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Nilla-Settling of Iceland

Started by Nilla, February 03, 2020, 06:22:12 AM

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Nilla

They looked around at their new home: Almost a peninsula with a few grows with birches, some bogland, some solid ground and mountains around it. The river flew slowly and on the other side, they saw more trees and as it looked; more solid ground. It was indeed a beautiful place. They also saw traces of trees and peat that had been cut but they saw no traces of any buildings. People who lived closer to the coast would probably come up here for wood and peat. Maybe they wouldn't like them settling here but they weren't afraid of some small farmers. They were Pelika men, armed and trained to fight. They were confident to be able to defend their land. But as soon as they could, they would send a message to their grandfather and make him legalize the claim of land on the Thing.

At first, there was a lot of discussions, how to use the few birches. First, they would need some wood to build a shelter. Most of them had grown up with Amircles´ stories about how Iceland had been full of forest and how the first settlers had been stupid enough to cut all big trees and then letting cattle and sheep graze on the former forest to "make sure" that all small trees were destroyed, too. Pelika´s wealth built on their forests. That's what they've heard 1000 times. The trees that were cut were carefully chosen, all animals were fenced. Every Pelika child knew how to tend to the forest. But these few birches?

They decided to first only take so many trees that they needed for a hut, or in the end, it became two huts. They realized that also the sheep would need to be locked away from the groves at night and even if they would need to start small and primitive, they were no small farmers or thralls who lived with their livestock. One hut was primarily made of stones and turf. Here they stored their supply and kept the sheep at night. The second one had a fireplace and a sharp pointed roof to lead the smoke away. There was barely room enough for all of them to sleep so both slave girls and mostly also young Marian spent the nights in the shed. The most important decision was to only cut so many more trees they needed to build a bridge. For all other buildings they planned, they would use logs from the other side of the river.

They wanted a solid bridge from logs and stones, not only a simple duck-board that would be washed away at the first flood. They also didn't want to block the river. Even if they didn't know if anyone lived upstreams, every child in Iceland knows how important the waterways are in a roadless country. Blocking a river may cause real trouble.  It took all winter to build the bridge. The weather was cold but the river didn't freeze. There were probably some hot springs upstream. This made it easier to continue fishing in winter. The river was full of fish. They mostly caught trout but further out in the deeper part of the river they saw big salmons. How hard they tried, they couldn't catch any from the river bank so they decided to build a fishing pier from the first logs they cut on the other side.

But there were also other things they needed from these first logs: During the construction of the bridge, some of their tools were worn out. They would also need nails, hinges and other construction pieces from iron. They had brought some iron bars from Pelika but to form it, they needed a higher heat than firewood or peat could give. They also wanted tar, so they built a proper kiln for tar and charcoal and heated it with deadwood they found on the ground. To heat their hut and to cook at the fireplace in front of it, they usually used peat-fuel.

There were so much to do: They needed a workplace for ironwork. They used all spare pieces of wood to build a fence to make it easier to keep the sheep on the place, they were supposed to grass and after the birth of Werne, the son of Dall and Sana, they needed a second hut. That baby could cry, he kept everyone from sleeping. The voice of a future great lawman, like his great-great-great-grandfather, everyone said. Speaking the law on the Allting so loud that everyone could hear. They had planned to build each couple a proper house as soon as they had time to build and had collected enough material but instead, they built a second hut as fast as they could. They put it down by the fishing pier. In the safe distance from Dall, Sana and their son.


Nilla

I had a bad computer crash the other day. It looks like my son can fix the computer but not all saved things, so this was probably all from this town.

galensgranny

So sorry about your computer.  I hope your son can fix it.

Artfactial

Just wanted to hop in and say I'm sorry for your computer and save file, how bad is the damage?

I will take the time to read your new Iceland entries this weekend, was happy to see you return to it.:)

Nilla

New computer ordered after some attempts to get the old one working. :-\

Artfactial

Oh that's good news!
An upgrade over the old one which might allow for a bit larger cities?;)

Artfactial

Caught up on the new village, a shame you can't continue it. Sounds like it would've been a big challenge with some great story possibilities.:)

Nilla

Maybe someday I can continue the story. I added the seed number on the very first picture and as far as I know, it´s always the same people at the start. And since I didn´t get very far, there will not be much difference. Probably the baby with the loud cry will not be born but I suppose we can let it die, as far as I know, it wouldn´t be very unlikely to that time that newborn dies.

At the moment I play a vanilla game on my new computer. Since I loaded Banished new, there are no achievements and all achievements on one map is a fun challenge that I want to make (or at least all except the 200 years tenure achievement).

Artfactial

I just found out about the Landnámabók...incredible to have such a recourse and account of the formative years of a new land.^^

Nilla

Science isn´t sure how authentic it is. Some scientists mean that it´s pretty much documentary, others are of the opinion that those who wrote it had the agenda to prove the importance of their own families. It was written around 1200. There´s another document: Íslendingabók that´s older; written about 1130, also a lot later in the Christian time and my story builds on historical events told in this book, true or not.

