What was the role of the blacksmith in medieval society? | Hacker News Reader

What was the role of the blacksmith in medieval society?

medievalists.net

89 pointspetethomas71 comments

And so they don’t talk at all about the non-military metalwork that a blacksmith would have done, or the value of those things. Like nails, or hinges, or gates, or locks, or tools for other workers.

IMO, it is useful to look at what a modern blacksmith does and then ask what of those things had what utility back then.

Check out the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America and then come back to this article and see how empty it is.

Nor does he mention horse shoes, and eating knives in an age where nearly everyone carried their own personal knife for food. Then there's the other cutlery and kitchen equipment, and the scythes and other tools to grow and harvest that food. The bands for barrels and wheels. The linchpins for those wheels.

That's the reason blacksmiths were the linchpin (sorry) of their village. They were the toolmakers of their day.

Even militarily it's strangely lacking. No mention of the million arrows an English expedition might take to France. That needs a million arrow heads. There's a surprising amount of work goes into a bodkin or broadhead, needing hundreds or thousands across the country to contribute.

Yet the author is studying for a degree in Medieval Studies and I've just read a bunch of history books for fun.

Eh, most people used wooden or ceramic eating utensils. Except the rich of course. There is a reason why a metal utensils set was dowry...

The other stuff, indeed. The article is a shallow editorial not a major work on medieval history.

That's why the personal knife was so important as most of the rest wasn't metal. :)

About the personal knife, it is interesting that in the french country, you often see people eating with their own personal knife, even when they have all the cutlery they need in the kitchen. Lagiole or Opinel folding knives are typical.

These knives are often prized possessions, and it is not uncommon to see old people using the same knife they had when they were young, the blade being shortened by successive sharpening.

When did England invade France in the Medieval era?

The Hundred Years War, 1337 to 1453. Henry V and Agincourt etc.

Edit: Dates :)

That's the answer I was expecting. It seems strange to me to use the end of the High Medieval era and extrapolate that back across the whole.

It's the most well known. It's not like the English longbow or archery was a recent innovation by the time of the Hundred Years Wars. by that point there had been centuries of extensive use. The Burhs defending against Viking raids in the time of Alfred needed arrowheads too, as did the Vikings themselves.

Adding a response to the original question: The Battle of Gisors in 1198 was an English victory on French soil.[1]

Regarding the English Longbow, there appears to be an ongoing debate regarding when the longbow was developed, as used in the Hundred Years War. There are some who argue that prior to the late thirteenth Century, English bows were either a shortbow or less powerful "ordinary bow."[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gisors

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Origins

You're right. There's a respectably wide span across which the longbow may have become dominant, and another period of using some amount of both. I think most certainty is their origination in Wales. The Welsh and Normans were constantly learning from each other's tactics from the earliest excursions by the Normans. There are some who document longbows being used during the war of succession between England and Normandy in the 1140s (The Anarchy), and in Wales a little later in the 12th.

Others have argued much later. Unless we get an older find of Mary Rose quality, I think that debate will run on. :)

Centuries? In Wales perhaps, but not in the large-scale standardised way across England. That was initiated by Edward I who saw the longbow in action during a campaign in Wales, and ordered every able-bodied man in England to practice every Sunday on the village green. That's what lead his grandson to have access to so many highly trained longbow archers.

Archery definitely existed before that time, but that was not the same as the famous heavy longbow of the late Middle Ages.

Some have argued earlier, see my sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18544499

It's quite possible that they existed earlier, but as far as I know, they weren't in widespread use until Edward I ordered everybody to practice with them. And that makes a huge difference, because you need a lot of practice to be good with a longbow, and many many people practicing with them made it easier for Edward III and Henry V to field so many good archers.

England was also under French rule during much of this time so I would expect smiting to aid war efforts on the continent, also the middle part of this period has all those crusades.

Prior to that, Vikings, Norsemen. Lots of interchange over the channel.

The Kings of England were nobles in France with lands over there ever since William the Conqueror. He didn't stop being Duke of Normandy just because he was also now King of England and his lands and titles stayed in the family. Many of them primarily spoke French up to the Tudors. They didn't see it as invading France, but protecting and securing their ancestral rights.

