Where is He??

To my regular readers:

First - thanks for bothering!

I have been trying to get something up at least twice a week. Generally I've also been trying to keep to topics related to the Viking Age and Metalwork. As Steve commented after the Lebanon post, better to stay focussed and avoid the black pit of political commentary.

From August 5 through August 15 I was involved at the Celtic College and Festival at Goderich Ontario. This is an extremely intense 10 days. I always come home entrenched in the viewpoint of the artist and sympethetic to the Irish. Now have to quickly switch gears and get back to the Viking Age and museum related work.

There is a new feature film being shot in Nova Scotia. Its set in Sweden in the early Viking Age. They are creating a village set with about a dozen buildings, with principle photography starting about Oct 1. I was asked to provide a rush quote for a wide range of cookware, tools and other metal objects. Like usual, now its hurry up and wait. Will see how this works out.

Labour Day is our anual trek to Bonfield (near North Bay) Steve Mulhburger is an ancient friend who holds a camping event on this farm over that weekend. This year the theme is the Viking Age. DARC will be undertaking an iron smelt using all period equipment and what we have learned on historic method. One element to this smelt will be that we will be working inside a replica of House site J at L'Anse aux Meadows. In past years a cut out on the same measurements as found at LAM has been constructed, and we intend to base the smelter and positioning of equipment on the archaeology. Hopefully our smelt in the same arrangement of space may contribute to our understanding of what may have happened in Vinland circa 1000 AD.

After that project - a team from DARC will be traveling to Rhode Island for a weekend demonstration at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology (of Brown University). Neil Peterson has constructed a large event web site featuring images of DARC team members. Worth a look at :

http://www.treheima.ca/temp/haffen06/vikings.html