Viking stuff.

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Great site, and that is my real heritage. I would love to get a sword and a shield (which I need like a turtle needs a brassiere). Hang them in the Man Cave, but my wife would... well, you know.

Take a liking to a Viking! :great:
 
I met a guy once who made chain mail... not just as armor, but he also made other objects out of mail. Can't remember where I met him, probably at one of those Renaissance Fairs. He showed me how he made it, it was pretty cool... come to think of it, this might have been another truck driver, it happened so long ago that the details are fuzzy. 🤔
 
Great site, and that is my real heritage. I would love to get a sword and a shield (which I need like a turtle needs a brassiere). Hang them in the Man Cave, but my wife would... well, you know.

Take a liking to a Viking! :great:
Scottish?
Have you traced your heritage back to a Clan?

I am of the Douglas Clan
Never back up!!
Great site, and that is my real heritage. I would love to get a sword and a shield (which I need like a turtle needs a brassiere). Hang them in the Man Cave, but my wife would... well, you know.

Take a liking to a Viking! :great:
Sir James Douglas (also known as Good Sir James and the Black Douglas; c. 1286 – 1330) was a Scottish knight and feudal lord.
Are you Scottish?
I am of the Douglas clan
 
Scottish?
Have you traced your heritage back to a Clan?

I am of the Douglas Clan
Never back up!!

Sir James Douglas (also known as Good Sir James and the Black Douglas; c. 1286 – 1330) was a Scottish knight and feudal lord.
Are you Scottish?
I am of the Douglas clan
OMG , you and Morgan might be cousins!! 😮😉
 
Scottish?
Have you traced your heritage back to a Clan?

I am of the Douglas Clan
Never back up!!

Sir James Douglas (also known as Good Sir James and the Black Douglas; c. 1286 – 1330) was a Scottish knight and feudal lord.
Are you Scottish?
I am of the Douglas clan
I'm a big fan of Viking blades, once I get my shop up and running again, I'll start posting some.
 
Scottish?
Have you traced your heritage back to a Clan?

I am of the Douglas Clan
Never back up!!

Sir James Douglas (also known as Good Sir James and the Black Douglas; c. 1286 – 1330) was a Scottish knight and feudal lord.
Are you Scottish?
I am of the Douglas clan

No. Swedish, but I never traced it back that far. My father was full Swedish. Both of his parents came from Sweden. My great grandfather from my father's mother actually worked at Ellis Island late 19th early 20th century. My father wrote his heritage as far back as he knew, and it only goes back a generation or two before his grandparents. We keep his handwritten copy in our family bible.
 
Frodo will make reproductions! Can't wait!!
IMG_0049.jpeg
 
Bad picture
Deer hide, soft yet firm enough to hold its shape
Smells good also 👍
That is a draw string bag that has a belt loop. It is 10” deep and 4” diameter
With the draw string closed it gives you a 6” deep by 3”/4” bag
 
No. Swedish, but I never traced it back that far. My father was full Swedish. Both of his parents came from Sweden. My great grandfather from my father's mother actually worked at Ellis Island late 19th early 20th century. My father wrote his heritage as far back as he knew, and it only goes back a generation or two before his grandparents. We keep his handwritten copy in our family bible.
My great great Grand Pappy on my Mothers side
Also found out my parents were like 4th or 5th cousins, That was unknown at the time
His family was also Douglas. So Maybe that’s why I am so darn stubborn

James Douglas, Lord of Douglas​


Article Talk

Sir James Douglas (also known as Good Sir James and the Black Douglas; c. 1286 – 1330) was a Scottish knight and feudal lord. He was one of the chief commanders during the Wars of Scottish Independence.

A Victorian depiction of Sir James (third from left), and other leaders of the Wars of Independence by William Hole
Tomb of Sir James, St Bride's Kirk, Douglas
 
My Viking ancestors would be proud!

