What is "Giggleswick"?

There are two ways to answer your question. First, the official paperwork and bureaucratic way, the other way is the social "in game" shtick way. Officially there is no such place as Giggleswick in the SCA.

Bureaucratic:

The border of Stonemarche is the the state line of NH. Officially, if you live in NH you are in Stonemarche. If you live over the line in Maine you are in Malagentia.

Now on the other side of the coin socially we have defined Giggleswick as some number of towns in southern Maine.

Socially, what group you play with or feel part of is completely up to you as an individual. If you, or someone from MA, want to claim to be a member of Giggleswick no one is going to stop you. The existence of Giggleswick has provided some good shtick between us and Malagentia over the years. For those who live in Giggleswick but play in Stonemarche most of the time it makes no difference. The same goes for those who live over the border in other directions. The only time it makes a difference is when someone would like to be an officer, or Baron or Baroness, in the Barony. Then the official borders rule and you must live within the borders to be an officer, head of state or vote for the head of state. Could we have a war with Malagentia over the territory? Sure! It's great shtick. Would it change the border? no. For that we would need to go through a zip code exchange with Malagentia. If Malagentia agreed and the Kingdom seneschal agrees we could move the official border.

The one wrinkle with that is for boundaries that cross state lines we need to get approval all the way from the SCA, Inc. board of directors. Not impossible but a bit more of a pain. There will always be border areas and people going one way or the other to play with the group on the other side. Officially Giggleswick-by-the-sea consists of the area of Maine that has zipcodes starting with 03 (just like Stonemarche). Basically everything south of Wells, ME, including York; North, South and just plain Berwick; Kittery; Elliot; etc.


Shtick:

The Borough of Giggleswick consists of the seven towns in southern Maine with an 03 Zip code prefix; this includes the Berwicks, Elliot, Kittery, the Yorks and Ogunquit. It came about when the Kingdom was doing the "Great Zip Code Search" to establish the borders of groups and Andre of Branswatch responded that Stonemarche was any town with an 03 prefix. We capitalized on this by declaring an April first war on Malagentia (which they found out about the following Thursday). Since no one from Malagentia showed up to defend their claim, we figured we won by default. Malagentia, however, cleaned our clocks at the Great Northeastern War that year and claimed the land back. Elen Alswith of Eriskay threw the monkey wrench in the works by swearing fealty to Stonemarche in the name of the people of Giggleswick (thus the title 'protector of the people of Giggleswick'). King Gregor settled the affair by proclaiming that Malagentia owned the land and Stonemarche owned the people. Officially, that was only true for the duration of his reign, but we've had fun with it ever since.

Since that time people who live outside the bounds of Stonemarche proper but have their hearts here have come to refer to where they live as Giggleswick. Sort of like the Carolingians who claim residence though in Caid because "Carolingia is a state of mind". If you look at the latest New Hampshire Atlas & Gazetteer, published in Maine, it includes all of Giggleswick plus a little of Northern Mass.


Hrmm... Northen Mass eh?