A few years ago my good friend Sigurd Hardrada was given the accolade of knighthood in the SCA to much acclaim. I had the mistaken impression that in our kingdom, Lochac, our College of Scribes only prepared the award scrolls for which they are justly famous for the first award one received at each of the Award, Grant and Patent levels. Since Sigurd was already a peer, as a member of the Order of the Laurel for his metalworking and knife making, I thought I'd make him a reminder of the occasion fit for a viking warrior. Calligraphy and Illumination has never been my strong suit so I looked for alternatives. I took inspiration from the Norse standing stones dotted around Scandinavia which were used often as memorials or to acknowledge great deeds.
This seemed a good choice but again my lack of skill and equipment in stonework were a stumbling block so after a few abortive attempts at working stone I decided to play to my strengths and make the "stone" from wood. I had a large block of Rimu, a New Zealand native timber, on hand, about 400mm by 1000mm by 80mm, and decided to run with that.
I used the motif of a serpent around the outside and put the runes into this as this seemed a common way of doing this and used as my central motif a boar, as the boar is the central charge of Sigurds arms and to paraphrase the Bard "sorts well with his fierceness"
I wrote a poem in a style I felt was not inconsistent with my impression of norse style and converted it phonetically into the Younger Futhark. I don't have the poem on hand but I'll post it as soon as I locate it.
All this I carved into the wood using a combination of knife and a little bit of chisel work. The knife was the obvious choice of tool for carving runes and made short work of them. I finished the carving with a coat of light oil to give it a bit of pop and to protect it.
I gave the carving to Sigurd at Royal Court at Canterbury Faire and was well pleased with it's reception.
I later went on to carve another scroll for Bjorn Svartsson which I'll describe in a later post.
