Trix

Thank you indeed!

Thank you Tess! There's nothing like a Viking army for a good bit of plundering... :)

Archaeology Awards Voting - Current Archaeology Voting has now opened for the Current Archaeology Awards! Which people, projects and publications deserve recognition?

Our book 'Life in the Viking Great Army' is a contender for Current Archaeology's Book of the Year... so this is a last call for the voting from me.

If you'd like to put us forward, then please follow the link below - and thank you!

A finds photograph of a curved iron draw knife, small find sf180 from the Castle Field site at Torksey, Lincolnshire. The knife has a broad, U-shaped blade with two projecting handles, curled over where they would have originally met a wooden grip.

I think we'll stick with tools for today's #FindsFriday... although I can't claim that this is a 'Viking camps' post, as our find isn't from inside either of our winter camps!

This is sf.180, an iron draw knife found in Castle Field, Torksey - south of where we know the Great Army camp was. /1

If you want, you can find out more about the excavations in Castle Field through the paper below, published by some of my co-authors and available through White Rose. As ever, if you'd like an even wider picture - then I recommend our book, 'Life in the Viking Great Army', published by OUP. /end

An imaginative reconstruction of the Viking Great Army camp at Torksey, Lincolnshire: this gives an idea of what the main camp might have looked like.

We can now imagine our Vikings spread across the landscape - with working camps and foraging parties far afield, gathering in supplies, and sites like Torksey as logistics hubs. It's an image that's quite alien if you, like me, were raised on ideas of Vikings as merely plundering barbarians... /9

Ship-building as shown on the Bayeux tapestry, with men working to straighten and attach planks to longships.

An 11th-century ship-repair site at Fribrødre Å, Denmark, produced clench nails and an iron scraper: there's a clear similarity to our finds from Castle Field.

Once, we thought of Viking camps as forts, walled against the world outside... finds like our draw knife show a very different picture. /8

A panoramic photograph showing reconstructed Viking-Age ships from Roskildeford museum under sail.

We know the winter camps were used to refit boats: there are tools and clench nails from both Aldwark and Torksey, and splitting timber was a wintertime job. I don't think that the Army would haul whole oaks around, though: many authors have suggested that they'd use 'satellite' camps for supply. /7

YouTube video by 69penetrator69 Splitting a tree and hewing planks - Viking Longship construction

However, draw knives are very versatile tools, and can be used just as easily to smooth flat planes as to hollow out rounded ones. This video shows planks being made at the Roskilde Vikingskipmuseet: they use a flat draw plane at around 3:20, but I've seen and used a curved one for the same task. /6

An illustration showing the presumed use of a curved draw knife, hollowing out a bowl.

Why do I think that the clench nail is interesting? Well, if the knife and gaming pieces show the Army was in the ares, I think the nail shows what they were doing - repairing ships.

A lot of interpretations of draw knives suggest they were used to hollow out bowls and cavities, a shown below. /5

A photograph showing different views of two small, hollow-cast lead weights found in Castle Field, Torksey: these are classic Great Army finds, and were produced at the force's main camp, slightly to the north of modern Torksey.

A small iron clench nail, a ship rivet used by peening the shank over an iron rove plate fixed on the end. The thin length of shaft on this rivet shows it mush have been used on a scarf joint, attaching one plank lengthways to the end of another.

Near to our knife there were two lead gaming pieces. These are the definitive find for the Great Army, and we've used them to track the force across the landscape: where they're found, you can bet the Army has been. There was also - more interestingly - an iron 'clench' nail, used to rivet ships. /4

Map of medieval Torksey, taken from Maurice Barley’s 1964 paper on his excavations in the while investigating the Torksey pottery industry.

So, how do we know our Torksey blade is a Viking-Age one? Well, the Castle Field was the location of several early medieval pottery kilns, used after the Great Army moved on - so the site was clearly occupied in the era. More importantly, there were other 'Viking' finds recovered with the knife. /3

A finds illustration of the partially-broken curved draw knife from Coppergate, York.

A finds drawing of the straight-bladed curved draw knife No. 54 from the Mästermyr tool chest.