Constantly. From 1066 onward until the Tudors finally lost Calais, English monarchs were also barons or counts or dukes of lands in what is now France, whether in Normandy or Aquitaine or Gascony, or other places, and they were constantly getting snarled up in conflicts with other French nobles or the French king.

>Yet the author is studying for a degree in Medieval Studies and I've just read a bunch of history books for fun.

Often there does seem there must be a more meritocratic way to organize the merit of intellectual endeavors than what Feynman said could be "rotten clubs," academia. Surely academia is not the worst model, but with the tech we have today it seems quite medieval (sorry).

This is a very real problem, even in academic circles. My wife has a PhD in medieval studies, but because she's pursuing a career outside of academia she has no affiliation with an educational establishment. That means that if she wants to do research she has to get friends still within the system to borrow books on her behalf from university libraries. She's also unlikely to get anything she writes published, and presenting papers at conferences is prohibitively expensive because they're all priced on the basis that everyone is just going to expense their tickets, travel, and accommodation.

Academia is very much a club of people who think they're superior to the rest of us because they have a university ID badge, and getting anywhere in that world is essentially a case of waiting for professors to die off. There's a great many good reasons she decided to get out of that world professionally, but it seems a shame to stop talented and passionate people from contributing.

> She's also unlikely to get anything she writes published.

I chose not to remain in academia, but I still publish from time to time and certainly I've never had anything turned down by an editorial board for not being presently employed in academia (and then the article goes on to anonymous peer review). One can put down one’s university alumnus e-mail address in one's contact information, and if institutional affiliation is asked "University of X (alumnus)" is enough – often in the humanities the affiliation is shown in the article to give readers an idea of what tradition the writer comes out of, not necessarily where he/she is presently employed.

With regard to your wife not being able to borrow from uni libraries, that is unfortunate, but you shouldn’t disparage academia internationally as an elitist club for that, because there are myriad institutions where borrowing privileges are extended to alumni or even to the general public.

In Amsterdam it's possible for anyone to get an AdamNET [0] card that allows them to borrow from several libraries, including two university libraries, the library of another scientific institute, or the regular public library.

[0] http://www.adamnet.nl/ 15 years ago it included 5 libraries, but that number seems to have exploded since then; several more schools and a bunch of museums are now also listed. The price has gone up, sadly.

And no mention of plows.

IIRC almost the entire reason that northern europe could have a much larger society in medieval times (compared to roman) was that they had more metal, for making better plows, to turn over the heavy soil. That's why blacksmiths were so important.

First they had to make the swords before they could turn them into ploughshares.

"Across the country"? I thought that a lot of the production of the English warbow and its associated equipment was pretty centralized. Hunting equipment (both bows and arrows) as something entirely different (I think there's some evidence in found arrowheads).

But yeah, the article also equates "metalworker" and "blacksmith" in the first sentence, which is a bit weird, considering how highly specialized professions often were. No such thing as a "full stack smith", especially in late medieval cities.

Lords had quite a lot of power at the time, supplying soldiers (equipped) was basically one of their taxes to the king. I would be surprised if lords didn't maintain their own capability to produce arrows. Plus in a siege situation you would also want to be able to repair weapons and such.

I don't think a full stack smith would have been that unusual. Certainly at the low end. The friendly local blacksmith would probably be expected to do just about everything. If you wanted a top end sword, that would be much more specialised. I don't have any idea about the relative size of the groups though.

My understanding is things like armour were highly specialised and centralised. Not sure about the basic armour for archers and men, which would have been needed in more quantity.

Archery seems to have required a properly national effort, thanks to the escalation of military in the Hundred Years War. Levies on Lords and the peasantry in shires to provide men, wood, feathers, heads and what not. The assembly was, as I understand it, at least mostly centralised. There were levies to collect goose wing feathers from every goose to fill huge orders. I've no idea if Northern shires got off lightly thanks to distance. :)

Ultimately there was a Keeper of the King's Arrows who was responsible for just managing it all and bringing in adequate stocks. Similar for bows.

Earlier it wouldn't have needed that scale of effort, or management. I thought most came from the shires with the men going to the King, and was often quite variable as a result.

