Today's Project- Tanning Fur

I'm not always making knives, and today's project was fleshing a deer hide to prepare it for tanning. It's a lot of work, but its worth it if you want to use every part of the animal you harvest.

Homemade Norman Helmet

Handmade helmet and chain mail shirt.
Modified Cold Steel Norse Hawk.
Tinker Pearce Norman sword.
See the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJGbzymrHU

Artifacts from Lake Lednica, Poland.

I recently built a helmet from raw material, namely sheet metal and carpet tacks, which will be used in my short film "Sons of Romans, Sons of Vikings". The character who will be wearing it is Drogo FitzRolf, a Norman captain who wields a sword and ax in battle.  The photo of the costume was inspired by a picture I found of 10th and 11th centuryartifacts from Poland. The nasal helm, sword, spear, and mail shirt were discovered in the lake of Lednica in Poland.  The armor and weapons are part of a find of medieval settlement and fortification on an island in the lake called Ostrów Lednicki. ('Ostrów' means 'holm' (i.e., river or lake island). 

You can see the video of me making the helmet here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJGbzymrHU

Modified Cold Steel Viking Axe

To modify the Cold Steel Viking Ax, I soaked the tomahawk head in vinegar for several hours so that it developed a darker patina.  The hickory was stained with some birch oil that I rendered myself so that it took on that darker color. The grooves I also cut into the handle to provide better traction.

The original look of the head and handle.

Viking sword that inspired the "X" pattern on the axe handle.

Carved antlers from the Yorkshire museum.

I used a round file to cut the pattern onto the handle. 

Buy one here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/548210678/modified-cold-steel-viking-hand-ax-w?ref=shop_home_active_9

Forged Medieval-Style Buckles for Sword-Belts

See the video of me forging these buckles here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag7RfSaHMTk

This was the inspiration for my work. This original piece dates to the Viking Age and was found in East Agder, Norway.

Draken Harald Harfagre Sailing on the St Clair River (Michigan)

Photos taken on July 13, 2016 of the longship "Draken Harald Harfagre" on her way to the Bay City, MI, Tall Ships Festival. The Draken was built in Norway and sailed across the Atlantic, down the St Lawrence River, and entered the Great Lakes via the Welland Canal.

Viking Longship Sighted In Detroit, Michigan

The Draken Harald Harfagre traveled up the Detroit River today (7-13-16) from Lake Erie and now weathers a thunderstorm in Lake Huron after traversing Lake St Clair and the St Clair River. This photo was taken of it at around 11:30am as it left the Detroit River and entered Lake St Clair.

I spent the day trying to catch up to it again, more pictures will follow.

The Draken was built in Norway and sailed across the Atlantic to North America this summer.

Cold Steel Norse Hawk

I modified a Cold Steel Norse tomahawk to use it as a prop for a short film.  I put the head of the tomahawk in my forge to burn off the paint and replace it with fire scale.  I also stained the handle with homemade birch oil.

See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHTQmI06bw
Buy one here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/550771248/modified-cold-steel-norse-hawk-w-leather?ref=shop_home_feat_2

Viking Saxes with Hilts and Drop Point Blades

Found in Buskerud, Norway.

Found in Oppland, Norway.

The hilt style is commonly found in Norway, and the single-edge sword seems to have been popular among the Norwegian Norse.

Found in Rogaland, Norway.

Completed Spears

Here's what the completed modification of my re-enactment spears look like after I cleaned up the blades and shaped them a bit with a file. The shafts are mere mop handles and the rivets are cut down nails that are peened over. They are crude but effective, and beautiful in their own way.  They're not as pretty as they were originally, but now they have character. Video forthcoming, so keep an eye on my Youtube channel.

See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-oM57eX8U

This is how the spear heads originally looked. The top one is the Windlass Hewing Spear.

A Productive Day at the Forge

Modifications in progress on this Cold Steel Norse Hawk.

Modifying some stage combat spears to be a little more pointy.

Quenched these two blades. The top one I forged from a pruning shear blade and the bottom one was  forged from a piece of a coil spring. Both were successfully hardened and can now move on too the tempering process.

