Alfheimr Renaissance

Sailing to Borgarsandr, day 6

Dufansdalr (Flekkefjord)

The night goes by when we're anchored, and the next morning there are more happy sailors who praise the hammock. The boat also rocks a little anchored in the harbor, but those who slept in hammocks hardly noticed it if they hung the hammock in the right direction. It was not unexpectedly quite an adjustment and they need to get used to it, but they have already started to test various improvements, and a couple of more hammocks have already been created. I also discover a couple of sailors I didn't recognize who seem to be coming from some other ship. Life feels a little better right now. I just wish they weren't so damn lively this early in the morning.

Dufansdalr is a large town, perhaps a bit smaller than Kambsnes but difficult to estimate size and population. This town is more dispersed too. They don't know what awaits them....

muhaHaHAH!!

Ha!

Okay. Deep breaths. According to information, the local Jarl is away and thankfully there won't be a feast. Well, yes, there's probably a feast somewhere, but hopefully not a feast I have to accept an invitation to, which I'm just grateful for.

So far during the trip, Iselin has been moving around a bit but she tries to be near me most of the time to act like my maid, while Eira rarely leaves the cabin, and I just try to let her be, even when I'm in my cabin bed, thinking, dozing and just let time go by. Both women spend most of the time together and talking. They seem to change the subject when I show up, so I guess they sometimes talk about me. But in this world, I literally decide over their lives, so of course they are curious. I need to make a decision, and I don't like being a slave owner.

Time for some shopping! It's really practical to have Iselin with me as an interpreter and guide, and I can easily buy a bit of birch bark, four meters of coarse fabric and 16 bronze rings, about 40mm in diameter in the town. I had intended to buy iron but as long as it is metal and close to what I need, it will probably suffice. It's different to shop when there's no market where everyone is. A lof of asking around and trying to find out who might be selling. But it works, just inefficient. As expected, it's easy to buy things with silver instead of barter. Cash is king! Iselin's so very valuable, and showing up with a well dressed pretty maid gives me instant status. She's also nice company. And damn pretty to look at.

We leave what we brought in the cabin, and it's time for saltpeter hunting. Eira accompanies and carries three tied together ceramic vessels. We also bring my two waterbottles and some other stuff. We ask around and now Iselin knows what I'm looking for so it's easier. We're hungry when we return about 5 hours later, but Eira carries two vessels with saltpeter in them, and its probably 0.6 kg. Iselin shows her value even more by haggling it down compared to last time so it was cheaper. Nice. Again, we ask the farmers to spread the word, but let any buyers collect it for themselves, unless it's far from here. Iselin and Eira are a little curious why I seem so pleased with what Iselin seems to have described as 'white mouldy stone'. If they only knew. In the future, and if they stay, maybe they will.

We take the opportunity to eat on the ship while I think about the next step. Now I just need to find some sulfur ore/pyrite, i.e. iron sulphide. Also known as fools gold in English. If iron's extracted from the pyrite, the iron tends to be bad since the sulfur contaminate the iron, but I wonder if they know this. Sulfur is the residual product I want, because I doubt there is pure sulfur here, as it's probably only found from the volcanoes in the Mediterranean or Iceland. The ore mountain in Kiruna has magnetite and I wonder if it exists in this world because everything else is the same, but mining there? Njaah. But buy or seize land where there are mines in Midgård? Yes. If there isn't ore it's not a big loss, but if there is? It would be a huge win.

I've visited another historic mine south of Trondheim. I need to check the travel log and hope it is on the tablet, because then I have GPS coordinates for it's parking lot. But it should probably be marked on the GPS map with mine symbols. It was close to the Swedish border. But it was copper they mined there, and had sulfur etc. I've visited many places on many vacations, including a few mines. I have basically driven zig-zag through Europe with my car. North Cape down to Morocco, Ireland to Poland. Not been to southern Italy or the Balkans yet. Had planned to take another trip later this summer, but it feels like that won't happen. In the future, I need to hire someone to travel around and buy and collect things for me, but can't do it yet. I don't even know where my journey ends and where I will call 'home'.

Apparently someone talked for a couple of hours later, a slave comes running and asks if Sejdmann wants to buy more 'white stone hair'. His master has such things on his farm. It's longer and not an easy road to walk, and probably take one and a half hour to walk there. But worth it. It looks exactly the same, smaller bushes but scattered over a really large area. I look a little hesitantly at the wall, but after a bit of thinking I buy it, and manage to scrape together another 0.35kg. It's late when we return to the boat, but I'm very happy. Which makes my company pleased. I have about 1.5kg of nitrate now, which should give me about 2kg of black powder. Not much for a cannon, but I believe about 3-6g is enough for a musket shot, so I should have enough for 400-500 shots. That is quite a lot of 'boom'.

The evening's spent with thoughts going around and taking wild tangents, and I curse that my paper is so valuable because at home I would have made a lot of drawings already. Both for life preservers, black powder weapons and future houses. Okay, I can afford to buy paper because it's apparently not that expensive, but still. I'm not looking forward to having to use a quill and ink.

It's not the first time I design something a bit anachronistic when it comes to houses. Many years ago me and friends played through a big fantasy role-playing campaign over several books and a few extra adventures. It took more than a year. As part of it we built a castle in the game. It snowballed. I made complete 3D views, different floor plan drawings for all houses and floors, described built-in mechanical devices, defense and magic protection, and some that were entertaining sneaky. If I could think of a sneaky way in, so could an enemy, so I tried to prevent it. Fun side project. But it wasn't a boring castle or so. I mixed inspiration from the Lord of the Rings movies Rivendale with Viking Longhouses and made a dwelling that - in reality quite impractical - lay out on a couple of small island and rocks in a wide rapids, with a stone bridge leading there and connecting a side island and various amenities and defenses. I estimated construction time, manpower and costs according to information in books, and we spent quite a lot of some adventures finding exclusive items to decorate the castle and transport it back, which was unnecessarily troublesome. None of it was intended by the game master, but it was entertaining, and that is whats important in a roleplaying game.