Trapped in the snow and wind, what else can people do in their homes?
Adults told their children exaggerated stories, especially those of the men involved in the Northern Explorations, who told their children that the deer herders were formidable enemies and that their father had defeated them.
Adults do not hesitate to put gold on their faces to gain the admiration of their children.
If you just tell strange stories for a long time, life will seem very boring.
Many people actually weave and repair hemp rope nets in their longhouses, and repair longboats in larger wooden houses.
This time a large amount of animal skins were brought back. If the skins cannot be processed quickly and the skins rot, using them to make clothes will not be a good choice.
There is a group of professional blacksmiths in the Ross tribe. They found iron ore in the mountains and copper ore further away. Their iron smelting technology is not good enough. They can only smelt pig iron using ancient technology.
An ax that looks good after some beating.
Compared to iron smelting, their ability to make bronze is better, but the copper mines in this area are rarer and have lower yields.
For most tribesmen, the main way they obtain wealth and food is through hunting and fishing. They make smoked fish jerky and a small amount of leather. While satisfying their own needs, they sell extra products, or in the tribe.
Complete the transaction within.
The leather trade is usually indeed internal trade.
The blacksmiths of the tribe rarely participate in fishing, and rarely participate in large-scale collective hunting. They are not even very enthusiastic about the Sorgon voyage led by the leader Otto himself?
Why?
Because they are professional blacksmiths.
Every household in the tribe has its own metal tools, and everyone uses iron tools extensively in their daily lives.
Those wrought iron tools that have been beaten to a very low carbon content are prone to rust even if they are used. When some tools are severely rusted, they have to be handed over to the blacksmith and paid to have them refurbished or to buy a new one.
Blacksmiths would go to the mountainous areas themselves, carry suitable iron ore home, and make it into usable tools or weapons after a long process of smelting and forging.
Apart from that, the main job is repairs.
Ordinary people, if their wood-cutting ax becomes dull or the blade is damaged, they still have to take it to a blacksmith and ask him to forge it and pay for it.
Perhaps, the professional blacksmiths of various civilizations were their original chemistry experts.
Blacksmiths have to go deep into the mountains to search for available mineral deposits. In the process of searching, they will naturally dig up some priceless amber, as well as a small amount of rubies and sapphires. They can also always find some translucent ores, including crystal clear natural quartz.
, gypsum, and even alum and thenardite, which are very important to the tribe.
Alum and Glauber's salt can be found in the mountainous areas of this region. From the day of discovery, the Ross tribe no longer needs to import these two "strategic materials" from the brother tribes in the south, and even export them on a small scale.
In fact, they are not particularly precious minerals, because they are quite common in rocky mountains all over the world.
The central ridge of Scandinavia still contains many minerals. The Ross tribe and the Siiya tribe alliance prematurely discovered that this ridge is rich in iron ore. Maybe they have not thought about it at this time.
Further mining and smelting of these ores will eventually make Sweden and Norway rich.
The few blacksmiths are like the "geological experts" of the tribe. They focus more on blacksmithing. The alum and mirabilite they mine are basically sold out as soon as they are brought back to the tribe.
Especially those allied tribesmen living in the Ross tribe, some of them are not only businessmen, but also professional craftsmen.
These people buy and hoard alum and thenardite, and wait for the end of autumn, when the hunters of the Ross tribe will continue to sell the newly hunted animal skins to themselves.
So in some longhouses, it really stinks!
But under the stimulus of great wealth, it is completely worth enduring the stench and continuing to work.
Otto, his victorious action brought him a profit of a hundred deer, and during the difficult journey back, 80% of the deer either died or were sold by him on the way.
He personally owned fifty fresh deer skins. Although they were fresh, they were actually hardened by the cold.
Otto had no shortage of animal skins and clothing, and he did not expect Niya to complete the complex processing of fifty deer skins alone, and there was not enough material for processing animal skins at home.
He sold all the deer skins and directly earned fifty Roman silver coins of good quality, which he locked in his piggy bank.
In the cold winter, the world is frozen. Not only do the homes of leather merchants stink, but the entire family also falls into the busiest season. Celebrating Hanukkah in the Ross tribe, you can experience the days without sunshine in person, which is really more interesting than at home in the south.
.
This is also a place of wealth. After processing a complete deerskin, regardless of the cost, you can earn at least one silver coin by selling two.
It can be said that this is a job that seems to be profitable without losing money, and this is indeed the case, that is, it requires a lot of labor from the workers.
Hiding in a warm home, they first pre-process the fresh fur, scrape off the meat and fat on the hide, and wash it with hot water.
Fortunately, there is snow at your fingertips outdoors, which can be melted and boiled to complete the job.
Next is the tanning process that requires the participation of Glauber's salt, and the odor containing trace amounts of toxicity also escapes. To complete this process, there is also the tanning process involving alum.
