[ Icelandic Viking
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am very excited about today's video,
because this is the culmination of a long project that I haven't been able to talk about until now.
And it's a project that I think could actually force us to re-evaluate
our understanding of the very origins of firearms and black powder in Europe.
Now, this isn't something that I did on my own, I was privileged
to be part of a much larger research team, in particular working with Dr Jackson Crawford,
a distinguished Professor of Norse language and Norse mythology.
He's written a number of books, his translation of
as well as
And much of the study of Old Norse language written manuscripts
is done in Iceland, or through Iceland.
It is in Iceland that many of these documents actually still survive to this day,
and they make a fantastic resource for scholars like Dr Crawford.
Now what specifically brought me into this project was when Dr Crawford
happened across a previously unknown saga
in the Icelandic manuscripts in the National Museum of Iceland
that appears to describe the invention of gunpowder in Iceland
between the 9th and 11th centuries, between 800 and 1000 A.D.
Traditional understanding is that this is approximately when gunpowder
was invented or discovered in China in the 9th century.
It stayed restricted more or less to China for several hundred years
before traders, probably Mongol traders coming across the Silk Road,
brought it to Europe along with other trade goods.
And by the mid-1300s we know from well-established well-documented sources
that gunpowder was fairly common in European warfare.
European rulers and armies were using cannon, as well as smaller hand-held firearms in combat.
What we didn't know before was that this discovery may very well have been made
independently and in about the same time frame by the ... Viking settlers on Iceland.
So like I said, ... the document that Dr Crawford found is called
and Dr Crawford has posted a video specifically about that saga.
How he found it, and exactly what it describes.
I'll go over the brief details, but if you're interested I would highly encourage you
to check out his video to learn the full details, basically the other half of this story.
What I'm looking at is more the firearms and the practical application side,
where Dr Crawford will explain to you the academic, the literary,
the manuscript historical side of this fascinating story.
The short version is that in fact all of the elements for gunpowder existed on Iceland,
and it appears that one lucky (or unlucky) Icelandic settler
managed to unintentionally combine them all in the right ratios to create gunpowder.
So the elements that you need to create gunpowder
are going to be charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, or saltpetre or nitrates.
Now charcoal of course is easily available everywhere, it's just burnt wood.
There's not a lot of wood on Iceland, but there was enough wood
for fires of course, and gathering charcoal.
You can get it from burning anything else too as well, so that existed easily.
The sulphur was very readily available particularly on Iceland,
because of the island's immense volcanic activity.
There are hydrothermal vents, there are, well, sulphuric vents kind of all over Iceland.
It's one of the island's present day natural resources in the form of geothermal power.
And then the missing element was saltpetre, the nitrates
that you need to add to this mix to actually create gunpowder.
And what's fascinating about this story is that the nitrates used
in this invention came from nothing else than arctic shark.
Arctic shark is ... well known as one of the fairly disgusting ancient foods
that was used on Iceland, that was created on Iceland.
... Arctic shark has a large amount of ammonia in its blood
in the form of urea and other substances, and they're used
to help it survive at high pressure underwater and in extremely cold temperatures.
And simply eating the flesh of the arctic shark is poisonous
because of the levels of ammonia and nitrates that are in it.
And so what the Icelanders discovered how to do
was to actually ferment ... a dead shark for something like 6 months,
and that separates the ammonia out from the shark itself
and it leaves the remaining meat, which is called
Kind of disgusting, I did have the opportunity to try some as a part of this research.
Skál
- It's a little bit rubbery. - Mm-hmm.
- Whoa!
But ... the production of this foodstuff has been going on in Iceland for over 1,000 years now.
And it fascinatingly, gave the nitrates
that were necessary ... for Fredrik Four Fingers to create gunpowder,
and get his name in the resulting unintentional explosion
that apparently blew off one of his fingers.
Now what makes me very interested in this,
is the idea of the ... Icelandic Vikings actually building this new technology into an actual weapon.
And so there was a particular person that I knew I should talk to about this,
and that is Reynir Óskarson.
Reynir is co-author of a book called
which is a study specifically of Viking combat.
The arms and the tactics of Viking combat during this time frame.
