BLACKSMITHING in the VIKING AGE, Part Two by Bruce Blackistone (Atli) bruce_blackistone@nps.gov Fri Apr 10 06:50:30 PDT 1998 BOOKS and RESOURCES: There are only a few good consolidated sources on this subject. The first, and most obscure, that I have referred to is Metallurgy and Metalwork in Ancient Russia by B. A. Kolchin, Moscow, 1953, translated from Russian and published for the Smithsonian Institute and the National Science Foundation by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem, 1967. Ancient, in this case, refers to the 9th to the 13th centuries, a period of strong Scandinavian political and cultural influence. It was also a cosmopolitan period, with strong trade and technology contacts across Europe. Looking at the artifacts in the book: if you took a pile of Russian tools and weapons, and dumped them in with a pile of English tools and weapons, you would be hard pressed to sort them out. There are only three problems with Kolchin's book: it's hard to find (I stumbled upon a copy in the Departmental Library); archeology, especially in the areas of dating and analysis, has come a long way since 1953; and having been written in Stalinist Russia, it occasionally digresses into phrases like: "…they were thus misrepresenting the glorious past of the great Russian nation." In between the Marxist manifestations is some fascinating information on the technology and capabilities of this period. The second source is The Mastermyr Find; A Viking Age Tool Chest from Gotland by Greta Arwidsson and Gosta Berg © 1983, ISBN 91-7402-129-X, Almqvist and Wiksell, International, Stockholm, Sweden. Printed by Bergstrom Tryckeri AB, Motala, 1983. This is the Viking age (or a little later) tool box that I have mentioned here before. It is illustrated with 16 pages of drawings (only four of which I have taken the liberty of putting in the Sketchbook) and 13 pages of photographs of most of the metal and woodworking tools, utensils, stock and scrap from the find, plus detailed metallurgical analysis of selected pieces. It also includes a description of the circumstances of the find, what woods were used, the historical background, and almost all of the recognizable artifacts. The third source is On Diverse Arts by Theophilus, (ca. 1100) © 1963,1979 Cyril Stanley Smith; ISBN 0-486-23784-2, LoC 78-74298; Dover Publications, NY. (I believe Lindsay Publications and others frequently carry copies of this.) If the Mastermyr find tells you what they had to work with, Theophilus tells you what to do with it. Theophilus is not one to keep secrets. He is writing for his successors and any craftsmen in the church, that they may better use their abilities to glorify God. Except for a couple of passages on the efficacy of urine from red-headed boys or fern-fed goats for quenching fluids and such like, his advise is sound and practical. He is working on a small scale here, with church vessels; almost more on the level of a silversmith, but it does give you the feeling for the general techniques such as case hardening. The "Dark Ages" are mostly dark through our own ignorance. Theophilus helps mark their end by shining a little light on the subject for us. The fourth source is The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio, ca. 1540, translated and edited by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi; ISBN 0-486-26134-4. Now, I know 1540 is not exactly the Viking period. Biringuccio stands firmly in the Italian Renaissance, a long way in time and space from the Norway of Eirik the Red. And we're not looking at small-scale work anymore, like Theophilus. He deals with casting canons; waterwheel powered bellows and wire drawers, trip hammers and such. He is dealing with incipient industry. Yet, just as the tools from Mastermyr could be set unnoticed on our workbenches, so the techniques described by Biringuccio are relevant to the earlier periods. The advantage, for us, is that he goes into a lot more detail than Theophilus, and covers a wider range of subjects and objects. He is also skeptical of the mumbo-jumbo that passed for science in that period, with his comments based on close observation and empirical experience. He is also relevant in that if you have a Viking age artifact, his descriptions may suggest the process by which it was created. (You can't count on it, though. It's an uncertain world, and the multiplicity of cat skinners, and their techniques, is only matched by the numbers of hair splitters, and their academic objections.) Beyond that, there is not a lot of primary printed material. There are passing references in other books, a scattering of archeological monographs, some magazine articles, and so forth. My friends keep their eyes out for me, and I appreciate it. If you can obtain the above books through purchase, or inter-library loan, they will take you some way into understanding the artifacts that you see in the other Viking references. Bruce Edward Blackistone (Atli) Visit our Viking vessels: www.wam.umd.edu/~eowyn/Longship
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