When they completed all the processes and the hides became soft and extremely corrosion-resistant, spring arrived, and soon the frozen sea melted enough for shipping to resume.
Otto, as well as the people of the Ross tribe, did not know that the leather craftsmen among their allies were a hugely profitable business in purchasing the fresh furs they hunted.
Reindeer skin is warmer and has a larger surface area than sheepskin. It is quite expensive leather in itself. The Sami people who are good at raising deer also quickly turned from trade to war after encountering the Siiya tribe heading north.
.The deer-herding communities composed of small clans were destroyed one after another. Otto's actions this year were just doing what his ancestors had done.
Deer farmers are losers. There are not many wild deer herds in the first place. Without deer farmers, the reindeer population will shrink sharply.
Today, reindeer are extinct in Jutland, and reindeer are increasingly rare in Scandinavia.
The Danes struggled to raise sheep and cattle, and could only obtain important leather. Due to conflicts with the Frankish Kingdom and the Slavic Wende tribe, the originally relatively harmonious bilateral trade turned into simple robbery.
The relationship between the Danes and their traditional partners has become increasingly tense, and their trade routes have been affected, and they have to take tougher measures to do business with swords more frequently.
Therefore, the cobblers living in Rossburg can row their long boats straight to the Danish territory, and of course they have to sneak over quietly. Although the conflict between the Siiya Tribal Alliance and the Danes has become more and more serious in recent years, both sides have private interests.
The underlying trade is not really a decision.
Everyone speaks the same Norse language, and the language has not become too different due to geographical barriers. The merchant directly claims to be Danish and is the same race as the customer. As for where the high-quality deerskin comes from, the answer is also
Very easy to fool - snatched from the Finns in the north.
It’s not an exaggeration to replace one processed high-quality reindeer skin with five sheepskins from the Jutland locals. Although this is a very risky behavior, risking being attacked by the Danes is at least better than selling it to your own people.
Earn twice as much or more.
This time, there were more than 200 reindeer skins, as well as a large number of Arctic fox skins, ferret skins, wolf skins, and even ten white bear skins. The Ross hunters sold them all in order to quickly exchange for silver coins.
In this way, the local people of Fort Ross praised their leader as a "brave adventurer" who bravely helped everyone get a huge fortune.
As for the guest tanners, they almost knelt down in front of Otto, praising their leader's generosity with exaggerated smiles.
The cobblers are busier than they have been in decades. The small number of cobblers has to work at home this time, and even young children must help.
Because the owner of the family understands that if he spends a freezing winter completing a huge amount of work, the income gained will be enough to provide his family with a life of food and clothing without worrying about labor for two or three years!
Therefore, in the wind and snow, some strange buildings are always emitting black smoke.
It was the tribe's blacksmith shop and cobbler's workshop, where they burned charcoal to carry out complex production work with high added value.
The richest people in the tribe are of course the leader Otto and his family, followed by the priests, and the third ones are the blacksmiths, cobblers, and several particularly skilled carpenters.
It is understandable that the leader is the richest, because according to the traditional rules of the tribe, as the leader, he must legally get more loot. The priest group is completely supported by the entire tribe, and the priests are entirely composed of women.
More wealth.
Those craftsmen are ordinary people in the tribe, and their identities also determine that they cannot become heroic spirits in Valhalla.
They can't even be Odin's servants because they believe in Thor.
People believe that Jing Lei is the incarnation of Thor. This god holds a sledgehammer. In people's concept, he resembles a young blacksmith.
All blacksmiths worship Thor, as do other craftsmen. These people naturally do not need to fight to prove themselves. Although they are people of the same tribe, they believe that they are actually protected by Thor.
Since the heavy snowstorm started, the snowfall actually lasted for five full days!
Fortunately, only the first two days were filled with terrible snowstorms, and then it was just pure snowfall.
But this is not the beginning of peace. Every family's house faces huge safety hazards. The heavy snow can easily collapse the roof. So starting from the third day, some residents have braved the wind and snow to clean their homes.
After clearing the snow at the door, I climbed up to the roof and used the wooden shovel I usually use to dig dirt to clear away the snow as much as I could.
Perhaps only blacksmiths and leatherworkers don't have to worry too much about snow. It's so hot inside their longhouses that they can't store much snow on their roofs, and the slates at the chimneys remain the same.
Rurik spent most of his time these days studying.
Rumia could easily complete the task of just feeding the few deer hiding in the circle. This was the only necessary task Rurik assigned to the girl. The rest of the time, he held the girl by his side.
Translator of the Vilian priests, learning the language of the deer herders.
In a few days, Rurik had learned some of the most commonly used vocabulary, and he also learned all the phrases such as "eat" and "drink water".
In contrast, Rumia also learned a lot of Norse words and phrases. Due to the fact that the Norse language of this era still has many tongue-sounding sounds, it would be difficult to master it quickly if you don't learn it from an early age, which leads to
The pronunciation of Rumia's language is quite strange at present. The ancient Sami language of the deer herders does have a tongue-licking sound, but it is not used as frequently as in Old Norse.
