This is the first part of our blog about our volunteer week at the construction site Campus Galli, where an archaeological experiment is being carried out. A 9th-century plan for a monastery complex is being built near Messkirch, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, using only the tools and methods available in the 9th century. It is open to visitors as a living history museum in progress.
Background: If you build it, they will come...
Last year we took a trip to St. Gallen in Switzerland to visit the library there. We saw the Plan of St. Gall, which is an architectural plan of an ideal monastery, drawn up around the year 830.
The Plan depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound including churches, houses, guest quarters for distinguished visitors, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and even a special house for bloodletting. The compound was never built in its entirety... until today.
Today, a monastery complex built exactly to the Plan of St. Gall is being constructed in Meßkirch, Germany, using the tools and techniques of the early middle-ages (9th century). The project is called Campus Galli, and the purpose is to carry out experimental archaeology, which means that the project is supported by a board of 18 academic advisers, consisting not only of archaeologists and historians but also experts in theology, veterinary medicine, media studies and others. The project offers scholars and researchers the possibility to work on the site and to conduct archaeological experiments with the carpenters and workers of Campus Galli. The site was opened in April last year (2013), after 8 years of planning, finding support and dealing with local and state bureaucracy.
In about 40 years, it should look something like this sketch made in 1876. Volunteers are welcome to help build the complex, and Kathy and I volunteered to help from April 27 until May 3.
In the text below, there are references to several youtube videos. They are all in German, but one has only a musical soundtrack. They are referred to according to the youtube user name (Mslbelin, Karl Heinz, Journalistenakademie, rk-film). Each link will open in a separate tab (at least it does on our computer).We suggest that as you read, you open the links to the videos and leave the youtube tabs to each video open so you can go back and watch at the time points mentioned.
We Go Back to the Middle Ages
Fashionably dressed
On the first day, Sunday, April 27, we arrived in time for 9:30 am orientation at the "backstage" area. We were issued clothes and shoes. Richard received a tunic, a braided wool belt, pants, a wool "cape" hand woven out of wool (see pics below) and wooden shoes. He lucked out and found a fabric bag that attached to his belt that was large enough to hide his plastic water bottle. Kathy received a long dress, a belt and a woolen "cape", and decided to go with her own shoes until she found out what the day's duties involved.
The woolen "capes" shed water well, which turn out useful. Hiking them up so they covered the back of our necks kept the rain from dripping down our backs as we walked from hut to hut.
All the clothes were made from unbleached, natural colored cloth, probably linen. They are made during the winter in a hotel conference room in town called the "winter camp".
The clothing was voluminous enough that we could wear as many layers underneath as we needed. It was important not to let the modern colors peek out from under the neckline, though. Scarves were in short supply as they tended to disappear and the people making clothing couldn't keep up. One very cold day, Kathy had to borrow a wooden pin to keep her cape closed at the neck so her bright red sweater wouldn't be seen. She was lucky enough to find a cap that fit her.
A day at a monastery stars with a prayer, and a knock on wood
We started the day by walking to the site of the future wooden church, where there is a large cross. The man in the role of the monk said a short prayer in Latin, and although I doubt there were any believers among us, it was good to observe the medieval custom.
Then the monk struck a large wooden plank suspended by ropes, the tabula (Latin, of course), nine times, indicating the start of the work day. The striking of the plank could be heard throughout the construction area, and the "ringing" was used to indicate the time for lunch and the end of the work day as well. We relied on the sound of the wood being struck, because we wore no watches and we had no cell phones to tell us the time. This had a bigger-than-expected impact on experiencing the rhythms of day.
In the picture above, you can see the foundation excavation for the wooden church. It will have a stone foundation. Later, a much bigger stone church will be built around it. The monks had to have somewhere to pray while they built their monastery. The cross in the background designates the place where the altar of the stone church will be.
Gimme shelter
All the "stations", or huts, were outdoors. Each had its own, more or less water-tight roof and an unbleached canvas tarp. There was always a fire place in or near the hut. The wool hut is pictured below. It was cool and rainy all week, so the people with leaky roofs (most of us) had to take shelter under the tarp or the part of the roof covered by the tarp. Every hut was built differently, because there are not many written sources left over from the 800s about how they built shelters for the workmen at a construction site. It's all an experiment, after all!
