After a long absence due to concentrating on the schools education business, We have decided to rejoin ”The Vikings” re-enactment society.
This encouraged us to dig out some of the larger living history equipment that doesn’t get used much in schools and get back into doing a bit of craft work for a show at Whitby Abbey.
In many ways, it was the craft work that got us interested in living history in the first place. I learned to work leather first followed by bone and then silver with the help of good friends that taught me ancient skills that were almost forgotten. Debs developed her interests in the decorative textile crafts of the period and this helped us to make our own equipment and improve some of the gear we traded for along the way.
I spent most of the show working on a recreation of a brooch from the British Museum. I say recreation because the original was a little crude in it’s execution and I wanted to make one as if the original craftsman had made a second one having learned from the mistakes of his first. The original is known as the Sutton Brooch after where it was found or sometimes Aedwyn’s Brooch after it’s original owner. I now call this one ”The Whitby Brooch” after the location where it was created.
Now that the education work is running almost at full capacity we thought it was time to get back to these root skills that were so vital for life in the past.
Sadly Debs was unable to attend the Whitby show due to other commitments but it was a great chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones too.
We hope to make it to a couple more shows this year and many more in the future.