Fortunately, Rumia has basically learned the words that are most commonly used in ordinary life, and she has to use the newly learned words immediately in order to communicate with her master.
But is Rurik really the master?
This little boy, who is three years younger than himself, bluntly stated that he would rather call himself sister.
In fact, the child had intended to call him that from the beginning, but he didn't understand Norse at that time.
Rumia was even more moved because of this. What she longed for most was her family. As long as she had a family member who was willing to love and care for her, a lot of the pain in her heart would be gone.
It has been the fourth day of snowfall, and the snowflakes are more dense than yesterday. Everyone believes that the snowstorm season will soon pass.
During these days, Rurik led his servants to study intensively in the chief priest's house, at least that's what Otto thought.
The lives of Otto and Nia have also become more boring. They are more willing to hide in their warm house in the boring winter and watch their young son play. Although for a few years, their son has been playing in the cold winter every time.
Strange symbols were drawn on the ground with wooden sticks.
As long as they see this little guy, the couple is satisfied.
One silent night, the heartache that Niya had endured for many days finally broke out.
She asked her husband: "It has been several days. Rurik has been living in the priest's cabin. Are you really relieved?"
"Of course I am relieved that the child is studying. He said that he will not only be our leader, but also the leader of Novgorod and many deer herders. This child is challenging my authority. He
His ambitions are also very lofty." Thinking of many things that had happened, Otto had mixed emotions. Facing his wife, who was as old as himself, there were some things he really couldn't say.
"But he is a seven-year-old child."
"In ten years, the child will be seventeen years old, my Niya. He loves to learn very much, and he will grow into a wise man. His words are not lies. You also know that Rurik was learning from Arik's Pei
He learned the language of the Novgorod people from Lavina, and now he is learning the language of the deer herders. To become the leader of foreigners, of course you have to learn the language of foreigners, so you don’t have to worry about anything. He is your son forever.
It's all yours."
"But, I still like the way he looks like running around the house or messing around with sticks."
"Don't worry." Otto sighed, "Tomorrow, I'll grab him and his little servant. The servant is also learning our language, and I'll just take a look at the girl's results. Listen, tomorrow
We have to clear the snow off the roof. If the roof is damaged, it will be difficult to repair."
"You reminded me, I'll prepare the snow clearing tools now."
"Prepare some more food," Otto added.
"Well, Rurik is very light. If he climbs to the roof to clear the snow, I won't worry about the house collapsing. But you..." Niya chuckled, "He is too heavy, you must not go to the roof.
Like last year, I was worried that the house would collapse."
"Then you can't completely count on Rurik. Prepare more food. If Rurik goes to the roof, the servant must follow him. If Rurik wants to eat meat, the servant must also eat meat. Prepare enough for two people.
"
"Huh? Why? Just a servant." Niya seemed very unconcerned. "Just give that servant something to eat, such as some shark liver or something else."
What Niya actually means is that the food given to servants is a reward. Even if it is a reward, it should also be rewarded with unpalatable food that only satisfies the stomach, such as shark liver. Who would be willing to eat this strange-smelling food if it were not to survive.
.
Otto rejected his wife's idea. This was not because Otto was merciful, but simply because he was his son's servant.
"It's better to prepare more." Otto ordered, "You don't know, Rurik said in front of the priest that the servant is his future helper. Rurik eats meat, and the servants also eat meat. I don't know.
Why, Rurik pays special attention to this servant."
"That's strange. I've seen that servant before. There's nothing special about him."
"No!" Otto shook his head, "It must be special for our son. Because he personally tamed that servant. In the future, you should not say anything about the servant. If the servant is disobedient, he will keep it.
If there is no punishment, we don’t need to intervene.”
"That's fine. Let's call Rurik back, and... and that servant named Rumia. As long as that servant does a good job of sweeping the snow, I will reward her. But you, that servant won't do a good job.
I can't take care of that much, Rurik is my son, if he can't bear it I won't care, I will personally punish the servant who doesn't work!"
Sensing his wife's tough attitude, Otto deliberately asked: "What will happen to you?"
"I... at least... at least give the servant a slap in the face and warn the servant that he will be punished for being lazy."
Otto originally wanted to laugh wildly, but when he thought about the incident a few days ago, he closed his mouth again. "Don't think about it, go back to sleep, we have to clear the snow tomorrow morning."
Otto said no more, wrapped himself tightly in the animal skin and continued to rest, but his mind was full of thoughts.
For the sake of the girl named Rumia, the son boldly resisted his authority and held his own sword.
Not to mention, if this brat’s grandfather has a grandfather’s grandfather, some of his ancestors must have entered Valhalla. They should have seen this scene in the sky. They will also be happy for their unruly descendants.
Also, my own era is about to pass, maybe in another ten years, the Ross tribe will be Rurik's era by then.