Artfactial

Gehe, people writing histories usually have an agenda or at least a viewpoint on the events:) But yes getting closer to the actual date and authors of the words/work helps a lot in filtering that out.
And in the end, for a story told from a contemporary historical perspective, it matters much if it was true to those people in their worldview and mindset.^^
I'm planning on having some historians in my town who attempt to reconstruct lives from bannies past at some point.

Nilla

I always wanted to end this story with the christening of Iceland in the year 1000 and how it influenced these people. Yesterday I started a new seafarer game that might go this way.

It's no fun to play the same game again, so this story tells about some other young descendants from Dorrit and Amiracle than my first attempt on the crashed computer. This time it's two brothers, sons from Eugeneries younger son Casimeon; so they are grandsons of Eugenery and nephews from the present owner (and what they find bully) Aurelious. Casimeon runs a farm of his own but since it belongs to big Pelika the owner is Aurelious and he only wants Christians on his farms. He tolerates his pagan brother but will not tolerate any pagan son to take over. A few years earlier some cousins went away over the mountain to make a new life. They've heard that they had trouble with neighbours that claimed their land. To avoid such disputes Casimeon wanted to accompany his sons to the new area and make sure with the local chieftain that their claim would be accepted. They loaded everyone on Casimeons ship.

It was Casimeon´s eldest son Delma, his wife Patrinity and their little daughter Halli and his younger son Websterlin, newlywed to Crysta. They also brought a couple of working thralls; Fernand and Permella. They wanted to travel the river north, beyond the last known settlement.

The name Eugeneryson makes miracle. They were welcomed by the local gute with great respect and joy. He would be pleased to have the young grandsons of the great hero in his area. But the land is harsh and poor. It's bad here where he lives and even worse up north where there's still free land to claim. They can forget about farming but with luck find some land that could hold sheep. The river is full of fish and if they find a place close to a stream, they should look for crayfish. He can promise that they will be free from any Christians. Even if White Christ seemed to be a powerful god abroad and in the south of Iceland, here in this harsh land, he has nothing to say and no one he knows of follows him. He will continue to make the right sacrifices as long as he is gute.

They went on rowing the boat upstream. It was hard and difficult and when the river split into two even smaller streams, they decided to stop. There was no good land here but Delma and Fernand followed one river and Websterlin and one of the thralls Casimeon brought to sail the ship home went along the other. Each group would search for a suitable spot to settle. After two days they should return if they've found something or not. The women and elder men would wait there.

Delma and Fernand returned already the next evening, saying that they had found a good spot. Some flat land on both sides of the river; enough for a big herd of sheep, a few trees and a stream with a lot of crayfish, less than one days walk away. Websterlin couldn't possibly find something better. He decided not to wait for his brother so the next morning, he said farewell to his father and thanked him for the help and went with his family and thralls. Crysta would wait for her husband and join later.

The frost had been deep that night and it was still snow everywhere. Would it be possible to find food for themselves and their sheep in these surroundings?


Nilla

When Websterlin and Crysta arrived they were happy that Delma had found this place. He hadn't seen anything half as good. They called their new home Foresbon. Every Pelika child knows that the forest is the base of its wealth, so they decided to be very careful with every tree; use as much stones and peat to build as possible and heat their homes with peat and deadwood. And when they really needed trees; cut them as far from their houses as possible and they would tend to every little tree that spawns.

The first year was very busy but they were young, diligent and resourceful so they managed to build shelters and stores and gather enough food and fuel to survive the first winter. They had been worried about feeding the sheep through the winter, they hadn´t been able to collect very much grass and leaves for them to eat but the area here was quite dry, so there wasn´t much snow and the sheep could find a little themselves. Someone always watched out that the sheep didn´t damage any young trees.

That spring they had a big quarrel. It was close to the split of the settlement. It was all about the baby from the slave girl Permella that was born in early spring. Shortly before, Crysta had also given birth to a healthy son. She demanded that Permella´s son should be set out to die. Patronity was also pregnant and three babies at the same time were too much. At her home place, slave babies and sometimes also free-born babies were set out if times were rough and rougher then here was impossible. The slave baby would risk the lives of their children.  Her husband agreed but Delma proclaimed with big energy that on Pelika no child was ever set out to die and he would not allow that on his land either. It upset Websterlin that Delma talked about his land, he might be the elder but they have started to build this place together, he was younger but in this case the wiser. Permella didn´t leave her hut, she set there all day, holding her baby and cried. This was the first time in her life that she´d left Pelika. She had heard of babies being set out but thought it was stories, you tell to frighten children on long winter evenings. Patronity didn´t know how to act. She too was concerned about the wellbeing of her children and wasn´t sure if they could bring another 3 children safe through next winter. Even if her family wasn´t Christians, many people in her neighbourhood were and they saw each child as a gift from their gods and didn´t set children out and her family hadn´t set any children out what she knew of either. So basically she was on her husband´s side.

