Back Blogging: Bone Belt Buckle

Last summer I carved myself a belt buckle out of a beef bone originally packaged as a dog chew toy. I was inspired by a few different finds, but mostly this one from York.

Nice, simple, strong and not covered with more typical anglo saxon or viking era carvings (which are nice, don't get me wrong. I just didn't have the right tools at the time to replicate them, but a graver should be coming in soon...).

Containers

I've had my eye on attempting a recreation of the Gokstad backpack for a while now.  http://web.missouri.edu/~rls555/SCA/research/gokbkpk/gokbkpk.htm is a great summation of the archaeological find, and if you look on pinterest there are a lot of modern recreations, either of wicker or leather.  I felt like doing something a little different, and started a model size one in coil basketry.  I've been wanting to give coil baskets a shot for a while now and this is as good a way to practice as any. My materials are very much modern, I'm using the twisted brown paper you use to make rush seats and some artificial sinew (nobody sane would use actual sinew in this project, unless they somehow had a T-Rex worth of the stuff).

Hnefatafl final

As of my last update, pieces had been stained and I needed a bag and a board, which I had planned to combine.  It turned out that the goat hide I had for the bag was a bit too dark, so I took an evening to embroider a scrap of linen.

Hnefatafl update 2

Not only did I get all 37 pieces carved in a weekend craft bender, but I also have a new craft table! My assistant helped with both putting it together and with modeling.

Bone needle cases

 Needle cases seemed to be a pretty important piece of kit for Viking Age ladies.  There are finds in lots of mediums, from bone to precious metals.  I've got a link to one here but google and pinterest have loads more. While metal tubing is easily available and ships prime, I'm going to go with bone as it'll make for a more unique and definitely not mass produced gift.

The bones of large birds seems to be the material of choice as they're a good size and, conveniently, pre-hollowed.  Large birds in Scandinavia would have been geese, swans and maybe raptors.  I've no plans on being THAT authentic, so I'm going with clearance turkey drumsticks!

Hnefatafl update!

I settled on a design for the attacking team and at current count have seven and two defenders. Practice has me being more confident with my cuts, and thus faster.  So far I've stuck to design and haven't started adding any extras - a good thing, I still have a due date on these.

My goat hides showed up today, too! Part of one is earmarked for a circular drawstring pouch/game board and I'm quite happy with the color and texture.

Hnefatafl

So, hnefatafl is a viking age board game that is interesting for asymmetry. There look to be a lot of variations on number of pieces and size of the board, but basically a king + X defenders start in the center of the board and 2X attackers start on the edges. Attackers attack and defenders try to hustle the king to the edge and escape. Capture can only happen when surrounded, and pieces move orthogonally (up/down/right/left).

Have I played it? Nope. Am I gonna make a board and pieces anyways? Yup. I'm aiming for 12 defenders and 24 attackers out of 5/8" dowel and the king from probably 3/4".  I'm planning on the board being drawn on the drawstring bag the whole mess comes in, I should really order a goatskin soon for that.  Oh yeah, there's a due date. Judging for this A&S competition is Dec 5, so I'm going to have to do a few pieces a day (saving carving projects until the last minute is a great way to develop hand piercings).