Hello all

Hi Everybody

Hope that all is well and doing great reenachment og crafts this summer.
We have been very absent from the blog over the last year. It´s not that we don´t do medieval or viking reenachtment - but our modern life have been taking a lot of time. And the time for making blog posts and such have been minimal. Still it is great to see so many new readers and that people still find it interesting to read ours post on medieval pies, woodworking, plant dyeing, and leatherworking.

One of the reasons that the time for blogging have been low is that we last June found out that we were expecting af little girl. She was to come in the early start of 2013. But despite of all ods she decided to come 10 weeks to early and we ended up spending 3 months at the hospital. Despite of the early start all went well and she is now big and growing as expected. We havent been on many markets since she came and the ones that we have been to have only been as modern turists. This weekend my workplace, Bork Viking Habour, had the big annual viking market. And we all went as vikings!

I had made viking clothes for Laurine - a little white smock in linnen, a yellow wollen apron dress with silk ribbons and tabletweaving, and a smal silk cap made from madderdyed needlebinding. She looked so cute and we were very much photografed. Here are some of the photos.

This last photo was taken by a Danish photografer, Jim Lyngvild. See other photoes of vikings on his Facebook page. He have just made a danish book about vikings and also a cookbook with viking food. 

Scabbard

This week I made a scabbard for Louises new knife. I am quite pleased with the result, but I must admit that I am not very experienced at working with metal. I am getting better at handleing it though.
The only thing that bothers me is all the polishing and filing. I have always thought that my life was too short for sandpaper, but with metal there is no way around it (that I know of).

So rather than telling you how I did this scabbard I will give you a link to a swedish guy who makes scabbards and knifes like this one... Only much much better.
Be sure to have a look at his blog!

I have been looking at his knifes quite a lot, during the makeing of this knife. I especially like this knife, that he made in 2009. (Keep up the great work Frej!)

A knife for Louise

I just finished this knife, that I made for Louise. She will need a knife for her new viking-job, so I made one from another knife that I had.

I have been looking a bit at knifes from the 9th and 10th centuries, and found some nice examples from Sweden, that I really liked. They have wire wrapping around the handle and some were found in womans graves. So I thought that that would be just the thing for Louises new knife.



I used beech wood for the handle and brass for the end plates and wire wrapping.
The blade was made by my good friend Jesper.



The wrapping is made as a "common whipping". A type of knot where you draw the knot itself under the wrapping and cut of the edges.
I am not sure if the wire wrapping on the excavated knifes were done this way, but I wasn't able to find any info on this anywere.
The whipping works just fine and if it is made tight enough it will surely stay in place.



Here is a picture of one of the original knifes. This one is from Gotland. From a female grave (grave 503 at Ihre, Hellvi parish, Gotland). 9-10th C.

I got the picture from this site: Dark age recreation company
There are also some examples of knifes with wire wrapping in the collections of Historiska Museet in Sweden.

Another bone belt buckle.

I just made another bone buckle last night. It is inspired by one made by an english guy (i think) who has made replicated artifacts for various museums. Including some for a museum in Ribe (Here in Denmark). All of very high quality stuff.
You can check out his archive here: Roland's archive (It's all good!)



The buckle I made is inspired by this one.
But it lacks the ornaments on Rolands example. Since I still have to learn how to do that.



Here Is the buckle just after the initial sawing.



And here it is after most of the filing has been done.

I am really starting to enjoy working with bone. So I am definately going to make some more bone stuff in the future.

Going Viking!

Since Louise has now gotten herself a new job in the "viking ages" (At Bork vikingehavn) I have been thinking more and more about making some viking period stuff. I will of course visit Louise at her new job and do some crafts, so I need new clothes for the right period.

I have not quite decided what to make in terms of clothes, but I am aeking to get to do something. So I made a thing that I will surely need, whatever clothes I might decide to make - A belt.

I have long been facinated by bone buckles from the viking and medieval period, so that is what I have made. That way I could also try to use a new material (bone) and finish an old project that I have been wanting to finish for a long time - the pump-drill that I made last year.



The buckle is made from pieces of pig bone that I had lying around. I sawed the bone into plates and cut out the basic form using a coping saw. The I refined the shape using various rasps and files. The pin is set in place with a piece og brass rod, riveted on both sides of the buckle.
The buckle was then fittet on the belt using brass rivets.

The belt is aproximately 2 cm wide.

I needed the pump-drill to make the cirkle-pattern on the buckle and strap-end, so I made a small drill bit to fit in the pump drill. It turned our like this.



The bit is simply made by hammering flat a steel nail, and then filing out the "teeth". I didn't harden or temper it, but it works great none the less.
The bit is 5 mm wide.

And then there is another viking-related project, that I want to get back to. Since I made the Birka-wallet I have been wanting to make another one. The last was not the correct size and I read somewhere that the braids were done using metal foil rather than leather. So that is what I will try to do this time.
Although I still need to get the exact measurements from the originals (If you have them, I would be very interested in hearing from you! I believe they are in one of the Birka-books).

Here are some experiments I made, using copper foil for the braiding. I think it looks very nice.





More Viking crafts is yet to come... We are danes after all ;-)

Birka wallet

To start up this new blog I will post my latest project.
It is a 9.th. century wallet from Birka. Not an axact repliccation, but a wallet inspired by the findings from Birka.



The wallet is made from ca. 1 mm thick goatskin and the dark parts have been dyed.
I didn't have alot of sources on the this type of wallet exept for a small notice in "Purses in Pieces" and some pictures i found on the net.
So the decorations are mostly speculative.



Some say that the braids were made from gilded leather og metal bands wowen into the leather. but i wasn't abled to werify one or the other. So i just used leather strips.

The leather strips were drawn through the laether using an awl. I tried just pushing them througt, just using my fingers, but that was way to complicated.

Here are some pictures of how i fastened the braids to the wallet. The straps are made from one single strap, wich have been cut into three strips held togeather in one end.



These are all the parts of the wallet. The two big pieces are the front and back and the three small ones are the pockets for the inside of the wallet.



And here are the pictures i found og one of the original findings. The first picture is a drawing of an original and the second i a reconstruction. I don't know from where these pictures were taken, but i'm guessing it is from some book...



All in all i think the results came out pretty nice.