The wool shed (see pic to the right) had a sunken floor; if linen is being processed, the moisture coming up from the dirt floor is important. The walls and a lean-to roof were made of slender logs. The bark had been left on. The chinks inside were stuffed with moss and scrap wool. The shed roof, unfortunately, was not water-tight (had no tarp cover), and rain dripped down the logs on the inside and dropped onto the benches and the baskets of wool. Lest you say, "well why didn't they know about this before?", this hut was built only last year for the wool workers, and the first rain ever of the season had come the night before. It has been a dry spring in southern Germany!
Sonja, the rope maker for the day, appeared and asked if I would bring some raw wool to the smithy, where Richard was assigned. The wool was to put in his wooden shoes. I thought, OK, maybe the shoes are too big, but I was wrong; but more on this later. On the way back, I helped Sonja carry a basket of firewood to her rope maker's station, which was down the path from the wool hut.
When I got back to weaver's hut, there was a fire going. Almost all the wool had gotten wet, so most of it couldn't be worked. But Natasha showed me how to pull the dirt out of raw, washed wool so that it was ready to be combed. Spent the morning sitting by the fire trying to keep the baskets of wool away from the drips coming through the roof and pulling at the clumps to get dirt and knots out. This work was a bit hypnotic, because I had to focus on seeing the dirt in the wool and on what my hands were doing. At the same time, though, my mind wandered and I wondered if I was slowing down.
For a while, Natasha and I were the only ones in the hut. Then, a woman named Andrea showed up and started hand spinning. In the 9th century, Europe had no spinning wheels; they showed up in the 12th century. Video of Andrea spinning at 6:26 here (Mslbelin).
In this video (Karl Heinz) at 3:40, you can see women working at the wool hut, spinning and sewing. This video was made last summer. You can tell, because everyone is wearing their simple linen dresses with no wool layers on top.
My long dress and cape were constantly knocking over baskets of clean wool onto the ground. Had to learn to be careful when I got up from the bench. Later, the cape turned out to be handy for covering the baskets of wool next to me while I was working to protect them from the drips coming from the log ceiling.
Richard, Tuesday:
Sweeping the clouds away
After a cool morning, the sun came out, and it became a beautiful day. Richard spent the day making brooms. The only tricky part is getting the right amount of compression on the binding of the twigs so that the handle won't fall out but you can still get the handle in. Because the master broom maker was out, l also gave demonstrations to the visitors as they came by.
Not a petting zoo
The broom maker's hut is not far from the pig pen, so I could hear the pigs grunting all day. It was nice to spend the breaks at the fence watching them as they watched me. As Andy, the potter, says, a cat looks down at you, a dog looks up at you, but a pig looks at you at eye level. The pigs are Wollschweine (wooly pigs) (Mangalitsa?), a breed that dates back to the early 1800s in Hungary when domestic pigs were crossed with Wild Boar. They are as close to the breed of pigs in the ninth century as still exists. They are as curious as any of our modern pigs. And, true to their nature, it was reported on Saturday morning (the last day of our stay) that on Friday night, "the damn pigs got out". Luckily, there is a double fence, and the pig only broke out of the inner fence. The outer fence is required by law in Germany to prevent the wild boars from breaking into the pen and passing viruses to and cross-breeding with the domestic pigs (Wollschweine).
The goat pen is on the far side of the pig pen, so I did not see them often, but the small kid goat is really cute. To the amusement and concern of the visitors, it would jump onto the shed roof and get out of the pen every day, but would somehow find its way back in every night. There are also three sheep in the pen, but they keep to themselves at the back. Because they were recently shorn, they looked like goats to the untrained observer.
Kathy, Tuesday:
These shoes are killing me!
Tuesday I was going to try the wooden shoes. Richard says it's a weird feeling to walk in them. I thought it might be like wearing clogs. Not so bad - I had a pair in high school. We'll see.
Well, those wooden shoes hurt! They covered my instep and come all the way to my ankle on top and the wood didn't give, so when I bent my foot to take a step forward, it cut right into my leg. After several steps, I had bruises! Now I know why Richard needed the wool!