I never dug too deep into medival history, so thanks for pointing the Keeper of King's Arrows out to me. Definetly worth a deeper look or two.

Quite interesting to see the first signs of "industrialisation" of war already that early. Usually that is put into much later periods. (With the notable exception of naval warfare, navies always required more management attention than armies).

At the moment I am studying history at my local university (as a hobby to be honest). I am also an industrial engineer by training, a supply chain manager and currently a project manager for Integrated Logistics Support. And what I realized is that history is focusing a lot on the social side of things. And yes the military side as well (there is one professor who discouraged students to go after military what-ifs if they don't have the propper background).

What they totally lack is technical, economic and trade / supply side of things. Nobody is really looking into stuff like resource allocation during modern war like WW 1 and WW 2 on the level of military gear developed. Lend-lease is an underrepresented topic imho.

So I am not surprised that you with a technical background and an interest in history can provide insight into the importance bn of blacksmiths a pure historian can't.

And if you look at the area where technology, production and military overlap it really gets tricky. Even current experts are struggling for today's challenges. So I can imagine that in a historical context it is even harder, especially without a strong background in one of the three domains and solid knowledge ib at least one of the others.

I guess what I want to say is, let's go easy on zhe guy and provide some additional ideas. Maybe he's reading this discussion.

I wouldn't say logistics is completely ignored, but yes it is under represented.

I'm sure I've come across contemporary lists of what lords would have to supply for a mediaeval campaign, (something like each lord shall supply X archers, each with Y arrows, also Z men at arms) so you could work backwards from there.

Sorry if I'm teaching my grandmother the suck eggs.

As an observer, history teachers have taught me that Rome, Napoleon and maybe Alexander worried about logistics. I theory the message is that they were superlative in their logistical prowess, but in practice we only see a few examples.

There are certainly exceptions. I remember one documentory that looked at the theory that the roman empire's strength was infrastructure. I simply feel it is underrepresented.

Are there any good sources for the layperson? Coincidentally I was searching for average on-person items in different eras today and found little of any use at all (though the dumbing down of search results may be more to blame than lack of sources existing)

I would suggest to go for experimental archaeology. These guys are just trying out stuff with the tools and tech frombthe appropriate period.

There is currently a castle in France under construction, I think they should have some details on stuff like that.

A very interesting perspective, thanks. Perhaps a little surprised to learn there's not much investigation into those areas.

I imagine my reading choice may reflect my background and pick out some that focus on more military, tactical and technical areas. So a fair criticism too.

> Nobody is really looking into stuff like resource allocation during modern war like WW 1 and WW 2 on the level of military gear developed.

From a German perspective there is a lot of discussion on this, especially on WW2.

Lot's of debate on forced labor for military production (Spielberg even made a movie about this - Schindler's List), discussions on the role of women (who had to take over men's work in civilian areas to keep infrastructure running), lots of discussions in food supply and lots of debates about development of submarines and the V2 rocket. The impact of war on coal mining as well as factories and supply chain and being target for air strikes.

That's true. What I miss is more an analysis of the available resources, how these resources have been applied and what kind of equipment was produced and how. From a purely technical perpective one could argue that German tank development, as one example, was not perfectly geared for mass production under war conditions. Some of the welds on genuine WW2 Panthers were better then some you see on 21st century cars. Why would you do that during WW2? Also the maintenance and repair operations of the warring nations in WW2 deserve a much closer look, the framework to be applied is available now, albeit in the engineering domain and not the historical faculties.

And resources cover a lot more than just man power., So I would argue that the Allies in both world wars had more resources and industrial capacities and have been more effcient in applying them to the war effort. Obviously tactics play into that as well, as does operations and strategy. When you have more you can afford to burn precious power on risky or unsuccessful operations, when you don't you have to be more cautious in selcting your war goals.

Regarding slave labour. That was one way to offset the manpower used for combat. I won't go too deeply into the moral and social aspects of it here, let's just say that this was among the worst things the Germans did in WW2. Again what would be interessting is an analysis of whether it was worth it or not. See, I would assume that using slave labour would result in a much higher degree of rework for the stuff slaves produced. We are talking about Germans here, there have to be at least some numbers out there regarding this. Again, engineering knowledge can help to make sense of these numbers. And I could go on, which was the main reason why I decided to study history (even if it doesn't look like it will lead to anything right now, who would have thought that you can only miss so many lectures to be allowed to take the exam?).