Draw knives are fairly well-known from Viking-Age sites: there was one found at Coppergate in York, and a collection of knives from the Mästermyr chest have both straight and shaped blades: the shaped ones would have been used for making decorative mouldings on things like plank edges. /2

A finds photograph of a curved iron draw knife, small find sf180 from the Castle Field site at Torksey, Lincolnshire. The knife has a broad, U-shaped blade with two projecting handles, curled over where they would have originally met a wooden grip.

I think we'll stick with tools for today's #FindsFriday... although I can't claim that this is a 'Viking camps' post, as our find isn't from inside either of our winter camps!

This is sf.180, an iron draw knife found in Castle Field, Torksey - south of where we know the Great Army camp was. /1

Aren't they just? You know, I can remember showing you images of tempting, beautifully-made historical replicas back in the mid nineties.

Plus ça change :)

A group of five replica 'hound chasing hare' bronze handles for folding knives, all made by George Easton at Danegeld Historic Jewellery.

Danegeld Historic Jewellery also shared a photos of some 'hare and hound' folding knife handles the other day, all apparently destined for Heritage Blades' workshop... so there might be some of these available soon as well.

Gladiator Folding Knife- Secutor | Heritage Blades This recreation is based on an original from Piddington Roman Villa and will become one in a line of gladiator folding knives we aim to recreate. The handle is cast in bronze and is fitted with a carb...

Have you taken a look at Heritage Blades' website...?

Utterly amazing work as always from Adam @eblueaxe.bsky.social here: I've been keenly watching these coming along - particularly as a pair of these brooches are replicas of a find from near Bedale, very much on my patch!

I'm always stunned at the insights such things can give us.

In Anglo-Saxon architecture, Roman stone meets a timber way of thinking: stone becomes articulated into the Saxon timber-centric world view. I suppose, in this way, it is also a memory as well as a material. Here at All Saints', Earls Barton. 📸 my own.

Oohhh... Is Carn A' Bharraich one of them?

I mean, with Scottish Viking-Age finds, if it's not rabbits then it's sea otters, amirite?

A photograph of an earl-morning landscape, sun rising through mackrel sky clouds behind a stone-built church. Shades of blue and green dominate the image.

Dales morning, St Brigid's day. Hoping to manage a visit to Ripon cathedral crypt later...

They're still around in Yorkshire - just called Fat Rascals, slightly poshed up with cherry-and-almond decoration.

The North Remembers...

We set up at various places, generally in northern Britain - everywhere from Govan Old Stones in Glasgow to Moorforge Viking Settlement in Cumbria.

I do know Tod! Not personally, but I've got more than a few replicas made by him. A *superb* craftsman.

Ahhh - unfortunately photographed with the protective plastic cover on, but it's *very* sharp.

Those tools are interpreted as various things, but we've seen it as a 'slice', used to sever fibres when splitting timber:

They're generally pretty simple tools, I'm afraid: a hammer, several punches, and a chisel.

I might need to do a FindsFriday on the draw knife, it's another piece from Torksey but was found in what I think light be a working camp 'satellite' camp off the main site...

A collection of reconstructed Viking-Age tools and weapons, mainly mirroring finds from the Great Army Camps at Torksey, Repton, and Aldwark. A reconstructed ploughshare in in the front centre of the frame.

Sounds perfect, it's just the thing for a viking camp to be carrying with them!

I use mine as part of a handling collection, and have it on display at living history events: it always attracts a lot of attention, for all that it's such a simple piece of technology.

That's a grand idea! I can't claim to've made my own reproduction, but it's a brilliant thing - deceptively simple for something that was so valuable in the past, and which clearly carried so much meaning.

The link below will take you to the database entry for our find, with all the measurements:

A finds photograph of an early medieval ploughshare - TDB 2330 - recovered from the Viking Great Army camp at Torksey, Lincolnshire. The share is a long, pointed piece of rusted iron, with raised 'arms' at the upper end.

I'm not sure I can match the popularity of last week's mistaken-for-a-coprolite sword fitting for today's Viking camps #FindsFriday, and I'm pretty much through all the weapons anyhow!

I'm going to stick with iron, and go for an obvious 'swords to ploughshares' joke: this is Torksey find 2330. /1

An iron ploughshare, found at the site of Foremark. Photo by Cat Jarman, with kind permission.

Here's a photo, from my camp logistics article, kindly shared by Cat.

Fantastic, thank you very much indeed Christian (and Cat)!