Those spruce trunks that were deliberately sawed into about ten meters in length had already had their bark stripped off and had been left in the dry and extremely cold snow for more than two months. Rurik also stayed in the Far North for a long time.
time.
A large number of tree trunks have been dried in the shade for a certain period of time. Although the trunks are frozen hard, a large amount of water has sublimated inside, making the entire trunk appear even harder.
After all, the materials that will be used as masts are fir trees that have grown for thousands of years. Their slow growth cannot be described in words. Just felling and sawing them requires the joint efforts of multiple strong lumberjacks, and even more
It does take some time.
Now, these tree trunks have become shorter, so before moving them, Rurik took measurements of these trunks, which were relatively similar in length and diameter.
For a small ship like the Caravel, it is just a major modification of the Viking cargo ship, and its length and displacement have not increased much. Its mast cannot be too long or too thick.
All materials are selected from the front part of the trunk. The maximum diameter of the trunk is about 50cm, and the minimum diameter at the other end is reduced to only 25cm.
Therefore, these materials are similar to extremely long truncated cones. Rurik held a branch and made simple mathematical calculations directly on the snow.
The large number of mathematical symbols really dazzled the onlookers. Only the girl Saipolava saw some of the clues carefully and told her curious father.
What on earth is Rurik doing? Mechasta doesn’t understand. Oh, it seems that her daughter already understands.
After all, Saipolava was in Rossburg, and like other children, she was taught some mathematical knowledge by Rurik. There was always nothing to do for a long time, and girls were born with weaker physical strength than men, more like Saipolava.
A Kewen girl like Wa naturally doesn't like to fight.
The minds of those children have developed to a certain extent. Children over seven years old only need education to quickly logically understand abstract knowledge such as mathematics. Their minds are no different from those of modern people a thousand years later.
,the only difference is simply the lack of teachers with ,extensive knowledge.
Rurik was happy to impart knowledge to his future wives and concubines, so that when he had enough children and grandchildren, he would not have to invest a huge amount of time in their education.
The volume of the tree trunks was calculated. Rurik estimated that if one stika and one meter were basically similar (he always felt that the two measurement units were surprisingly similar), then the volume of six tree trunks would be just over four cubic meters.
The size of the big tree has more than doubled compared to before.
In essence, the weight of the trunk has been reduced to less than two tons.
After all, it is made of solid wood. When placed flat on the snow, it would take at least ten people to push it.
A group of strong men squeezed the flax cables, which were almost as thick as their arms, under the trunk of the tree. The hemp ropes were fastened with tight buckles so that they could be hung by the iron hooks of the crane.
Rurik did not expect that only one piece of equipment could handle the sled well. In order to ensure stability when loading the sled, he needed two pieces of equipment to start at the same time.
After some preparations, the boom hooks of the two cranes hooked the ropes.
On the other side, three sleighs were ready.
The strong men who had been busy for a while were covered in sweat. Many simply took off their leather clothes and wore only linen on their upper bodies, as if they didn't care about the minus five degrees Celsius.
Jevro was entrusted with an important task, and he stood in the mouse cage waiting for his master's orders.
More than five hundred people stared with their eyes wide open. They just wanted to see the wonders they had never seen before in their lives today.
"Sir! Let's start!" Jevro urged loudly.
Rurik looked left and right and swallowed his saliva.
"Okay! Start!"
The huge squirrel cage finally began to rotate, accompanied by a strong squeaking and twisting sound, during which the ratchet latches made of chromium iron made a metallic clanking sound.
In order to create a batch of amazingly tough range rovers, the people of Ironburg made great sacrifices. Rurik bought fishing nets from fishermen with wheat. The nets were dismantled and the thin hemp ropes were twisted thicker and thicker. This
That's not all. In order to make it more resilient, all the ropes have been soaked in seal oil and fish oil. The ropes exude some damn stench, but no one doubts their toughness.
Everything is proceeding in an orderly manner, and while people are stunned, the extremely heavy solid wood is slowly lifting off the ground.
Rurik visited the scene in person and was stunned when he saw that the trunk of the fir tree was over one meter too high.
"That's it!" He ordered, and the mouse cage stopped rotating. The strong pawls jammed the mouse cage tightly, and the tree trunk just hung in the air.
"Mechasta! It's your turn."
Mechasta was not a bystander. He took orders at the critical moment and ordered the people on standby to push the two empty sleds directly under the tree trunks.
Rurik looked again: "Start laying out the line!"
With the help of many previous experiments, the person in the mouse cage turned around as ordered, and the person responsible for operating the pawl also began to operate in the opposite direction.
The tree trunk is being unloaded slowly and rhythmically, and is finally pressed smoothly onto the sled.
In fact, the big tree can of course be dragged directly by the cable, and the reindeer herd keeps pulling it and sliding towards Rosberg. Rurik is too worried that such an operation will destroy the precious wood, and besides, this operation is not necessarily labor-saving.
There is nothing in the northern snow world that is more useful than a sled, not to mention a batch of sleds built by the residents of Ellenburg. They can squeeze twenty adults into them, and their economical and practical load capacity is at least more than one ton.