In many feudal societies, metal was a controlled substance especially among the peasant/serf populations. If you look at the architecture of most residences from the medieval era: thatch, wattle-and-daub and not a lot of hinges or nailed together things.

Leather hinges and wooden nails are significantly cheaper in a society where your blacksmith (or his apprentices for nails) has to spend a significant amount of time making them. Not to mention the significant cost of the raw materials.

Peasants/serfs just couldn't afford metal for such fripperies.

It's also easier and faster. If you have lots of practice using cheap leather, why not try building it from that first. It was like the plastic of the day. Can be molded to any shape, and it was extremely strong.

Much! Working metal is _hard_ and slow.

Okay, just read through it. In additon to the, more general points in my other comment I have some more things.

1) The way blacksmith's educated apprentices. Yes, it somehow resembles what knights did. But than it is also what every other craftsman did, be it tailors, carpetmakers or whatever. Strange to again link blacksmiths to knights as the article stated that you have to stop to do that.

2) Sure thing that kings from that period focus in their writing on war. That's what they did and that's what was important for them. Without a powerfull "military" they would have stopped to be kings. So maybe additional sources regarding the civilian life with regards to blacksmiths would have served the article well.

3) I know that it is tempting to look at the "saxy" stuff like swords and arrows and armor while taking the basic stuff for granted. Much like nobody cares today about all the consumer electronics around us today. Yet, the impact of these trivial things and the people making them on a society is huge. Especially in history people should focus more on that, luckily some historians do.

So now that's it. But even with the benefit of doubt the article makes a not to o good editorial.

>Like nails, or hinges, or gates, or locks, or tools for other workers.

Most of these would have been luxuries to most, the exception being the tools which would have still been rare belonging to tradesmen.

Nails in the late 1400's a 6 penny nail would have been about 1 USD a piece, a 16 penny nail about 2.60 USD a piece, nails were largely used for nice furniture/chests/affixing hardware which again would have been mostly for those in higher stations in life.

Gates, ha, outside of castles gates were wood or movable stones used to block openings in rock walls (this is what the original Húsafell stone, of Strongman fame, was). Same for hinges, you wouldn't have seen too many doors outside of castles and businesses as you needed skilled tradesmen to even attempt to build structures that had remotely square corners.

For locks, the Medievalist has a good article about them (it's a great site/publication in general) http://www.medievalists.net/2011/03/medieval-padlocks-an-int... the article is actually linked on that page as a PDF after a brief introduction. Didn't want to direct link the PDF for those with bandwidth limitations.

In all the documentaries I've seen (e.g. Robin Hood, Avengers Infinity War, etc.) blacksmiths are for spouting exposition and building the hero's super weapon montages.

Weren't the blacksmiths in Robin Hood only for the bad guy?

Of note, the site attempts to run malicious javascript by some organization known as "Centify" that interferes with the User Agent. It attempts to block reading of the text based on the User Agent acting on behalf of the user by removing extraneous images and scripts.

A quite interesting question of language.

English seems to disambiguate between blacksmith, smith and farrier, while German (to my knowledge) only knows Schmied ("smith") and Hufschmied ("hoof smith").

Wikipedia lists Smith, Blacksmith, Coppersmith, Bladesmith, Weaponsmith and a whole bunch of others.

In Dutch, "smid", "hoefsmid" and "edelsmid" (for gold and jewelry) are probably the most common words.

I know of Goldschmied, Silberschmied, Kupferschmied, Feinschmied, Grobschmied, Messerschmied, and Stahlschmied ({gold, silver, copper, fine, coarse, blade, steel} smith), all of which are either current trades or preserved as last names.

The article often touches a lot of things which probably have a lot of interesting depth, but then it moves on to the next one. It could at least cite more primary sources so I'd know what to read for more.

It reads like a college freshman essay that someone knocked together at the last minute.

Its pretty clear from the site's About Us that it's intended to be a short, active, shallow treatment blog.

