The origin of Iron, as told in the Kalevala

I'm curious to the making of steel in the past , from hollywood etc we see these amazing quality of steel swords and weapons but I read that only recently ( 300- 500 years ) was steel made with good consistency and it was a lot of guess work involved in getting a good batch. I know in the Far east they have been making swords for thousands of years but when and how was that knowledge brought to the west? Were the swords in the days of the Vikings or Crusades really that amazing as we perceive now. Lot's of stories based around that special sword " excalibur" for example . That would lead one to believe that there were lot's of junk back then too , fables based around the mystical , magical blade. There must have been tests done through archeology to the quality of metals during certain time periods. Maybe some history buff could enlighten me.
 
Thanks Sam, that one of my favorites! Stacy will probably chime in as he's got the Kalevala's blacksmith in his title on the forums, Ilmarinen.

Although Stacy's as old as mud, he ain't got nothin' on W(V)ainamoinen.

Vainamoinen old and steadfast
He the oldest of magicians...
 
duffy99 said:
I'm curious to the making of steel in the past , from hollywood etc we see these amazing quality of steel swords and weapons but I read that only recently ( 300- 500 years ) was steel made with good consistency and it was a lot of guess work involved in getting a good batch. I know in the Far east they have been making swords for thousands of years but when and how was that knowledge brought to the west? Were the swords in the days of the Vikings or Crusades really that amazing as we perceive now. Lot's of stories based around that special sword " excalibur" for example . That would lead one to believe that there were lot's of junk back then too , fables based around the mystical , magical blade. There must have been tests done through archeology to the quality of metals during certain time periods. Maybe some history buff could enlighten me.
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John Verhoeven has has done a few studies on metals including extensive study in woots damascus. Still unclear how it was made but with the help of a smith Dr. Verhoeven came very close to finding the exact method of its creation. Very interesting but highly technical writings.

Quality weapons were often set aside for rich or powerful people of the time. Asking to arm soldiers with quality weapons was too expensive, it would be like giving a custom William Henry to every new soldiers today.

Our steels now are more pure and controlled in element percentages, something that was a guessing game hundreds of years ago.
 
Just a minor correction, but Kalevala is a Finn epic, not viking. The vikings were Germanic, the Finns north Asian originally.
 
Anne Fuerbach (I probably botched her last name) has done archaelogical research on the industrial city of Merv (The bible mentions men with Merovingian shimmering steel) which while having no resources of its own was a major steel production center in biblical times. Her team found hundreds of thousands of used steel crucibles.

-Page
 
The kalevala is a long and rambling collection of Finnish saga and folk lore. The main hero is Ilmarinin. In the Kalevala there is the detailed story of the creations of the heavens, the creation of beer, and the creation of iron.
I had a thread about it about 3 years ago. There was some good info and a poem I wrote on it:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/582476-paraphrase
 
Those Finns are not nearly so crazy as I thought ! Creating beer and iron - wow !
 
I think there is still some question as to which side of the Urals Finno-Ugric and the other Uralic languages originated. While some belive they originated in western Siberia, others think they may have developed in the Volga valley to the north of where the much larger Indo-Europeans language groups developed. At some point they were on both the European and Asian side of the Urals but most of the folks who speak those languages migrated west and northwest in the last 1000 or more years. The modern Hungarians are the largest sub-group today.
Esav Benyamin said:
Just a minor correction, but Kalevala is a Finn epic, not viking. The vikings were Germanic, the Finns north Asian originally.
Click to expand...
 
Iron was around for quite a while before folks figured out how to carburize it and then turn it into steel. There may have been iron ornaments made from meotrites as early as 3000 BC in Egypt. Iron was being smelted perhaps as early as 1800BC and the Hitties got going around 1500BC and by 1100, the technology had moved into much of the Med basin and parts of Europe.. Cast iron was "invented" in China in around 500 BC. Some say that the original iron weapons of cultures like the Hitties were intially inferior to high qulity bronze weapons, but once folks figured out that you didn't have to wait for iron to fall from the sky, it became more plentiful and much cheaper than bronze. (didn't require tin to be imported from FAR away at great cost) There is a bit of research today that theorizes that the introduction of large numbers of iron weapons cause a major political and social upheaval in the Med basin and Middle East and actually led to kind of a region wide dark age in much of the west, including the Greek Dark Ages after the fall of Mycenae. By the time we get into the first millenium BC, mass produced iron weapons allowed the Assyrians to form what many consider to be the first large professional army in the West. As best as we can tell, crucible steel was first produced perhaps as much as 2300 years ago in India, but some say that people were making primitive bloomery steel in Iran as early as 1000 BC. The Chinese came to the iron weapon game kind of late. The started pattern welding around 500 AD. Of all of the weapons found with the terra cotta warriors at the funerary complex of Emperor Qin Shi Huang from 210 BC, only 4 were iron. The rest were VERY advanced cast bronze and many still had a very sharp edge after 2200 years.
duffy99 said:
I'm curious to the making of steel in the past , from hollywood etc we see these amazing quality of steel swords and weapons but I read that only recently ( 300- 500 years ) was steel made with good consistency and it was a lot of guess work involved in getting a good batch. I know in the Far east they have been making swords for thousands of years but when and how was that knowledge brought to the west? Were the swords in the days of the Vikings or Crusades really that amazing as we perceive now. Lot's of stories based around that special sword " excalibur" for example . That would lead one to believe that there were lot's of junk back then too , fables based around the mystical , magical blade. There must have been tests done through archeology to the quality of metals during certain time periods. Maybe some history buff could enlighten me.
Click to expand...
 
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