Greetings, all! My presentation is on the ironworking of the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons. (Article courtesy of Ben Levick.)
Iron was a very important commodity to the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and those skilled in working it were held in high regard. Most farms had their own forge where the farmer would be able to make simple everyday items. More complicated items would be made either by travelling smiths who came to the farm, or be made by the village or town smith. Kings and noblemen often had their own smiths.
Smiths made anything from nails to swords. Many cooking utensils, pans and cauldrons were iron. Almost every other craftsman relied on the smith for many of their tools. One of the most important tools made by the smith was the knife, which had an enormous number of uses, from eating to carving wood. Although they look simple, the blades were made of steel and could be of a better quality than those made on a machine today. The smith was also responsible for making locks and padlocks and shoeing horses.
In order to make anything the smith first had to obtain his iron. First he had to get the iron ore. This was generally obtained from deposits near the surface of bogs, and was called bog ore. The iron ore was then heated in a clay furnace (a process called smelting) at very high temperatures to remove the impurities, known as slag. To do this the iron ore was layered with charcoal. The charcoal was then lit and the furnace had its temperature raised by using bellows. The iron then melted out of the ore and the slag collected in the pit at the bottom of the furnace. When the slag had been removed the smith was left with a fairly pure lump of iron, called a bloom, which could then be worked into many different objects. This type of iron is called wrought iron, but the Saxons were also able to add carbon (from charcoal) to make steel. This was useful where extra hardness and strength were needed, such as on knives or chisels.
Once the smith had his iron blooms he would forge them into bars and strips of different shapes and sizes ready for use. Sometimes, especially for sword blades, the smith would twist together bars of iron and steel to make a blade. This was a difficult process, but it meant the finished blade would be far stronger as it had the strength and hardness of the steel with the flexibility of the iron. This process was known as pattern welding since the two different metals gave a ‘marbled’ pattern to the surface of the blade.
The smith’s forge had a fire, which was either a pit in the ground or, more usually, raised of the ground at waist height on a clay hearth. Next to the hearth would be an anvil. He would heat the metal in the fire on the hearth (made hotter by blowing it with bellows, raising the temperature to 900 - 1000°C), remove the glowing metal with a pair of tongs, and hammer it into the desired shape on the anvil. He would also have punches to make holes, clippers for cutting sheet metal and files for smoothing the metal. Next to his anvil he would have a supply of water and/or vegetable oil for cooling his tools or the items he was making.
--Ben Levick, January 1993
exits: Back to the Faire
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