Richard finally got the wool I brought him onto the right place in his wooden shoes, so they are no problem any longer. It was a trick to get it to stay in the right place while we walked, because it kept working its way out. Along with wearing 3 pairs of socks, we had to take smaller steps to keep the wool and the shoes in the right place. It was similar to the way you see geishas walking in the movies! They are comfortable to stand in and provide good insulation on cold days. They were warmer than my modern Goretex shoes were on the coldest day. The people who wear them every day get the cabinet maker to grind out the instep a little, or customize them by getting the instep carved out and putting a piece of leather over the instep.
(A side note for the sticklers, who know that medieval shoes were no more than "leather gloves for the feet": the wooden shoes were a safety requirement for the site. The smith actually wore modern safety shoes because his job involved constant exposure to heavy pieces of metal, and the stone mason wears safety glasses.)
Rope making to sooth the soul
Today, after spending the morning hours with Natasha in the wool hut for company, I joined Inge in the afternoon at the rope maker's hut to learn to make rope. The picture above is of me and Inge. (Turns out that Andrea and Inge are sisters.) A video of Inge making rope is at 2:41 on youtube at this link (Journalistenakademie). The repetitive twisting and overlaying was very meditative, and a good rope maker could make 4 meters (more than 4 yards) in an hour. I don't know how much I made, but on Saturday, our last day, I wound what I had made during the past 5 days off the "spool" onto my arm between hand and elbow, and my hand was full. I delivered it proudly to the pig enclosure (see the picture above), where the basket maker was weaving willow twigs between the posts to make the outer fence stronger. My rope was to be used to tie the posts together at the top. The rope I made probably was enough for at most 20 to 30 posts; there are probably hundreds in the outer fence. The huge time investment makes the simplest things, like rope, so valuable.
The rope is made from linden bast, the inner layers of the bark of the linden tree. In the above photo, you can see the fibers bundled together around the hut's central post behind us. As we would explain to visitors, the trees for use in building are felled in the winter between November and February when the sap is not running. Then the bark is stripped and soaked for 6 to 8 weeks in standing water. Tiny bubbles form in between the fibers inside the bark and it can be stripped off and washed. The washing is to free it of a gelatinous layer. The fibers gained are smooth and soft; they didn't rough up my fingers. They are best worked when they are wet, so we always had a bucket of water between us to wet our hands with. On cold days, that could get uncomfortable.
At the rope maker's hut were ropes made in various thicknesses for various uses, from very fine fishing line to the 1/8 to 1/4 inch size for hanging bundles of herbs, to the right diameter for tying down the components of a roof (about a half-inch diameter), to almost an inch in diameter for agricultural uses such as attaching the plow to the harness that the oxen wear.
Bast rope tends to wear quickly when it is drawn over a sharp edge. Hemp rope is better. The site has a permit to start growing a very low-THC variety of hemp next year to use for making rope. Eventually it will be used for lifting stones to build the stone church.
Background: If you build it, they will come...
Last year we took a trip to St. Gallen in Switzerland to visit the library there. We saw the Plan of St. Gall, which is an architectural plan of an ideal monastery, drawn up around the year 830.
 |
| Plan of St. Gall |
Today, a monastery complex built exactly to the Plan of St. Gall is being constructed in Meßkirch, Germany, using the tools and techniques of the early middle-ages (9th century). The project is called Campus Galli, and the purpose is to carry out experimental archaeology, which means that the project is supported by a board of 18 academic advisers, consisting not only of archaeologists and historians but also experts in theology, veterinary medicine, media studies and others. The project offers scholars and researchers the possibility to work on the site and to conduct archaeological experiments with the carpenters and workers of Campus Galli. The site was opened in April last year (2013), after 8 years of planning, finding support and dealing with local and state bureaucracy.
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| Sketch of Plan, by Rudolf Rahn. |
In about 40 years, it should look something like this sketch made in 1876. Volunteers are welcome to help build the complex, and Kathy and I volunteered to help from April 27 until May 3.
In the text below, there are references to several youtube videos. They are all in German, but one has only a musical soundtrack. They are referred to according to the youtube user name (Mslbelin, Karl Heinz, Journalistenakademie, rk-film). Each link will open in a separate tab (at least it does on our computer).We suggest that as you read, you open the links to the videos and leave the youtube tabs to each video open so you can go back and watch at the time points mentioned.
