expressed differently in each of us: we both stepped big, took up space, and had a knack for sometimes rubbing people the wrong way. He had been at it longer than I had, and overcome his stumbles by and large, while I was still blundering through mine. We were also very different types of performer, since my storytelling almost always manifests through song.

A few years back, when Zsof suggested to Toki and I, separately, that he might be the Peer that could help me move forward after she and had been working together for a few years, we both had the same response: “Him? Seriously??” She persisted with both of us for a couple of months. Finally, he and I set up a phone call, and in one hour we both realized how alike we were, how much each of us was dedicated to our own growth, and how much we had underestimated one another. We ultimately determined that this was a good fit, even as we also agreed that a joint effort along with Peregrine would help me most. Their styles complemented one another. Peregrine had fantastic insight into me as a songwriter and musician; Toki was, even from Ithaca, still very active and respected in the East Kingdom and understood the politics.

Toki knew how to give and accept thoughtful advice. The one time he asked me what I thought he should do in a challenging situation, he didn’t hesitate to follow through when I answered.

He encouraged growth because he modeled it. When the pandemic hit and I realized my term of service as royal bard was going to be a completely different set of challenges than we had expected, he remained a steady, grounding presence along with Peregrine.

He was a steadfast Peer through two and a half difficult years, and was there with Peregrine (the only time we were all physically together as my team) when I received my Maunche in November of 2021.

While Toki was less regularly involved in the SCA the last few years, I got to see him again at Known World Cooks & Bards last September. I got to see him deliver one of his last performances, his signature story “The Three Monks of Colmar”.

I also got him down to the recording studio set up at the event, where we recorded his other last performance. When the time is right, and it will bring more smiles than tears, I’ll share that piece out. It begins with a conversation with my Peers, played by my Peers, providing a comic-edged version of the sage support and advice that sustained me when I needed it most.

If word-fame is immortality, as Toki taught us, he’ll never really be gone.