The Rus replica and finding a story

 So, here it is, the almost finished knife with the carving completed.

I am now searching for the story and the name. It all started with me realizing that the blade also resembles the find of the famed "Amunta" knife. I thought, well, might it be that the knife inscribed with Amunta a mik (which is read today as "Amunta owns me") belonged to a skóggángr man? Skóggángr was a sentence of banning people from the community, often without weapons. I´ll do an article on this soon. Suffice to say, while there are reasons people were banned from the community in the Viking and Vendel age, nowadays it might as well be a honourable deed banning oneself from a society of lunatics. In that line the story and myth of this knife will happen.

When I rode home from the smithy last Sunday, when I had completed the handle, I presumeably did the silliest thing in my whole life: Riding over the lane by the river with a rucksack full of steel in the middle of a lightning tempest. I was sure I´d die there, and I asked the fates to make me understand. It was then lightning struck nearby, behind my back, and the St. Elmo´s fire went right through me. While it is not an experience I can recommend:-), it was a goosebumps experience, with the violent purple light running through my limbs and onto the lane  ravaged by the driving rainstorm in the dark... and the tempest pushed me with a backwind that literally smote me forward with some 35 km/h without me even pedalling. If you ask the Gods in a lightning storm, chance is, they will answer... it will always be a part of this knife´s story now... in this case it is a bit more complicated. It is not just a mere name, but I really want to find out about its true myth... it´s a bit of quoting a story that is already there but written in a language you cannot read... yet.

So watch this place...

Next step will be making a utility sheath and then one for bling;-D. 

On the bench-some progress

 I am a bit reluctant- might well be that you are getting fed up with those progress posts, but bhere they come. Sanded and filed the handles of the two Rus knives, and in the middle´s the Tai - Goo - style bush knife with a quick paracord wrap.

On the big ´un with the Kopis blade that will see a carving....

 

...like this, see? I daresay one can imagine how I had the idea...;-). Or any such like. Quite certainly it will be modified in the progress.

 

Anyway, I am talking in ellipses, what I want to say is, I fitted a buttcap out of homemade Mokume Gane. Silver and copper. 

 

 

I look forward to the knife. I peened the tang over with the tip submerged in a piece of hardwood, crosswise to the grain and levered it out, and it took it with no damage. It´s not THAT hard, but hard enough to carve mild steel rods and chop antler, so it´ll do fine for my woodwalking and re-enactment endeavours. I am taking this quite slow, because I want to find a story suited to it in the work process, and a name that fits. Watch this place, it´ll be not the last time you´ll read about it;-).