We Go Back to the Middle Ages
Fashionably dressed
On the first day, Sunday, April 27, we arrived in time for 9:30 am orientation at the "backstage" area. We were issued clothes and shoes. Richard received a tunic, a braided wool belt, pants, a wool "cape" hand woven out of wool (see pics below) and wooden shoes. He lucked out and found a fabric bag that attached to his belt that was large enough to hide his plastic water bottle. Kathy received a long dress, a belt and a woolen "cape", and decided to go with her own shoes until she found out what the day's duties involved.
The woolen "capes" shed water well, which turn out useful. Hiking them up so they covered the back of our necks kept the rain from dripping down our backs as we walked from hut to hut.
All the clothes were made from unbleached, natural colored cloth, probably linen. They are made during the winter in a hotel conference room in town called the "winter camp".
The clothing was voluminous enough that we could wear as many layers underneath as we needed. It was important not to let the modern colors peek out from under the neckline, though. Scarves were in short supply as they tended to disappear and the people making clothing couldn't keep up. One very cold day, Kathy had to borrow a wooden pin to keep her cape closed at the neck so her bright red sweater wouldn't be seen. She was lucky enough to find a cap that fit her.
A day at a monastery stars with a prayer, and a knock on wood
We started the day by walking to the site of the future wooden church, where there is a large cross. The man in the role of the monk said a short prayer in Latin, and although I doubt there were any believers among us, it was good to observe the medieval custom.
Then the monk struck a large wooden plank suspended by ropes, the tabula (Latin, of course), nine times, indicating the start of the work day. The striking of the plank could be heard throughout the construction area, and the "ringing" was used to indicate the time for lunch and the end of the work day as well. We relied on the sound of the wood being struck, because we wore no watches and we had no cell phones to tell us the time. This had a bigger-than-expected impact on experiencing the rhythms of day.
In the picture above, you can see the foundation excavation for the wooden church. It will have a stone foundation. Later, a much bigger stone church will be built around it. The monks had to have somewhere to pray while they built their monastery. The cross in the background designates the place where the altar of the stone church will be.
Gimme shelter
All the "stations", or huts, were outdoors. Each had its own, more or less water-tight roof and an unbleached canvas tarp. There was always a fire place in or near the hut. The wool hut is pictured below. It was cool and rainy all week, so the people with leaky roofs (most of us) had to take shelter under the tarp or the part of the roof covered by the tarp. Every hut was built differently, because there are not many written sources left over from the 800s about how they built shelters for the workmen at a construction site. It's all an experiment, after all!
Kathy, Sunday:
Wool gathering
Because Kathy was interested in weaving and sewing, Natasha, the woman who helped us pick out our clothes, asked for her help in the wool hut.
First, we brought a huge basket to the shingle-maker's hut to load up with firewood that he had split and piled. This wood is the leftovers from making shingles. We filled the basket and brought it back to our hut.Wool gathering
Because Kathy was interested in weaving and sewing, Natasha, the woman who helped us pick out our clothes, asked for her help in the wool hut.
The wool shed (see pic to the right) had a sunken floor; if linen is being processed, the moisture coming up from the dirt floor is important. The walls and a lean-to roof were made of slender logs. The bark had been left on. The chinks inside were stuffed with moss and scrap wool. The shed roof, unfortunately, was not water-tight (had no tarp cover), and rain dripped down the logs on the inside and dropped onto the benches and the baskets of wool. Lest you say, "well why didn't they know about this before?", this hut was built only last year for the wool workers, and the first rain ever of the season had come the night before. It has been a dry spring in southern Germany!
Sonja, the rope maker for the day, appeared and asked if I would bring some raw wool to the smithy, where Richard was assigned. The wool was to put in his wooden shoes. I thought, OK, maybe the shoes are too big, but I was wrong; but more on this later. On the way back, I helped Sonja carry a basket of firewood to her rope maker's station, which was down the path from the wool hut.
