
What was the role of the blacksmith in medieval society? - petethomas
http://www.medievalists.net/2018/11/role-blacksmith-medieval-society/
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bradknowles
And so they don’t talk at all about the non-military metalwork that a
blacksmith would have done, or the value of those things. Like nails, or
hinges, or gates, or locks, or tools for other workers.

IMO, it is useful to look at what a modern blacksmith does and then ask what
of those things had what utility back then.

Check out the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America and then come
back to this article and see how empty it is.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Nor does he mention horse shoes, and eating knives in an age where nearly
everyone carried their own personal knife for food. Then there's the other
cutlery and kitchen equipment, and the scythes and other tools to grow and
harvest that food. The bands for barrels and wheels. The linchpins for those
wheels.

That's the reason blacksmiths were the linchpin (sorry) of their village. They
were the toolmakers of their day.

Even militarily it's strangely lacking. No mention of the million arrows an
English expedition might take to France. That needs a million arrow heads.
There's a surprising amount of work goes into a bodkin or broadhead, needing
hundreds or thousands across the country to contribute.

Yet the author is studying for a degree in Medieval Studies and I've just read
a bunch of history books for fun.

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wavefunction
When did England invade France in the Medieval era?

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NeedMoreTea
The Hundred Years War, 1337 to 1453. Henry V and Agincourt etc.

Edit: Dates :)

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wavefunction
That's the answer I was expecting. It seems strange to me to use the end of
the High Medieval era and extrapolate that back across the whole.

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NeedMoreTea
It's the most well known. It's not like the English longbow or archery was a
recent innovation by the time of the Hundred Years Wars. by that point there
had been centuries of extensive use. The Burhs defending against Viking raids
in the time of Alfred needed arrowheads too, as did the Vikings themselves.

~~~
phillc73
Adding a response to the original question: The Battle of Gisors in 1198 was
an English victory on French soil.[1]

Regarding the English Longbow, there appears to be an ongoing debate regarding
when the longbow was developed, as used in the Hundred Years War. There are
some who argue that prior to the late thirteenth Century, English bows were
either a shortbow or less powerful "ordinary bow."[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gisors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gisors)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Origins)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
You're right. There's a respectably wide span across which the longbow may
have become dominant, and another period of using some amount of both. I think
most certainty is their origination in Wales. The Welsh and Normans were
constantly learning from each other's tactics from the earliest excursions by
the Normans. There are some who document longbows being used during the war of
succession between England and Normandy in the 1140s (The Anarchy), and in
Wales a little later in the 12th.

Others have argued much later. Unless we get an older find of Mary Rose
quality, I think that debate will run on. :)

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ourmandave
In all the documentaries I've seen (e.g. Robin Hood, Avengers Infinity War,
etc.) blacksmiths are for spouting exposition and building the hero's super
weapon montages.

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dlhavema
Weren't the blacksmiths in Robin Hood only for the bad guy?

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kevin_b_er
Of note, the site attempts to run malicious javascript by some organization
known as "Centify" that interferes with the User Agent. It attempts to block
reading of the text based on the User Agent acting on behalf of the user by
removing extraneous images and scripts.

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ThePadawan
A quite interesting question of language.

English seems to disambiguate between blacksmith, smith and farrier, while
German (to my knowledge) only knows Schmied ("smith") and Hufschmied ("hoof
smith").

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rubberpoliceman
I know of Goldschmied, Silberschmied, Kupferschmied, Feinschmied, Grobschmied,
Messerschmied, and Stahlschmied ({gold, silver, copper, fine, coarse, blade,
steel} smith), all of which are either current trades or preserved as last
names.

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vharuck
The article often touches a lot of things which probably have a lot of
interesting depth, but then it moves on to the next one. It could at least
cite more primary sources so I'd know what to read for more.

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empath75
It reads like a college freshman essay that someone knocked together at the
last minute.

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PhasmaFelis
Tangentially, I was just wondering what the time investment is for mail as
opposed to plate armor. Plate needs to be individually fitted, which I'm sure
is time-consuming, but mail takes ages to attach and (ideally) weld or rivet
each individual link. On the other hand, practically anyone can turn wire into
passable mail with a bit of practice, so it could be farmed out to apprentices
and assistants; it's not _difficult_ , just laborious. Plate presumably
demanded the more valuable time of a fully-trained smith.

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benj111
Does anyone know about repair at this time? A lot of ink is spilled about how
a blacksmith made something, not so much about repair. Arrow heads, were they
repaired/reused, or just used as scrap? If a sword has snapped in half was it
welded back together, modified into a knife, had the whole blade replaced?

