Hordweard - starting concepts

This page will be a record of anything interesting that I find while completing the 2012-2013 Hordweard challenge.

I have chosen to study the skill set of a model and mould maker working in a fine metal smith workshop during the 10th century in the township of Birka. This might mean I do some casting, but it's not really the goal. Making moulds from a range of materials in a range of designs seems a large enough set of processes to attempt in just 12 months.

I've been thinking about the following concepts in starting to approach this challenge:
1. There are 12 months available to complete this challenge
2. The spread of information and techniques
3. What my craftsman would have been doing
4. How my craftsman would learn these new skills

1. 12 months- this is not very long to spend researching and practising a new skill. I would like to think that this will all lead to casting items, but given that we have just one year, I'd rather try to get some of the foundational skills up to a better level than leap too far forward and make poorer set of items.

2. Modern timeframes vs timeframes in the Viking Age - we seem to fall into the trap of thinking that because large volumes of information are available to us very quickly, we should be able to 'learn' quickly. Without the aid of electronic telecommunication, VA people relied on word of mouth, visual information and, to a lesser extent, written texts. These could only be transported as fast as a ship could sail, a person could walk or a trader could get to the next business centre. This would have slowed information compared to our modern view, but it allowed time for assimilation, practice and consideration. When a new technique or design was seen, it took time to bring home and replicate.
      I'm going to try to grab info from a certain time frame (maybe the first half of the 10th century) and a certain place (the trading settlement at Birka in modern Sweden). Then I am going to try to approach the task from the point of view of a smith of that time - not sure exactly how to do that yet, but perhaps it will mean doing a fair whack of research first and then avoiding google while I spend a few months trialling some methods. Talking to other people who have used the methods or who know about related methods feels like it would have been part of the learning process, along with trial and error and repetition.

3.Would there have been more than one person doing the work in a fine metal workshop? Would the same person have done the sculpting, the moulding, the casting, the cleaning and the setting? Were there groups of workers who each only worked on one step of the process? Were there teams, with each person able to complete all steps, but each having their own area of expertise? I'm going to use the latter model (since my starting research doesn't suggest the buildings were much larger than a town home, suggesting a similar sized group, and hasn't yet contradicted that idea). This is why I will focus on just the mould making side of the process.

4. The process of learning a new skill in a finemetal workshop could have taken several forms - apprentices or bonded workers who were taken in specifically to learn a task, an experienced crasftsman who has heard of a new technique and needs to teach themselves, or possibly a family business with younger members growing up into the smith, learning skills by exposure and rote tasks from an early age. In each of these scenarios there must be learning tasks to build the skills. I will be trying to learn about the learning techniques used in the VA and then use the same activities to build my skills.

I'm very much looking forward to this hordweard. Hope it doesn't eat me up.