When I got back to weaver's hut, there was a fire going. Almost all the wool had gotten wet, so most of it couldn't be worked. But Natasha showed me how to pull the dirt out of raw, washed wool so that it was ready to be combed. Spent the morning sitting by the fire trying to keep the baskets of wool away from the drips coming through the roof and pulling at the clumps to get dirt and knots out. This work was a bit hypnotic, because I had to focus on seeing the dirt in the wool and on what my hands were doing. At the same time, though, my mind wandered and I wondered if I was slowing down.
For a while, Natasha and I were the only ones in the hut. Then, a woman named Andrea showed up and started hand spinning. In the 9th century, Europe had no spinning wheels; they showed up in the 12th century. Video of Andrea spinning at 6:26 here (Mslbelin).
In this video (Karl Heinz) at 3:40, you can see women working at the wool hut, spinning and sewing. This video was made last summer. You can tell, because everyone is wearing their simple linen dresses with no wool layers on top.
My long dress and cape were constantly knocking over baskets of clean wool onto the ground. Had to learn to be careful when I got up from the bench. Later, the cape turned out to be handy for covering the baskets of wool next to me while I was working to protect them from the drips coming from the log ceiling.
At 1 pm, the gong rang for lunch. Lunch was a piece of roast pork in a broth with onions and a bean stew with crunchy parsley. Warm, tasty and filling. There was also bread baked on site. It was in high demand among the craftsmen.
That afternoon I tried combing the wool that I had picked clean. It involves combing the knots out and pulling the wool through the combs so that bunches of long fibers are formed. Only long fibers are good for spinning. It is harder than it looks. We used combs made out of wooden paddles with only one row of wooden teeth, as it would have been in the 9th century. The combs are visible on the table in the video link above (Karl Heinz) at 3:57.
In between spinning and combing, Natasha was weaving on an upright loom. It was new to her and had been set up by an expert. On it was a undyed wool rug destined for the wooden church. It was cool to finally see a real vertical loom with clay loom weights on the warp threads, after having seen so many pictures from antiquity and from the Navajo Indians. Archaeology come to life!
Under our tarp was a big basket of wool sheared from the 3 sheep onsite. The wool was waiting to be washed so it could be plucked, combed and spun. (The sheep breed is "Skudde", for the wool specialists out there to whom that matters.)
That afternoon I tried combing the wool that I had picked clean. It involves combing the knots out and pulling the wool through the combs so that bunches of long fibers are formed. Only long fibers are good for spinning. It is harder than it looks. We used combs made out of wooden paddles with only one row of wooden teeth, as it would have been in the 9th century. The combs are visible on the table in the video link above (Karl Heinz) at 3:57.
In between spinning and combing, Natasha was weaving on an upright loom. It was new to her and had been set up by an expert. On it was a undyed wool rug destined for the wooden church. It was cool to finally see a real vertical loom with clay loom weights on the warp threads, after having seen so many pictures from antiquity and from the Navajo Indians. Archaeology come to life!
Under our tarp was a big basket of wool sheared from the 3 sheep onsite. The wool was waiting to be washed so it could be plucked, combed and spun. (The sheep breed is "Skudde", for the wool specialists out there to whom that matters.)
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| Richard at the bellows in the smithy |
Richard, Sunday:
A new appreciation for metallurgy
The blacksmith's hut is an A-frame roof with openings in the peak of the gables to let the smoke from the fire out. The floor was dug into the ground, which made short walls dug into in the dirt. At the top of the wall, at ground level, was a narrow space underneath the roof. This area served as bedroom for the family and kitchen for the blacksmith's wife.
The fire pit was wood lined with clay and lime. The bellows were an approximation of those used at the time because apparently no precise drawings exist from the 9th century. See more of the blacksmith's station in this video from mslbelin at 2:46.
Richard spent most of the day working the bellows and watching the blacksmith, Sven, perform his trade. The first part of the day was spent repairing chisels for the stone mason. After forging a new tip, it had to be heat treated to make it hard. This involved watching the color change, and when the blue area moved sufficiently close to the tip, the end of the chisel was quenched by dunking it in water. The rest of the chisel was still hot, so the blacksmith stood the chisel in a small stone trough with a shallow pool of water in it. With the tip of the chisel in the cool water, the rest of the chisel in the air could cool slowly to keep its strength (strength and hardness being mutually exclusive).A new appreciation for metallurgy
The blacksmith's hut is an A-frame roof with openings in the peak of the gables to let the smoke from the fire out. The floor was dug into the ground, which made short walls dug into in the dirt. At the top of the wall, at ground level, was a narrow space underneath the roof. This area served as bedroom for the family and kitchen for the blacksmith's wife.
