OVERVIEW - Iron Smelting at Heltborg

As regular readers here know, I was invited to attend this international gathering of experimenters working with various types of Northern European early iron smelters. Teams were present from England, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, several from Denmark, with myself from North America. There were a total of seven working teams, most of which fired at least twice over the six days. The stress was on historic furnaces and process, ranging from Early Iron Age through to Viking Age types. After a long day either smelting or in preparation, the evenings held presentations from participants or visiting archaeologists.

I have put together an overview of the Symposium laid out as a 'day by day' visual record of the main events on the main Wareham Forge Iron Smelting documentation:

http://www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/HELTBORG/

As you might guess, I have been trying to plow through all the research from my trip. Not only iron smelting, but also visits to a number of major museum collections in Roskilde, Ribe and Copenhagen. On top of that, I am scrambling to get a number of projects sorted out and underway - to PAY for the trip! More chaos than normal around here...