And so on Iceland I had the opportunity to be introduced to Mr Óskarson,
and he very generously agreed to help us out with our research and answer some of my questions.
So we started with the question of iron. If you're going to make a functional firearm,
you're going to need iron, you're going to need ... essentially a metal barrel
to contain the explosion and direct it to launch a projectile. ...
You've done actually some fairly pioneering research on the production of iron ore in Iceland
from almost the beginning of the settlement age.
How much actual production of iron was done here and how early?
- So, when we think of the settlement period starting around 800 or a bit earlier
we know the Icelanders were using bog ore to smelt raw iron.
It was not practical to import their iron from Norway, and the skill of smelting,
smelting skill was highly valued in the settlements.
We see extensive archaeological evidence of locally produced iron used for
everything from nails to weapons to farming tools. The practice was really very well established.
- It's at this point that I really started to get excited.
So having an iron working society and iron production in place
gives us the technological foundation for creating a rudimentary firearm.
They could make it, all they needed was the gunpowder and the opportunity.
And we can see from the newly discovered saga,
that they actually had access to early rudimentary gunpowder.
Now, where we get to the really important point is the term
... It's a word in Old Norse that has never actually been translated.
It's known to be a weapon from contextual use,
but nobody's ever been able to figure out exactly what sort of weapon it is.
The term is very similar to the Old Norse word for spear,
but not the same, it's some variation on spear.
And like I said, no one's been able to accurately translate it until now.
What's fascinating is if you ... understand the Old Norse explanations of
and you understand the possibility of gunpowder existing in Viking-age Iceland,
the two fit together almost perfectly.
And it becomes very clear that an
Again, I would encourage you to watch Dr Crawford's video
where he explains all of this documentary evidence for the term.
For my sake, I wanted to put the question to Reynir Óskarson,
he's ... literally written the book on Viking weapons and combat.
And if anyone could confirm that these two puzzle pieces go together, it would be him.
So I had this theory, looking at all of the evidence that we've found,
that
Do you think that makes sense?
- Now ... I think you are really onto something here. I never made that connection myself
but it does clearly make sense. I'm ... really impressed by the sources you found to
figure this out. It's a brilliant deduction by you and you research team.
- It really is a fantastic feeling to have a hypothesis like this
confirmed by a true subject matter expert in the field like Reynir Óskarson.
So we continued to discuss the subject and to go into some more detail,
we were looking into some of the older manuscripts, some of the books,
discussing different aspects of Viking combat, Viking history.
And finding more and more connections where the firearm nature
of the
Now Reynir has also been heavily involved in Icelandic archaeology,
and is familiar with many of the artifacts and settlements that have been unearthed.
And to date, we don't know of any actual
But what I wanted to do was put together
our best approximation of what one of these would have looked like.
So after some extensive discussions and collaborations with Reynir and other partners,
we have put together just that. Shall we take a look?
This is my reproduction of an
Now we know in the traditional histories
of firearms in Europe, that when gunpowder started
being used it was largely used in the form of cannon.
Very large firearms that were used to assault the fortresses
that had been built to essentially be impregnable prior to the era of gunpowder.
But we wouldn't expect that to be the case in Iceland,
we would expect a much smaller style of gunpowder-based weapon.
And the reason is well, there were no standing armies in Iceland, there were no giant fortresses.
There wasn't enough manpower to build something equivalent to a European castle.
Frankly there wasn't a lot of wood, ... just the wood that goes into
essentially the stock of this
Probably similar in expense to the cost of making the small iron barrel.
... Iceland was a very individualistic society,
and weapons at the time were viewed on an individual basis.
The man would have his spear, his sword, his shield, his axe, or a combination thereof.
And it makes sense that the individual Viking warrior
would use gunpowder in the form of an individual weapon, a "fire lance" you might say.
And we actually have a good reference to this in one of the drawings
that was actually put into one of the manuscripts that Dr Crawford found.
You can see it right there, and that's largely what we aimed to copy with this reproduction.
So let me show you a little bit more. There's not much here technically,
but I think it's interesting to take a look at.
The business end here is the important part.
We went with a stock which is used to stabilise the weapon,
to aim the weapon, and to hold it out at a little bit of a distance
to protect the user potentially from any failure of the barrel.
