Viking era fish spear

[ameling]

These fish spears are a bit early for most time periods on this board,
but there are some whaling harpoons from the 1700's that are
pretty close in style and shape to these - just larger.

I forged these up earlier this week. The original was found in
Denmark near a waterfall, and they say it was used for salmon.
Those guys sure didn't want any fish to get away! The original is 8
inches long (after doing the conversion from that eurotrash metric),
and these are 7 3/4 and 8 1/4 inches long.

A fun little project, and they will be used by some Viking reenactors in their talks/demos.

yhs
Mike Ameling

 

[DNICK]

Mike congrats on another project that makes me look like an idiot, I havent figured out how you can forge half of this stuf I have only made about a half dozzen fire steels and still seem to mess some of them up.

 

[ameling]

Hey, don't let it get you too discouraged. You should see my "scrap" pile! Kind of looks like a cross between some medieval torture room, shrapnel from combine eating a rock, and pickup wreck! And that's the stuff that worked out right!

Seriously, (if my evenning beverage will allow it), time and practice/experience leads to a lot of stuff working out right. You pick up a lot of "tricks of the trade" by just doing the work over and over. And most of the time you don't even realize what you've learned. Hey, I'm an Unconcious Learner! Woo Hoo! No more school ... no more books ... no more teacher's dirty looks. (Except now both me and teach are both old enough, and she's kind of cute - I think I need to stay after class for some personal tutoring!)

It took me a long time and a lot of bad or broke strikers to finally get them to turn out right. That heat-treat is tought to learn and do by sight. I used a magnet to check the temp for most of a hundred strikers before I got the "eye" for the right temp/color. It's real frustrating to forge up a striker, heat treat it, test it - then set it on the workbench, turn around, hear a "tink", and look back to see it in several pieces. Aaarrrggghhh. But you slowly learn.

The best hint on flint strikers I learned was from a knife maker friend. He said to Thermal Cycle my flint strikers - to help reduce the "brittleness" of them. After you are done forging to shape, heat up to critical temp, then pull it out and let it air-cool till you see no color. Then heat/cool it the same way two more times. Then heat to critical and quench. This relieves internal stress in the steel from the forging process, and shrinks/refines the grain structure (smaller grain = less brittle). This really helped cut down on breakage. So my strikers are heat-treated almost as hard as I can get them, but don't fly apart if I look at them wrong. The harder the striker is, the better it works.

So, keep up the good work. Endevour to Persevere. And don't forget to "play" sometimes. I decided to "play" a bit, and in the process figured out how to make these Viking era fish spears - 600 to 900 a.d.

yhs
Mike Ameling

 

[BillinOregon]

Mike: Love the spear points. What kind of luck have you had fitting those sockets to a shaft, and how did you do it?

 

[spitfire]

WoW,Love anything Norse.Nice work and thanks for posting?

 

[ameling]

Hi.

Thanks for the kind words. They are appreciated.

The sockets are approximately 1 1/4 inches wide by 1 1/2 inches deep. That isn't much of a socket to work with, and the text doesn't say anything about how they were used for salmon. It could be drilled and pinned to your wood shaft, but I think it was used a little differently.

I think they used it more like a whaling harpoon. I believe that they had a cord/rope tied around the harpoon right above the socket, and then the shaft was jammed in - a "friction" fit with maybe a little pine pitch/tar to help hold it on. In use, they would spear a salmon, and then the wood shaft would pull out - leaving the harpoon stuck in the salmon. They would then pull it in using the cord or rope - allowing the fish to struggle as much as it could without worrying about breaking the wood shaft. A lot of later time period whaling harpoons worked like this.

Of course, this is just my opinion on how they were used. The books (and the experts) don't say. If you were going to pin/rivet the shaft into the socket, that socket would need to be a whole lot longer/deeper - and a much thicker wood shaft would be needed.

One thing we can see for sure, is that they definitely didn't want any fish to get away after they speared/harpooned it. Those barbs would tear a big hole in the fish pulling out.

I love researching and making these "everyday tools" of the common people - in whatever culture or time period. These are the little things that kept the world working, while others marched around seeking fame and glory.

Just my humble thoughts to share.

yhs
Mike Ameling