BLACKSMITHING in the VIKING AGE, Part One by Bruce Blackistone (Atli) bruce_blackistone@nps.gov Fri Mar 6 10:59:33 PST 1998 (*note: please click on the thumbnailed pictures to view them full size) First thing to keep in mind: Viking is a job description, not a racial designation. You went viking,(verb) which meant that you were engaging in a piratical raid, with or without political motive, at home or abroad. The modern term Viking is a catchall for the pirates, mercenaries, freebooters, royal troops, and suchlike concentrated in the Scandanavian area. Second thing: No one had a patent on any of this technology (not even a copyright). So where individual smiths may have had their secrets, technology did get around. At the very least captives and enslaved craftsmen were certainly freely traded, as were household goods, luxury items and weapons. We're dealing with a fairly cosmopolitan society here, which stretched from the steppes of Russia, down to Constantinople, across the Atlantic to North America, and with voyages and raids touching Spain, Italy, the Levant and northern Africa. There was extensive settlement in France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Man and the northern isles, Iceland and Greenland. We are also talking about a period of 300 years, and a lot can happen in 300 years! This series will mostly deal with tools and techniques used throughout Europe during this period. Third thing: Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. We will never know exactly what we are dealing with, so most of the following is educated guess work. We're relying on a small base of tools and artifacts, and extrapolating many of the techniques from this evidence. However, as many of you know from your own experience, learning smithing alone and from a few books, your technique may be the same as another smith's, or it may be completely different. Many of you have had the experience of going to another forge and seeing that where most techniques are the same (tools and medium do impose certain boundaries to technique, after all), some are very different. The results may be the same, better or worse than your work in terms of labor expended and quality of product. We can talk to each other and demonstrate, or post neat stuff on-line, but it's very hard to quiz someone who has gone to dust 1,200 years ago. Yet, when you see their tools and observe the results of their work, and investigate it and try to duplicate it, you cannot fail to feel a kinship with these people. (In truth, they probably are your kin. Conquering populations are always free with their genetic material!)
Forge: The common forge was a side draft using
double bellows, mounted side by side. We quickly discovered that it takes some talent and
a fair sense of timing to operate these bellows. You have to build up pressure gradually,
and must keep one bellows blowing while the other is on intake. If there is not pressure
in the pipe leading to the tuyere, the intake bellows has a tendency to suck the
superheated air and smaller live coals into itself, which makes a terrible noise and can
burn out the leather sides. One
Tongs: Unchanged for the last 1,200 years or more! Other Tools: Hacksaw (useful for lock work), metal shears, pritchels and punches, chisels, files, offsets, nail headers, draw plates, shovels, slices, pokers and rakes. To wet down the charcoal a broom-like "swab" was used to sprinkle water from the slack tub. Wrought Iron: Bog iron (limonite) was the predominant source in this period. It's virtue is that in an active bog (as opposed to a "fossil" deposit) it renews itself every 15 years or so, since the iron is precipitated out of the water by bacterial action. It would be processed into a bloom in small smelters (sometimes only 2' wide and about 4' high) using vast quantities of charcoal. Production was frequently in blooms of about 20 pounds or so. Towards the end of this period, in the 10th and 11th centuries, the Catalan furnace from Spain became better known, and production runs tended to be measured in 100 pound lumps or better. None of these smelters reached melting temperatures (the Chinese were making cast iron B.C., but that's another story) so the bloom was a pasty agglomeration of iron and slag, (which was mostly silicon). This bloom would be heated and beaten into a consolidated lump, and then eventually formed into bars and other useful and transportable forms. Steel: Steel was either picked out during the bloom stage (If you "cooked" the bloom for a longer time, portions of it would pick up more carbon. There are later references to "steely iron".) or it was made by a variation of the case hardening process. In case hardening a finished object, usually a blade or cutting implement, is covered with a carbon source and encased in either an air-tight coating, or put into an air-tight container. It is then "soaked" in a furnace at a steady temperature, with the carbon penetration a function of the length of time and control of heat. This method provides a thin steel coat "encasing" the object. (The other possible derivation of the term is the fact that you use a covering or container.) Instead of a finished product, bars or strips could be packed in charcoal and held at temperature for days at a time, producing what would later be known as "blister steel". The steel edges for the cutting tools in the Mastermyr find tested to about 40 points of carbon. This is rather handy, since you could harden it by quenching and not worry about tempering it, due to the general toughness of 40 point steel. Samples from swords reveal carbon contents of 60 and 80 points. Recycling: In a labor-rich, materials-poor society you tend to recycle everything. Until it's recycled, you use it and mend it until it's just about used up. One of my favorite blacksmith's finds was an Anglo-Saxon iron hoard. It contained a variety of bits and pieces, ranging from an 11th century spear head to a Roman(!) axe. Swords were beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and , just as often, plowshares were beaten into swords and , well, the Anglo-Saxons would use the pruning hooks (or "bills" as they were known) to lop limbs off of people as well as trees. Most medieval chainmail has literally gone down the drain since, once it became obsolete for warfare. It was ideal for scrubbing out pots. Also, because of its high surface area to volume ratio, it is very vulnerable to rust. Ut! ATLI © Bruce Edward Blackistone, and the Longship Company, Ltd. Please use with permission and/or for educational purposes only. Any misuse may result in a visit from our Bos'n, Bork! Visit our Viking vessels: www.wam.umd.edu/~eowyn/Longship |