This is a matchlock system. So I don't want to start making any crazy claims
about weird technology that the Vikings could have invented.
They didn't have any of the more modern ignition systems like flintlock, wheellock, etc.
This would have been ignited by a simple slow burning match.
Now early Chinese firearms did in fact start with the use of bamboo or paper barrels.
It was an attempt to increase the power of their gunpowder
by increasing its nitrate concentration that led to the need for iron barrels.
And we know that the ... documented Viking formulations of gunpowder
were pretty heavy in nitrates from that
And so we would expect them to go straight to iron barrels as well.
So the way this would work, you would simply pour in some of your powder.
You would press in a projectile, most likely a rounded stone.
And you have a touch hole here, a slow-burning match is touched to that.
The fire ignites the powder charge inside, and - boom - it goes out the front.
Now this barrel is held in place by a pair of iron straps,
those are held to the wooden stock by ... two pairs of nails.
We know that the Vikings were using nails, they used nails in their ship construction,
and that would be a very simple and familiar construction to them.
The bore here is a bit under an inch in diameter, a relatively small diameter.
While the Icelanders did make iron, they weren't cranking out huge quantities of it
and so you'd want to keep something relatively small.
But this would still certainly have enough power to inflict a lethal wound.
Now for the really exciting part, let's take this out to the range.
Let's load this up and give it a try. I am going to switch out my sunglasses
for proper scientific goggles here.
I think I want a little more protection too.
I figured this is what would have been appropriate at the time.
Let's go with that, this ought to certainly help.
By the way, helmet from Grimfrost, fantastic supplier of original pattern Norse cool stuff.
OK, so I have barrel, flash hole.
We're going to go ahead and load this up.
Going to do a very careful measurement of powder.
This is basic, standard, FFFG black powder.
That's probably way too much.
But ... Vikings didn't get where they got by being timid.
Now the Vikings would have loaded a projectile on top of that,
we're going to start with no projectile here.
Alright, we're going to add just a little bit of powder to our touch hole here.
We want just enough there to ignite the powder on the inside.
Alright, and now our ignition mechanism is simple slow burning match.
I already decided I don't want to be like that close to it,
so we'll just put this on a stick to use.
We'll go ahead and light our match.
It's a little bit windy, see if we can get this out of the wind.
Alright, and there our match is lit and smouldering.
Here we go. Three, two, one.
That is super cool, it actually worked!
It didn't explode, it fired downrange, this is fantastic!
And now that we've got a test firing out of the way, now it's time to try it actually from the hand.
So, we are going to load this back up.
Again, carefully measuring my Viking level of powder there.
Now as I said earlier,
this would have been used presumably with a good rounded stone.
So I'm going to put a piece of cloth wadding in first.
That will compress the powder.
And it won't seal it, but that will minimise powder blow-by past my stone.
There we go. And then in it goes, put that down in there.
And then ram that in place.
Do not get my hand in front of it.
Now ... we have to prime it.
Oop, a little much on the priming powder, but.
Alright, one loaded and ready to go
Got my fuse, I'm going to keep this fuse out on a stick here.
You ready? Here we go.
You cleared the range, right? - Yeah, I think so. - OK.
- Baaaa! - Whoo! Oh, oh ****.
Is that a sheep? ****
Cut that, cut that, cut that, cut that...
OK, that may not have gone quite as well as I had planned,
but we're going to get back to it, I'm going to keep working on that,
because I think that
It really has been truly a privilege to be able to be a part of
ground-breaking research in the origins of European firearms development.
If you are interested in this subject, once again I recommend checking out Dr Crawford's channel.
His video on this subject in particular, as well as all of his other work.
His translations of books like
and are a fantastic resource for anyone interested in Norse culture and the Norse language.
Reynir Óskarson deserves a huge thanks for his generous help to us in Iceland.
His book,
is a fascinating treatise on Viking weaponry and Viking combat.
Done very much from a practical perspective
of actually testing and experimenting with these concepts.
So if you have any interest in that period, I highly recommend the book.
And of course a big thanks to everyone who helped me construct the reproduction
Thank you very much for watching. I hope you all enjoyed the video.
[Special thanks to those named, and apologies to the sheep's owner.]