Rurik wanted to squeeze out the potential of the sled, and these two sleds were loaded with two tree trunks.
"Hey, it really feels like a semi-trailer."
The tree trunk is tightly fixed to the sled by cables, and coupled with the trunk's own gravity, it becomes extremely stable.
Rurik began to jokingly call this a semi-trailer, and the front of it was towed by four reindeer, of course.
Since the contact area between the sled board and the ice and snow is very small, just four reindeer can pull it away under the urging of the whip, and still maintain a very good inertial motion.
The loading work was completed in the eyes of more than 500 onlookers, and it was just the beginning.
During this day only, not only the six most critical spruce trunks were loaded, but a batch of pine logs also began to be hoisted very quickly.
When night fell, ten sleds had been loaded. Especially the four dedicated to loading pine wood. The trunks cut into two standard stikas were hoisted one after another, with five at the lower end and one at the upper end, stacked in a pyramid style.
Finally tied up with a Range Rover.
Everyone had to face an exciting reality. The core personnel who completed the lumber hoisting were the four guys standing in the mouse cage. After completing the task, no one could tell how tired he was, but Rurik still gave him this gift.
The most sumptuous dinner for four.
Now that the squirrel cage crane is put to great use, it should move more lumber!
At night, the crane became the most popular topic of conversation among bored people.
No, in Rurik's mansion, Mechasta's laughter was almost never heard. Because he knew that the crane would not be moved again if it stood in Ironburg.
He has no concept of "heavy equipment requiring regular maintenance" and thinks that if it stands here, it will serve Ellenburg forever.
The lights in the mansion were brightly lit, and Mechasta continued to feel lazy after dinner, and couldn't help but ask about Rurik's next arrangements.
"Now that the crane is a success, when will you leave?"
"What? Are you expecting me to leave?" Lirurik deliberately showed his displeasure.
Mechasta hurriedly denied: "How could it be? I... hope you will continue to live here. You know, my people have all benefited from you."
"A favor? If this can be considered a favor..."
The so-called favor here actually refers to Rurik's extremely generous provision of a large amount of wheat. In fact, this is nothing. Rurik must have understood the basic knowledge of modern nutrition. To put it bluntly, these are all knowledge in middle school biology courses.
Their physical labor was unprecedented, and the cranes would not have been able to build without a large amount of wheat.
Rurik has always had an idea that he hopes can be realized in the short term, which is to ensure that every adult man and woman in the Rus tribe and the servant tribe can eat one pound of wheat every day.
If the Russians have 10,000 people, then the annual wheat demand is 3.65 million pounds. From a practical point of view, if the Russians do not personally open up a large amount of farmland and rely on various means, it will be difficult to obtain the wheat from the Melalen people.
You can buy wheat of this staggering size here.
It can be said that the residents of Ironburg have taken the lead in living the kind of life Rurik hoped for during this period. However, this good life is about to come to an abrupt end, and they have to live the same old life of only eating fish.
Rurik thought for a moment and cheered up, "Frankly speaking, the reason why I stayed here is to get a large amount of wood for shipbuilding, and the purpose of making cranes is also for this purpose."
"The crane is now complete."
"Yes, so I'm going to evacuate. I can load all the remaining wood in the next three days, and on the fourth day I can drive the reindeer herd and evacuate with my people. The crane is here, and it's still
There are many strong men eager to sell their strength for silver coins and wheat, and there are many sleds that are empty. Even if the weather is very cold, we must continue."
"Oh! That's so good!" Mechasta longed for those wheat in his heart. Seventy thousand pounds of wheat were destined to be eaten in his stomach. He wished that all of them would be eaten by his own people.
Rurik continued: "I still have to wait. I have to wait for the big leader to come back."
"They... they went to the east." Mechasta worried, "Maybe they went to my hometown again, and maybe they encountered tribes that didn't surrender."
"Are you... worried about their failure?"
"No!" Mechasta denied flatly: "We don't know anything about the eastern world. They may have the most terrifying bears and the most dangerous land."
"It's really boring, so you are weak." Rurik muttered, and sat upright: "If they really go all the way east, they will see a sea frozen by ice and snow. It is not the end of the world in the east, it is just a sea
It’s just the sea.”
Mechasta believed it: "Master, you do know the composition of the earth."
"Of course! To be fair, the place we are in is by no means a good place. If there weren't a lot of leather, ore, salmon, and even a lot of shipbuilding wood, why would I build a city here? Listen, sooner or later one day
We're going south and explaining that I'll let you settle in a warmer world."
Sometimes Rurik would laugh at himself and vow to be the king of the bad land. This is indeed the case. The reason for this situation is extremely simple - the population is too small.
Since they cannot obtain a large population from the outside for the time being, they can only rely on their own people to desperately reproduce. This brings about another serious food problem, which makes the Russians step up their expansion. Then ships, as an important tool for expansion, need
Step up manufacturing.
Rurik intended to wait a little longer, and took the opportunity to organize people to continue logging, and notified people to make more sleds.