The fire pit was wood lined with clay and lime. The bellows were an approximation of those used at the time because apparently no precise drawings exist from the 9th century. See more of the blacksmith's station in this video from mslbelin at 2:46.
Near the end of the day, the blacksmith turned a steel rod into a knife for the Schindler (roofer and shingle maker). I had to hold the hot knife with tongs while the blacksmith punched holes in the handle used for attaching a wooden grip. The last thing the blacksmith made was a metal tip for the monk's walking stick, which was also a measuring rod. He made the tip from a thick steel rod. The thick tip was hammered down to a thin long spike to be inserted into the end of the walking stick. The process of hammering out the spike took a lot of strength to strike the blows with a heavy hammer as quickly as possible before the steel cooled. By the time he finished, the blacksmith's arm was fatigued and sore, and although he is quite muscular, he could only lift the smaller hammers used for the finishing work.
Many of the other trades depend on the blacksmith to make and repair their tools. The potter needs a metal edge for the wooden shovel he uses to dig clay out of the ground. (Only the edge of the shovel is metal, because metal is so valuable.) The wheelwright needs metal bands for the cart wheels. The wood turner and carpenter need axes. And so on.
The blacksmith also needs to make his own coal for the furnace. The part of the process l did not see is turning the local iron ore into steel.
By the end of the day l was tired and a bit sore, but also somehow mentally relaxed, and at the same time stimulated by the new experience. And working outdoors all day in the light rain brought back old memories of being on the farm.
We had very few visitors on Sunday because it was cold and rainy. The site was closed on Monday, as are most museums.
Many of the other trades depend on the blacksmith to make and repair their tools. The potter needs a metal edge for the wooden shovel he uses to dig clay out of the ground. (Only the edge of the shovel is metal, because metal is so valuable.) The wheelwright needs metal bands for the cart wheels. The wood turner and carpenter need axes. And so on.
The blacksmith also needs to make his own coal for the furnace. The part of the process l did not see is turning the local iron ore into steel.
By the end of the day l was tired and a bit sore, but also somehow mentally relaxed, and at the same time stimulated by the new experience. And working outdoors all day in the light rain brought back old memories of being on the farm.
We had very few visitors on Sunday because it was cold and rainy. The site was closed on Monday, as are most museums.
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| Richard making brooms |
Sweeping the clouds away
After a cool morning, the sun came out, and it became a beautiful day. Richard spent the day making brooms. The only tricky part is getting the right amount of compression on the binding of the twigs so that the handle won't fall out but you can still get the handle in. Because the master broom maker was out, l also gave demonstrations to the visitors as they came by.
Visitors could buy a broom at the broom maker's station. In one tour group whose members it was very important to impress, one guy bought a broom. We took it as a good sign.
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| The pig pen. Note the two rows of fencing. |
Not a petting zoo
The broom maker's hut is not far from the pig pen, so I could hear the pigs grunting all day. It was nice to spend the breaks at the fence watching them as they watched me. As Andy, the potter, says, a cat looks down at you, a dog looks up at you, but a pig looks at you at eye level. The pigs are Wollschweine (wooly pigs) (Mangalitsa?), a breed that dates back to the early 1800s in Hungary when domestic pigs were crossed with Wild Boar. They are as close to the breed of pigs in the ninth century as still exists. They are as curious as any of our modern pigs. And, true to their nature, it was reported on Saturday morning (the last day of our stay) that on Friday night, "the damn pigs got out". Luckily, there is a double fence, and the pig only broke out of the inner fence. The outer fence is required by law in Germany to prevent the wild boars from breaking into the pen and passing viruses to and cross-breeding with the domestic pigs (Wollschweine).
