Viking mythology and all that goes with it

Hehe, was getting really frustrated trying to make a clay model for my Mjollnir pendant project, and then I realized I got the wrong kind of clay (I got the claymation kind, it's too soft to hold carving).

Hopefully it drops below 100 someday soon, so I can fire up my forge. I think I know what you're talking about with the spacers, pretty sure I've seen them in someone's kit. But if you can show me a pic, that's be great. I've got some new stock to try making the strainer from, as well, just been out of town the last 2 weekends. Also need to make myself a ladle for pouring casts. :)
 
I just finished bottling my Thor's Hammer mead. I tried a bit, and it is better than last year's - even un-aged.

For Dragonkeeper. The basic recipe is from the Jack Keller webpage:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request180.asp

I leave out all the chemical additives (except the yeast nutrient - it's a must) and increase the honey to 3-1/2 lbs per gallon. I also leave just a little bit of green on the dandelion blossoms for a slight bitter note. I use champagne yeast because it ferments like a rage.

This mead doesn't clear very easily, but the taste is so good, I've decided to live with a little cloudiness.
 
Runesinger said:
I just finished bottling my Thor's Hammer mead. I tried a bit, and it is better than last year's - even un-aged.

For Dragonkeeper. The basic recipe is from the Jack Keller webpage:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request180.asp

I leave out all the chemical additives (except the yeast nutrient - it's a must) and increase the honey to 3-1/2 lbs per gallon. I also leave just a little bit of green on the dandelion blossoms for a slight bitter note. I use champagne yeast because it ferments like a rage.

This mead doesn't clear very easily, but the taste is so good, I've decided to live with a little cloudiness.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recipe Runesinger! I am not sure about the dandelion though...does it make it bitter?
 
DragonKeeper said:
Thanks for the recipe Runesinger! I am not sure about the dandelion though...does it make it bitter?
Click to expand...

This recipe makes a rather sweet mead, so you want a little flavor complexity. Otherwise sweet mead can be a little insipid. Here's a picture of last weekend's handiwork (those are 20-oz bottles)

ThorsHammerBatch.jpg
 
Hey, I got a question, is not mythologycal but is old story of scandinavia ( well,not s old)I guess, so i decided to include it in here:

I just come from the fjords and one day i did a trip and the guide there told us the story about the alcohol in scandinavia, told us the reason for the state to rule over it comes from the times when spanish sea traders go to norway with the ships full of wine( and soil???) the exchange the stuff in there and apparently the norwegians liked wine a lot so everybody were drinking and the estate got nervous so took the control over it....it´s like hard to believe...

other question is that the same guide told us that vikings were surprised with the abilities of north spanish ( basque country, the guide said) sailormen, which also seems strange to me remembering what happened with the invincible army...

I wonder if the one drunk in the whole story was my guide...
 
Tyra said:
When you and the band do your first North American tour and play in Vancouver, then you can stop at my house and have some. Then on the way to Seattle, you can stop at Runesingers and pick up some more.
Click to expand...

No problem Mauler. I've got several types to sample. Any friend of Tyra's is a friend of mine. But take it easy with the Thor's hammer mead, There's a reason it got its name...it's very strong! It was probably wrong of me to bottle it in 20-oz bottles... :Shedevil:
Runesinger
 
Maybe this has been posted but too lazy to check all the pages but what's with the different spellings of Odin or Oden? I'm confused =(
 
Different dialects. Oden is the Swedish spelling, Oðinn the Icelandic, and Odin is the Anglicized version of the Icelandic. Woden and Wotan in the Anglo and Old German. We won't get into the million other things he has been known to call himself, either. ;)
 
Bates said:
Different dialects. Oden is the Swedish spelling, Oðinn the Icelandic, and Odin is the Anglicized version of the Icelandic. Woden and Wotan in the Anglo and Old German. We won't get into the million other things he has been known to call himself, either. ;)
Click to expand...

Ok so it's all the same dude? :err: Before I listened to AA I was a big (still am) Manowar fan and it was always Odin. :loco:
 
Hey, Bates, I've a smith question for you. In the Völundar saga, it says that once VölundR had killed the king's sons he made jewels from their eyes and silver bowls from their sculls, but he discrded the legs. In the English versions, the place he tossed them has been translated in a variety of ways, such as "under soot-balckened bellows" and "under the prison's mixen", but one of them has it translated as something like "under the quagmire". That adds up better with the ON text, which basically says he put them in a mucky puddle (the word used is a cognate of the English word fen), and all the Scandinavian translations speak of mucky, yucky water or water puddle. I suspect that what the author is after is something implicit, something that is so obvious that all of those listening to the saga back in the day would have known what it was - but I don't. Have you any suggestions of what this puddle of gucky water might be? I thought it might be something like the bowl of water that one uses to cool the iron, which would have had oil in it to prevent splattering and sputtering, but the ON text is specific - I cannot interpret it any other way than that it is a puddle, or, as in the English translation, a quagmire, but why on earth would there be a quagmire by the smithy? The text makes it sound as if the puddle belongs to the smithy: The smithy's puddle of dirty water under the bellows.
The explanation could be that there are more stories about VölundR that explains this puddle, ones that we don't know about (there is, for example, an interesting difference between the Scandy version and the German, where the German provides a few cluse as to how to interpret the Scandy one). I just want to know if you (or anyone else, for that matter) can think of anything in the process of working iron and/or silver that would utilize or cause a mucky puddle. -T
 
I'd suspect a quenching tub or where he dumped it, myself. I haven't done enough prying at the historical aspect to know exactly how they did things in those days, but there's no such thing as a smithy without a lot of water. Quenching buckets and tubs especially get nasty in a hurry and are generally dumped daily. The word mixen actually means compost hill or dungpile, so I'm suspecting it was probably the spot where he dumped the ashes, leftovers, and quench bucket, which would've made for fairly nasty puddle, indeed. I'm sure most every smith probably had a similar spot, since most folks in those days didn't bother tossing most trash very far.
 
Thanks for that! That's pretty much what I had imagined, too. What we're after is the ashes of the bones, and how they could have been used. One can use bone ash to make iron harder, for example, and so what we were thinking is that human bones culd at some point have been used as a sort of sacrifice to the smithy. Boneash can be, and was, also used to line the quenching tub. The question is how to establish what species, flora or fauna, the ash was made up of...
Edit: 'cept for one thing: The ON text is very explicit in telling us that the puddle is under the bellows. Why would you dump mucky grossness in the smithy, even if you'd had your achilles tendon hacked off? Wouldn't you toss it out the door then, at least? It's just that it's so damn implicit - apparently we all know there's a puddle of muck that belongs under the bellows, only in this day and age, we don't.
 
This thread is huge! :D i started it yay!
We should have made one for the mythology and another one for viking lifestyle and history... oh well too late ^^
 
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