With plenty of time to kill between now and Season 8 of Game Of Thrones (sob), people are coming up with lots of ways to keep the fandom occupied — up to and including blacksmithing. The YouTube series “Man at Arms: Reforged,” hosted by Baltimore Knife and Sword, recently filled 20 minutes of the interminable wait by re-creating Euron Greyjoy‘s battle-axe, which turned out to be exactly as frightening as we expected.
It’s truly remarkable to watch the process from start to finish, which includes a computer-generated design of the axe head, the forging of the head and handle (which are then welded together) and the intricate work of adding the squid design in wrought iron on the side of the axe head:
“Man at Arms” also re-created Ice, the iconic Valyrian sword wielded by Ned Stark (sob again, I’ll never get over it) earlier this year, which you can watch here to kill even more time.
While companies like Baltimore Knife and Sword have been creating stage combat weaponry for decades, blacksmithing has experienced a recent surge of interest among young people thanks to Game Of Thrones. Australia’s ABC news recently reported that the Artist Blacksmiths Association of South Australia has seen a growing number of young adults wanting to experience what it’s like to work with fire and metal.
“We have a lot of younger teenagers in particular who have been watching a lot of ‘Game of Thrones’ and things like that, and have their own interests in what blacksmiths might be able to do,” said the association’s Brian Dreyer. “The number of younger people we have coming along and wanting to learn how to make weaponry is quite interesting. We do not actually teach them that, but we do teach them the basic blacksmithing skills; beyond that is up to them.”
So there you have it: a new possible hobby to while away the hours while we wait for the final season of Game Of Thrones. Go on, channel your inner Gendry!
Gendry!
Aha – Very appropriate 🙂
A great video BTW. I enjoy watching shows like this – A bit like ‘Forged in Fire’ on the Discovery History channel. As Doug Marcaida one of the panel of judges would say – “It will kill!”
One thing that I find curious with GoT, is that for a civilization that’s supposedly been around for thousands of years, they haven’t progressed much technology wise on Westeros! No power hammers or MIG welders in Gendry’s workshop in KL 😉
Black Raven,
I always like to watch the blacksmiths and glassblowers as they work anytime I come across them – it is a fascinating process.
I’ve watched a few episodes also out of curiosity, and it really is amazing to watch the process and see how they turn a hunk of metal into art (in a week!) and the tests are fun too 🙂 I can see how a lot of new interested has emerged. Every contestant on that show has a home forge, I never realized all the new equipment available to the home hobbyist – making it seem quite affordable.
Man at Arms Reforged is great and always has been. Watch the episode where they make Ice. These guys are legit and always have been. Illyio (sp) is amazing. There are tons of episodes on YouTube they also make Needle and even Longclaw though that was one of the way earlier episodes.
Black Raven,
Good observation! My guess is, they lose so much in the years-long winters that it’s really hard to make progress. Deaths throughout the winter, as food and fuel diminish; massive die-offs when the spring fevers hit.
I completely agree! I’ve always wondered why GRRM built his world with such a lengthy timeline when his story inspiration was largely the War of the Roses-era Europe. The Wall was built 8000 years ago and yes, it incorporates magic, but its construction is attributed to Bran the Builder.
If the technology existed to build the wall and the castles fortifying it 8 millennia ago, why hasn’t Westeros progressed far beyond our modern day level? It only took humans 2000 years to get from the Roman era to the computer age.
LadyGoodman,
Yes, so very true. One would think a civilization so old would have surpassed even the technologies we have today.
Perhaps its due to the maesters in Oldtown holding back technological advancement? From what we see, they simply archive ancient knowledge (such as what Sam found in old books) and not interested in using that knowledge to push technology forward?
I’ve often thought it was a great loss to this world when the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed. All that ancient knowledge lost forever! As some scholars have speculated, perhaps there was an advanced civilization many thousands of years ago who got wiped out either through natural causes or ended up destroying themselves with ancient WMD 😉
viki,
Yes, seems like GoT has got many people interested in having a go at Blacksmith’n which I think is great. Its an ancient art/skill which should be kept alive.
Modern technology in some respects has ruined what was once a common site in villages and towns – the smith working at his forge. I guess more so in the days when horses did the pulling rather than a steam or internal combustion engine!
Yes, you could well be right. I’ve never considered that scenario.
I spent four hours watching some of these videos this morning. While I feel very educated in the ways of metal forging now, I feel like my employer is going to frown heavily on the lack of work I managed to get done! 🙂
Thanks for sharing!!!
Very fascinating videos about blacksmithing and forging in the modern day (I went on to watch the Ice and Needle and Jaime’s sword ones).
The profession of a blacksmith is ancient and has always carried a mythical/magical aspect. Metal-working must’ve seemed like magic to ancient contemporaries. World mythology is full of smith figures. Hephaestus, Wayland the Smith, Seppo Ilmarinen in my native mythology…
My grandfather had a smithy on his farm, like many farms in my country in the first half of the 20th century. Mostly it was used just for shoeing the work horses, maybe some repairs on farming equipment – certainly not for forging weapons! Grandfather acquired the first tractor in late 1940s/early 1950s so the horses were phased out and the smithy was mostly forgotten. Until the late 1970s when my dad and uncle, who’d learned the basics as kids, fired it up again to demonstrate to us kids (me, my brother, our cousins). I worked the bellows, got to hammer some red hot iron and plunge it into water for tempering. Wow, it was magical!
Oh, and I think the fact that the only surviving Robert Baratheon bastard (in the show) is a smith, as opposed to a weaver or something is significant. Go Gendry!!!