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| Curious woolly pigs |
The goat pen is on the far side of the pig pen, so I did not see them often, but the small kid goat is really cute. To the amusement and concern of the visitors, it would jump onto the shed roof and get out of the pen every day, but would somehow find its way back in every night. There are also three sheep in the pen, but they keep to themselves at the back. Because they were recently shorn, they looked like goats to the untrained observer.
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| Kathy and Inge at the rope maker's station. Note the linden bast tied to the post in the background. |
These shoes are killing me!
Tuesday I was going to try the wooden shoes. Richard says it's a weird feeling to walk in them. I thought it might be like wearing clogs. Not so bad - I had a pair in high school. We'll see.
Well, those wooden shoes hurt! They covered my instep and come all the way to my ankle on top and the wood didn't give, so when I bent my foot to take a step forward, it cut right into my leg. After several steps, I had bruises! Now I know why Richard needed the wool!
Richard finally got the wool I brought him onto the right place in his wooden shoes, so they are no problem any longer. It was a trick to get it to stay in the right place while we walked, because it kept working its way out. Along with wearing 3 pairs of socks, we had to take smaller steps to keep the wool and the shoes in the right place. It was similar to the way you see geishas walking in the movies! They are comfortable to stand in and provide good insulation on cold days. They were warmer than my modern Goretex shoes were on the coldest day. The people who wear them every day get the cabinet maker to grind out the instep a little, or customize them by getting the instep carved out and putting a piece of leather over the instep.
(A side note for the sticklers, who know that medieval shoes were no more than "leather gloves for the feet": the wooden shoes were a safety requirement for the site. The smith actually wore modern safety shoes because his job involved constant exposure to heavy pieces of metal, and the stone mason wears safety glasses.)
Rope making to sooth the soul
Today, after spending the morning hours with Natasha in the wool hut for company, I joined Inge in the afternoon at the rope maker's hut to learn to make rope. The picture above is of me and Inge. (Turns out that Andrea and Inge are sisters.) A video of Inge making rope is at 2:41 on youtube at this link (Journalistenakademie). The repetitive twisting and overlaying was very meditative, and a good rope maker could make 4 meters (more than 4 yards) in an hour. I don't know how much I made, but on Saturday, our last day, I wound what I had made during the past 5 days off the "spool" onto my arm between hand and elbow, and my hand was full. I delivered it proudly to the pig enclosure (see the picture above), where the basket maker was weaving willow twigs between the posts to make the outer fence stronger. My rope was to be used to tie the posts together at the top. The rope I made probably was enough for at most 20 to 30 posts; there are probably hundreds in the outer fence. The huge time investment makes the simplest things, like rope, so valuable.
The rope is made from linden bast, the inner layers of the bark of the linden tree. In the above photo, you can see the fibers bundled together around the hut's central post behind us. As we would explain to visitors, the trees for use in building are felled in the winter between November and February when the sap is not running. Then the bark is stripped and soaked for 6 to 8 weeks in standing water. Tiny bubbles form in between the fibers inside the bark and it can be stripped off and washed. The washing is to free it of a gelatinous layer. The fibers gained are smooth and soft; they didn't rough up my fingers. They are best worked when they are wet, so we always had a bucket of water between us to wet our hands with. On cold days, that could get uncomfortable.
At the rope maker's hut were ropes made in various thicknesses for various uses, from very fine fishing line to the 1/8 to 1/4 inch size for hanging bundles of herbs, to the right diameter for tying down the components of a roof (about a half-inch diameter), to almost an inch in diameter for agricultural uses such as attaching the plow to the harness that the oxen wear.
Bast rope tends to wear quickly when it is drawn over a sharp edge. Hemp rope is better. The site has a permit to start growing a very low-THC variety of hemp next year to use for making rope. Eventually it will be used for lifting stones to build the stone church.
I worked at the rope maker's station for the rest of the week because there were enough people (employees and volunteers) at the wool hut, but there was nobody to man the rope-maker's station most of the day. Inge was the paid employee who usually manned the station, but she was also paid to clean the bathrooms and common areas in the mornings. On rainy days, she had to spend the whole day cleaning again and again, as mud was tracked into the trailers that housed the restroom facilities and the employees' common room backstage. And you know how Germans like cleanliness!
