Sustainability

Working with local villagers led by Margrét Hrönn Hallmundsdóttir, an archaeologist from NAVE, the purpose was to investigate how sustainable our ancestors were. The first task was to build a kiln

based on archaeological evidence - the ‘footprint’ left by the intense

heat needed to melt iron. The team knew that these early kilns were

averaging 30cm diameter and (in Iceland) were built of turf and stone.

Over a three-day period, turf, lava blocks and clay from hot springs was

gathered and the kiln began to take shape.

Carolina lombardini from Cnr-iValSa in italy reSearChed the proCeSS – here She iS with iron Soil, CharCoal and raw iron.

4 I Green VillaGe

Carolina (it) with daVe watSon (Uk), marGrét hrönn hallmUndSdóttir (iCe) and the ‘VikinG-aGe’ iron kiln.

Archaeologists, researchers, rural developers and linguists from Italy, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom descended on the hamlet of Árbær near Selfoss on Iceland’s rugged south coast to re-enact Viking Age iron production.

Words Martin Clark

Photography Martin Clark

The 10-counTry eu-supporTed ‘Green VillaGe’ projecT ran a communiTy inTeracTiVe acTion in iceland recenTly

susTainable

iron producTion The ‘VikinG way’

Five hours later, the ‘slag’ was released from the kiln base like a mini-lava flow from nearby volcano ‘Hekla’. Then the kiln yielded a mucky mass of iron, charcoal

and cinders – called a ‘bloom’. tappinG the SlaG from the bottom of the kiln.

Our ancestors would then have beaten this with hammers, continually re-heating it and shaping it until the impurities were taken out. The figures –

38 kilos of charcoal + 37 kilos

of iron rich soil (red ochre) gave

2.8 kilos of raw impure iron. The

bloom was divided and Icelander

Guðjón Stefán Kristinsson and

UK blacksmith David Watson

will create something memorable

with it

Project leader Martin Clark from Grampus Heritage in the UK explains what it’s all about...’these days, we’re incredibly wasteful and we throw such a lot of things in the bin – including metal! Our common ancestors from the Medieval period knew the true value of metal because they worked incredibly hard for several days to produce just a few kilos. Iron was so precious that the poorest people had hardly any’.

5 I Green VillaGe

Sustainability

the finiShed reSUlt - a ‘bloom’ of iron, ready for re-workinG into SomethinG USefUl

Up until the industrial revolution such kilns would have been a common site, dotted around the northern landscape. Using local iron rich soil and charcoal, the experiment

began with fire, a constant draft to give plenty of oxygen

and layers of iron soil and charcoal fed in from the top of

the kiln’s 90 cm high chimney.