The brothers didn´t talk. There was so much work now in spring but nothing was done. As soon as they saw each other it was close to a fistfight (or worse, they both had swords and knew how to use them). Patronity realized that she had to do something. First, she talked to Permella and asked her that if she persuaded everyone to let her keep the baby, would she promise to use some special herbs, she had learned to use from her grandmother who was a skilled herb woman. It would prevent her from having another baby. Then she talked to Crysta, talked about the last year and their efforts and that they always had enough to eat, sometimes there was a shortage of fuel but one more baby wouldn´t make them need more of that. Slave children grow fast and in a few years, this boy could tend to the sheep and make other useful things. He might have to make do eating only crayfish (that they all have loved at the beginning but now was really tired of) but no one will starve because of this one child. Both women realized that if they don´t come to an agreement here, they will have to go back to Pelika in failure and become Christians. None of them wanted that. Crysta promised to talk to her husband and also Patronity promised to talk to hers about being too bossy.

So it was decided that Permella could keep her baby. It took many years until she became pregnant again. The brothers worked together, Dalma seldom spoke about "his" land and now and then even asked for his brother's advice. But in the end, Websterlin happily let his brother make the difficult decisions. He was raised to be a younger brother and had no real ambitions to be something else.

The picture shows the house from Dalma and Patronity. You can see the good crayfish spots, the crossing of the stream and in the background a small forest with spawning new trees.

Nilla

I haven't written anything the past few days although I played a little. I have some issues with the story.

In a story like this, you need to adapt historical events and my interpretation of how people thought and acted at that time into Banished. The discussion about the slave baby in my last entry is one such thing. That's the fun part of writing a story like this. But you also need to adapt Banished gameplay to your story. That makes more trouble.

In the first part of the story, I dealt with marriage among siblings, between master and slave, the interpretation of dying of "old age" and maybe some more things.

In this part, I've come to a point where I've built a thingstead. I want the statistics and the nomads it brings. But in real Iceland to this time a small pour mountain village would never have had a thingstead and a man in his late 20s would not have been chieftain, no matter which important family he came from. How do I explain its presence?

There are other small oddities like a Sami tradesman. In the Northern Scandinavian mainland, this is not odd but here in Iceland to this time? I've never heard of ships in the same culture. They would not have travelled that far. How do I explain this?

I might have a few ideas that I will think about, we will see how it goes on.

The picture shows the troublesome thingstead.

Nilla

So far Delma and Websterlin hadn´t participated in any things meetings. They hadn´t had time but the third spring, they decided to take some days off and attend the spring meeting. In winter they had built a small boat. It would be much easier to go on the river than on land.

When they arrived, Gute Ragnar greeted them happily, saying that he wasn't sure that they had survived up in the harsh mountains, since no one had heard anything from them. He also asked them for their sacrifice fee. Delma was astonished. A sacrifice fee? He had never heard of anything like that. Now the mind of Ragnar changed and he answered with irritation that if they thought that he would make sacrifices in their names to the gods and get nothing in return, they were mistaken. He was not rich like the big landowner in the south. No one at Pelika had ever requested anything from their neighbours in exchange for the animals and other goods that were sacrificed or the big amount of food and beverage on the meeting fiests. Quite the opposite, the neighbours got gifts and support in bad times. But Delma and Websterlin also understood that only wealthy farms could manage this and here up in the poorer north it would be reasonable for everyone to take their share of the costs. Delma had brought some silver in the hope to buy some grain and salt but now he felt forced to give most of it to the gute. He was still displeased, saying that they were 3 years late but he would be satisfied for now but next year he wanted the full fee according to the law.

They were a bit disappointed when they came to the thingstead. At home, it was a beautiful big circle of stones with magical runes and signs and with benches for the elder men to sit on. Here it was nothing but a common large stone on a meadow, normally used by sheep. Their dirt was everywhere. The idols for the sacrifices were also small and simple, the chicken that was sacrificed looked old, thin and chewy, the beer offered to the goods didn't seem to be the strongest. If the gods would be pleased with such poor gifts? But the meeting was peaceful, disagreements were solved without too much agony by any of the involved. Gute Ragnar seemed to be respected and do that part of his duty well even if he often suggested sacrifices as fine with a fee to him for performing the sacrifice, something they never heard of before. They couldn't compare the fiest afterwards with those at Pelika, but nothing was missing and the beer and food were better than they had been used to in the last years.

Delma wanted to speak to his father about the gute and his demands for silver so when it was asked who would accompany Ragnar to the regional things meeting later that spring, he volunteered. Ragnar was satisfied, it wasn't easy to get the men together, he was obliged to bring to the thing. And the grandson from the famous Eugenery Dorritson would bring honour and who knows what other benefits also to him.