The coldest month of January is over in the Gulf of Bothnia, and now the days are lengthening dramatically.
The time has arrived on February 15th of the Julian calendar, and more than half of the month has passed. The difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar seems to be that the calendar time is one week later, so the spring equinox in 831
On March 28th.
The temperature is no longer so aggressive. Even if there is a snowfall in the middle, the temperature is still rising quietly. It will take some time before it returns to above freezing point.
Finally, as March was about to arrive, a team that was full of travels and fully loaded returned to Ironburg triumphantly.
Who are they? They are the hunting army led by Otto.
Originally, Ironburg was used as a shelter for the northern hunting party, but as a result, the hunting party was like a speeding arrow, heading eastward.
They actually hunted wild deer, forest cats, ferrets and snowshoe hares near the lakes in the upper reaches of the Kemi River. They set up a large number of traps and captured a large number of small animals. They also used particularly useful crossbows to hunt wild wild animals crazily.
Reindeer and other large animals.
Other than that, they didn't meet any other hunters.
This is the fact. They are actually active in the Nordbotten District of Finland today. Even a thousand years later, this place is almost no man's land. In the past, some hunters from the Kovin tribe would visit this area, but now the Kovin people are weak, and the Rus
The powerful hunters began to plunder the animal resources here for the first time.
They only made a batch of simple sleds, hauling a large number of furs of various types. The wheat cakes had been eaten long ago, but fortunately the captured animals were rich in muscle and oil. Otto's aging body sat on the sled,
He didn't feel tired being led by his own tribe. What he cared about most now was the price he could get for the furs on hand.
Otto is back, and today's Ironburg is familiar yet strange.
What are those two huge indescribable things standing at the west gate of the city?
It wasn't until he saw that this thing could lift extremely heavy wood easily, that he sat down in the snow in shock, that he realized how dreamy it was.
The winter hunting was a great success. In the forest and snow fields in the east, the team obtained more than 300 deer skins, as well as up to 2,000 mink, forest cat and snow rabbit skins. There were ten bear skins. Frankly speaking, if
If some bears were smart enough to escape, the Russians would bring back more bear skins.
Ten ferocious bear heads and forty terrifying beheaded bear claws are the best proof of strength.
The hunters who were eager to make money almost immediately sold the leather to the merchants stationed in Ironburg. Since the Gould family's son gave the best price, it can be said that the Gould family became a big player in this transaction.
winner.
Why? For more than three months, they stayed in Ironburg to enjoy the aurora every day, and watched the crane grow from scratch. Their waiting was rewarded with great profits. They were all second-rate dealers, and they bought leather.
They will roughly process it and then sell it to tailors who make clothes.
In the past, this work required leather merchants to transport goods to Mälaren for trading. For the Gould family, because he owned the tailoring workshop that was relocated to Roseburg, Gould was able to immediately receive profits, and his
It seems that all the family has to do is acquire, package and supply.
Otto came back. At the banquet in the mansion, he listened to his son's stories about cranes and giant trees. He also told about his various adventures in the eastern snowfield.
"We are leaving with a huge amount of goods. What are you going to do when you go back?" Otto asked his son.
Rurik's answer was very simple: "Building ships. I have stored a huge amount of wood for shipbuilding."
"Wood? The one near Roseburg can't satisfy you?"
"Of course! Those small trees are only suitable for fuel, and only the big trees in this area are the best materials. From now on, we will have to transport a large amount of wood here every winter."
"That's fine. I plan to stay for two days and then leave. What about you?"
Dad was so anxious, Rurik thought for a while and nodded.
The two leaders of Ross will lead their tribesmen to evacuate, and then Ironburg will return to its old state. At first, Mechasta was a little resistant to their permanent presence, but now that he is used to it, he is eager for the leaders, especially those who stay, to stay.
Rick often comes to visit. Let’s talk about the emotional relationship, because his daughter Saipolava is destined to be Rurik’s woman. As the father of his daughter, he naturally treats Rurik as his own child.
Of course, Mechasta knew that Rurik's status was extremely noble, and he also felt that he had an obligation to provide all help he could.
In the end, there were twenty snow trucks filled with wood, of which the three "semi-trailers" were the most eye-catching. The carefully selected reindeer became the core driving force of the sled, and the task ended with only eighty stags.
Finish.
They headed along the ice front of the coast, with some of the 70,000 pounds of grain still uneaten.
In addition to leaving part of the reward to the residents of Ironburg, take the rest of the Rurik with you. People will only eat a small part, and most of the unprocessed wheat grains are the food of the reindeer along the way.
.That is twenty sleighs with a huge load. If they are not fed fine feed, the reindeer will soon die of exhaustion.
Rurik's small body didn't matter. He was covered in thick leather and sat on the top of the wood of a sled. He was riding on the highest pine wood, and the paving was laid under his crotch so that he wouldn't get cold.
He saw that the dark transportation team gathered in a compact group and continued to trek, but the speed was quite slow.
Finally, after walking on the ice for five days, they returned to Roseburg, where they had been away for four months, and time quietly entered March.