Viking Armor on the Lindisfarne Stone

This carving on the "Lindisfarne Stone", called such because of its discovery on the Isle of Lindisfarne in Great Britain, is thought to depict the very first Viking raid.  The Vikings raided the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793 A.D.,  and it is thought that the monks carved this stone to document the attack.  If this is the case, the Stone is as close we can come to an eyewitness account, and I like to draw as much detail from the carving as I can

One thing is interesting to note, that the "Vikings" have three swords and two axes, which would indicate that the sword was not so rare a weapon as we might think.

Also, the horizontal banding on the warriors leads me to think that they were wearing some kind of armor. It could either represent mail, but this seems unlikely due to its expense at the time and not many warriors would have owned armor.

The bands could be strips of leather sewn together into a kind of brigandine armor.  It seems to me that leather would be easy enough to make into armor, and even if it did not offer much protection against a direct hit, it would still be better than nothing against a glancing strike or wayward blade in the thick of battle.

Coilspring knife- handle design

This is a sketch I did for the knife I forged from a piece of a coil spring. Seeing what I want the handle to look like in relation to the blade, as well as seeing where the handle scale pins will go.

Evidence of Viking Shield Patterns and Colors

Viking shields are commonly portrayed as brightly colored and highly stylized. How is it that we have come to conclusion. The following is a list of all evidence I can find as to the reconstruction of how Viking shields looked.

• The "Gokstad ship" was found in Norway and 32 shields lining each of the gunwales. They were painted alternately in black and yellow.  This is the only evidence of colorful shields. 

Runestone carving, from Gotland (Sweden). It clearly depicts a "pinwheel" pattern emanating form the shield boss. There also appears to be a rim on the shield. Archeologists suspect rawhide, as there is unsubstantial evidence to suggest iron.

The Tangelgarda Stone, from Gotland.

Actual Viking Shield

This shield was found near Copenhagen, Denmark. It is made of fir wood and measures 32" in diameter. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26772763/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/-year-old-viking-shield-found-denmark/#.Vr6rlFpiPJz

The is supposedly comprised of seven planks which are 8mm thick, but which taper to 5mm at the edges.

Windlass Hewing Spear

In preparation for shooting the sequel to my short film "Viking Proverb", I made a spear with the Windlass Hewing Spear head.  I mounted it to a short flag pole, the type you'd hang off your porch.  This made the spear very short, but also very maneuverable. I used a nail to secure the head to shaft and simply cut the point off and peened it over. Because of the way the hole in the spearhead was cut, the peen actually ended up flush with the rest of the socket.  Look for this badass weapon in the short film "Viking Toothache".

The nail end peened over to lock the head onto the shaft.

A look at the original nail head.

Making a Viking Shield Boss

Current work in progress, a piece a 14 gauge steel that I'm pounding into a shield boss using a ball peen hammer and a dished stump.

Italian Mosaic Depicting a Norman Warrior

"Mosaic from the destroyed Santa Maria Maggiore Basillica in Vercelli. Italy 11th-12th century"

I found this picture very interesting because I am currently working on a script for a short film about the Norman conquest of southern Italy, specifically the Battle of Civitate.

The fellow on the left looks very much to me like a Norman, due to his kite shield and shirt style. His shoes look like the "Viking" boots similar to the ones found in Yorvik, and his sword and facial hair also seem to lend themselves to the Norman persuasion, though I do not count that as strong evidence. The period that the mosaic is dated to falls into the same time as the Norman activity. They originally came to help fight Saracens, so perhaps that is his opponent to the right.

The depiction of the fighting I do find interesting, however, as it seems that the "Norman" is using his long shield to jam up both of his opponents weapons. With his sword in a high guard, he seems poised to either deliver a fatal thrust to his enemies face or sweep low for his exposed leg.

I also find interest in the concept of kite shield vs round shield. Perhaps this indicates a transitional period of shield use between the two types. Or perhaps the kite shield is truly indicative of his Norman identity.

In any event, I have definitely found this image useful as I work on designing the costume pieces for my film.