OK, so I don't know if any of my Norse ancestors were actually Vikings, but there are some connections. The Mowats of Caithness and the Orkney Islands in North Scotland had their seat at Castle Bucholly. Bucholly was originally built as a stronghold for Sweyn Asleifsson, who was a Viking warlord mentioned in the Sagas. The Mowat family of Caithness (Lairds of Balqholly/Bucholly) had apparently been intermarried with the Norse for some time by the 1500s. My ancestor Anders Mowatt had a merchant fleet and traveled to Norway, building a land empire and becoming an admiral in the Norse navy. The land that is now the Baroniet Rosendahl museum belonged to him. He married a daughter of Christoffer Rustung, who was alternately an Admiral, a pirate, a pirate hunter, a privateer, and a schemer in Norse politics.

My study of the Vikings shows that all of our modern ideas of them are wrong. They wore Mail and leather armor, had no horned helmets, used short swords rather than great big long ones, and they were mostly under 6ft tall. (But the average adult European man then was only about 5'3" or so, and Vikings were 4 to 5 inches taller than that, so they seemed huge). Their artifacts are fascinating to study...
 
My Viking ancestors would be proud!

OK, so I don't know if any of my Norse ancestors were actually Vikings, but there are some connections. The Mowats of Caithness and the Orkney Islands in North Scotland had their seat at Castle Bucholly. Bucholly was originally built as a stronghold for Sweyn Asleifsson, who was a Viking warlord mentioned in the Sagas. The Mowat family of Caithness (Lairds of Balqholly/Bucholly) had apparently been intermarried with the Norse for some time by the 1500s. My ancestor Anders Mowatt had a merchant fleet and traveled to Norway, building a land empire and becoming an admiral in the Norse navy. The land that is now the Baroniet Rosendahl museum belonged to him. He married a daughter of Christoffer Rustung, who was alternately an Admiral, a pirate, a pirate hunter, a privateer, and a schemer in Norse politics.

My study of the Vikings shows that all of our modern ideas of them are wrong. They wore Mail and leather armor, had no horned helmets, used short swords rather than great big long ones, and they were mostly under 6ft tall. (But the average adult European man then was only about 5'3" or so, and Vikings were 4 to 5 inches taller than that, so they seemed huge). Their artifacts are fascinating to study...
What you have said about Vikings being a short stature is interesting, when people were making the movie "The Vikings" and they made the Longboats as the Vikings did, they found that the seating for the oarsmen was way too close because the actors were way taller than the Vikings and had to patch up the oar holes and make greater spacings. Those Vikings, though being of short stature, scared the hell out of the nations that they plundered and raped, yeah, that too as I have heard that's why there are so many blond haired people in the lands were they came to.
 
What you have said about Vikings being a short stature is interesting, when people were making the movie "The Vikings" and they made the Longboats as the Vikings did, they found that the seating for the oarsmen was way too close because the actors were way taller than the Vikings and had to patch up the oar holes and make greater spacings. Those Vikings, though being of short stature, scared the hell out of the nations that they plundered and raped, yeah, that too as I have heard that's why there are so many blond haired people in the lands were they came to.
They also settled in most of those lands. Russia is called Russia because of the Rus people, who settled there. The Rus were Swedish Vikings. Normandy in France is named for the Normans, or "Northmen" - who were Vikings that established colonies there. The Norman, William the Conqueror, defeated other competing Scandinavian kings to control England. Northern Scotland was controlled by the Norwegian Earls of Orkney, until the Norse king forfeited it to the Brits for non payment of a dowry.

Norse genetics are known as far as Italy, Iran, Spain, and Morocco. Ironically, the genetics of those places are known in Scandinavian countries too. The Vikings took both wives and slaves from those lands back to their homelands. My old neighbor's wife is the most Norse looking woman on the planet, nothing but ice blue eyes and nearly white blonde hair. Her family tree research yielded nothing but Norse names for hundreds of years. But upon taking a DNA test she found a small percentage of Moorish DNA. Someone many generations ago brought someone back from a voyage, most likely a slave. The Vikings didn't care about what race of people they enslaved - they were equal opportunity about that stuff. They would have enslaved the Pope if they had the chance. That Moorish slave probably married an enslaved white person, eventually one of their offspring gained freedom, and through the ages their genetics made their way to Iowa in the US. Kind of amazing, when you think about it...
 

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