~~~
ryanmercer
>If a sword has snapped in half was it welded back together

I'm not aware of any physical period examples of this happening HOWEVER the
Gísla saga mentions a broken sword being used to fashion a spearhead.

Melting the metal back into bar stock would have been a waste of time and
resources if you could just forge it into something else. The above example of
making a spearhead, as you suggest making a shorter blade is logical, someone
could have just reused it to pattern weld (pattern welding existed by the 2nd
century in Europe) another implement.

~~~
benj111
" Then Thorkel brings out the broken bits of "Graysteel," which had fallen to
his lot when they parted their heritage, and Thorgrim forged out of it a
spear, and that spear was all ready by even and fitted to its haft."
[http://sagadb.org/gisla_saga_surssonar.en](http://sagadb.org/gisla_saga_surssonar.en)

This reads to me more like just using the metal as raw material? Obviously
some 'nuance' will be lost in the translation of ancient sagas though.

My intuition is that if everything is hand made to order, theres nearly no
down side to fixing/ remaking versus making from scratch. I'm interested to
see how far that went.

~~~
ryanmercer
Named weapons in myth (Mjolnir, Tyrfing, Fragarach, Moralltach, Claíomh Solais
etc) and legend almost always involved magical properties, I would assume that
using the material to literally forge something else would destroy these
properties and that more likely the intention here is that the tip side of the
break was used for a spear point.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I would assume that using the material to literally forge something else
> would destroy these properties

Historical views about magic properties frequently involve reuse of materials
to transmit properties, so I wouldn't assume that.

~~~
ryanmercer
>so I wouldn't assume that

I assume it based on alleged supernatural items like the Lance of Longinus
(the holy lance, spear of destiny etc). While at its creation it would have
originally been a Pilum some 6 and a half feet long with the pole having been
lost by the 600's when King Khosrau II captured it, since then some have
reported it as having power for rulers/military leaders and Hitler even took
it and some attribute it to the power of the Nazis during WWII as a
fragmented, 'repaired' piece.

Now it's back in the Hofburg palace collecting dust. There's countless other
artifacts that are purported to have magic power/attributes that are mostly
fragments too. If you could manufacture it into something else I imagine it'd
have been a hell of a lot easier to just melt it down and make a swagger stick
or a belt buckle or something.

Mind you we're debating something that is unrpovable but haha, I like to spend
some thought on such things anyway.

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mymythisisthis
[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten)
Looks to me like blacksmiths made lots of buckles for horses, arrowheads,
needles, small knifes, and jewelery.

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gaius
This is silly. If you asked anyone what medieval blacksmiths did 9/10 would
say horseshoes.

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posterboy
T'was blacksmithn, I reckon. In ancient times it was the highest
responsibility in the village, next to the druid's, administering judgement
and a good ol' smitin', collecting funds, preparing or war.

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xrd
If you step back from this article and read the comments, it is actually
really funny to see how passionate people here are about accurately
characterizing blacksmithing hundreds of years ago. I say this as someone who
has done a small bit of blacksmithing and am an interested party in this
conversation. The intensity of the comments here is hilarious.

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rhacker
I absolutely agree with all the comments on how much of a puff piece this is.
Are we going to waste our collective time killing websites that says "birds
are cool" next? Can we please flag and kill this.

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caymanjim
Does no one proofread anymore? I'm interested in the topic, but I can't read
this article. Every other sentence has a spelling or grammar error. It's like
nails on a chalkboard.

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leni536
I wonder why Smith is such a common family name in many languages.

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apocolyps6
Smiths were common, and occupational surnames were common.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surname](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surname)