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| The foundation trench for the church after the heavy rains on Wed. and before the drainage ditch was dug. |
Richard, Wednesday:
You'll never get rich by digging a ditch
First half of the day was spent helping Andreas, the Zimmerman (carpenter), who is working on the wooden church. At this early stage, trenches for the foundation are being dug, so Richard became an Irish ditch digger for a day. In the ninth century, a ditch digger could dig 0.3m3 per hour. We managed 0.5m3 before noon. The dirt was wet from the rain and heavy. And the ninth-century shovel was heavy even when empty. (see (Karl Heinz) at 4:01)
I learned a lot from Andreas. He is making a Kratztafel (scratchboard), which in the 9th century was used to draw plans for a building. It consists of a layer of charcoal on top of a bed of white lime. The "scratches" in the charcoal expose the white background and the plans become visible. The stone church will have a crypt, so perhaps the foundation for the wooden church can be reused.
See Andreas, the carpenter, with the long black beard at 0:58 and 5:21 in the youtube video by Mslbelin.
During the noon meal, rain water had accumulated in the foundation trench to that we couldn't dig any longer. Instead, we went to the capenter's shed, where I carved wooden nails for shingles. Boy, do we need shingles. It will take about 8,000 to 10,000 shingles for the stone church. But before that, each of the craftmen's sheds need to be shingled.
Kathy, Wednesday:
Raindrops keep falling on my head
On Wednesday, it rained all day long and water started dripping through the tarp, despite (or maybe because of) my best attempts to keep it from pooling at the low spot. The only dry spot at the rope maker's station was reduced to approximately 1 square meter. Alone at my station, I tried to arrange my seat and the spool within this dry spot under the tarp. It rained so much that the site closed one hour early at 5 pm. Boy, were we grateful!
Richard, Thursday:
Generating more hot air
Worked with Tino, the Schmied (smith), again today.
Richard, Saturday:
During the last minutes of the lunch break, I managed to put in some time at the wood-turner's station, see pic below. The employees at the site ate their lunch from wooden bowls with wooden spoons. I decided to make a couple of spoons for future use.
Please see Part 2, posted in May, for a description of the people we worked with, the working conditions, our reception as Americans, and the send off on Saturday evening.
You'll never get rich by digging a ditch
First half of the day was spent helping Andreas, the Zimmerman (carpenter), who is working on the wooden church. At this early stage, trenches for the foundation are being dug, so Richard became an Irish ditch digger for a day. In the ninth century, a ditch digger could dig 0.3m3 per hour. We managed 0.5m3 before noon. The dirt was wet from the rain and heavy. And the ninth-century shovel was heavy even when empty. (see (Karl Heinz) at 4:01)
I learned a lot from Andreas. He is making a Kratztafel (scratchboard), which in the 9th century was used to draw plans for a building. It consists of a layer of charcoal on top of a bed of white lime. The "scratches" in the charcoal expose the white background and the plans become visible. The stone church will have a crypt, so perhaps the foundation for the wooden church can be reused.
See Andreas, the carpenter, with the long black beard at 0:58 and 5:21 in the youtube video by Mslbelin.
During the noon meal, rain water had accumulated in the foundation trench to that we couldn't dig any longer. Instead, we went to the capenter's shed, where I carved wooden nails for shingles. Boy, do we need shingles. It will take about 8,000 to 10,000 shingles for the stone church. But before that, each of the craftmen's sheds need to be shingled.
Kathy, Wednesday:
Raindrops keep falling on my head
On Wednesday, it rained all day long and water started dripping through the tarp, despite (or maybe because of) my best attempts to keep it from pooling at the low spot. The only dry spot at the rope maker's station was reduced to approximately 1 square meter. Alone at my station, I tried to arrange my seat and the spool within this dry spot under the tarp. It rained so much that the site closed one hour early at 5 pm. Boy, were we grateful!
Richard, Thursday:
Generating more hot air
Worked with Tino, the Schmied (smith), again today.
Richard, Saturday:
During the last minutes of the lunch break, I managed to put in some time at the wood-turner's station, see pic below. The employees at the site ate their lunch from wooden bowls with wooden spoons. I decided to make a couple of spoons for future use.
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| Richard in his element, turning some wood for spoons |
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