Tangentially, I was just wondering what the time investment is for mail as opposed to plate armor. Plate needs to be individually fitted, which I'm sure is time-consuming, but mail takes ages to attach and (ideally) weld or rivet each individual link. On the other hand, practically anyone can turn wire into passable mail with a bit of practice, so it could be farmed out to apprentices and assistants; it's not difficult, just laborious. Plate presumably demanded the more valuable time of a fully-trained smith.

Does anyone know about repair at this time? A lot of ink is spilled about how a blacksmith made something, not so much about repair. Arrow heads, were they repaired/reused, or just used as scrap? If a sword has snapped in half was it welded back together, modified into a knife, had the whole blade replaced?

>If a sword has snapped in half was it welded back together

I'm not aware of any physical period examples of this happening HOWEVER the Gísla saga mentions a broken sword being used to fashion a spearhead.

Melting the metal back into bar stock would have been a waste of time and resources if you could just forge it into something else. The above example of making a spearhead, as you suggest making a shorter blade is logical, someone could have just reused it to pattern weld (pattern welding existed by the 2nd century in Europe) another implement.

" Then Thorkel brings out the broken bits of "Graysteel," which had fallen to his lot when they parted their heritage, and Thorgrim forged out of it a spear, and that spear was all ready by even and fitted to its haft." http://sagadb.org/gisla_saga_surssonar.en

This reads to me more like just using the metal as raw material? Obviously some 'nuance' will be lost in the translation of ancient sagas though.

My intuition is that if everything is hand made to order, theres nearly no down side to fixing/ remaking versus making from scratch. I'm interested to see how far that went.

Named weapons in myth (Mjolnir, Tyrfing, Fragarach, Moralltach, Claíomh Solais etc) and legend almost always involved magical properties, I would assume that using the material to literally forge something else would destroy these properties and that more likely the intention here is that the tip side of the break was used for a spear point.

Is that an assumption, or something more concrete? I have problems with making assumptions about magical things.

Maybe you just need to tap it 7 times to keep the magic in?

> I would assume that using the material to literally forge something else would destroy these properties

Historical views about magic properties frequently involve reuse of materials to transmit properties, so I wouldn't assume that.

>so I wouldn't assume that

I assume it based on alleged supernatural items like the Lance of Longinus (the holy lance, spear of destiny etc). While at its creation it would have originally been a Pilum some 6 and a half feet long with the pole having been lost by the 600's when King Khosrau II captured it, since then some have reported it as having power for rulers/military leaders and Hitler even took it and some attribute it to the power of the Nazis during WWII as a fragmented, 'repaired' piece.

Now it's back in the Hofburg palace collecting dust. There's countless other artifacts that are purported to have magic power/attributes that are mostly fragments too. If you could manufacture it into something else I imagine it'd have been a hell of a lot easier to just melt it down and make a swagger stick or a belt buckle or something.

Mind you we're debating something that is unrpovable but haha, I like to spend some thought on such things anyway.

Arrows, arrowheads, and armour were definitely reused. The Shakespearean "cry havoc" was permission for the men to pillage. In other words, the battle is won, get looting! There were harsh penalties, like death, for an early cry.

I did not know that. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cry-havoc-and-let-slip-t...

I also thought that line was from Henry V. So that's 2 things I've learnt.

Would pillaging not have been for more valuable stuff rather than armour in and of itself though? I appreciate theres probably some overlap.

Expect many liberties to keep length sane. First thing to find was significant survivors for ransoming back to the enemy. A good chance to loot for gear.

The levied men, as opposed to those in a Lord's retinue, were often little more than a poor unskilled peasant with knife, a little later they were expected to turn up with at least a knife and bow or for better status a polearm, shield and helmet. By Agincourt there weren't many levied men in use.

They might find their first mail shirt (with a couple of holes) to loot, or a better weapon. Maybe a leather jerkin with more hit points. ;)

There's obviously the more traditional plunder if you capture a town, but the travelling army would constantly loot and raid locally to supply and eat on the way there and back. Lords would expect any fancy valuables.

We often get totally the wrong idea from TV and film where everyone from way back has a distinct and new uniform with common colour, a nice crest (reserved for nobles), and nicely matching shields and flags. I get the idea if it became hand to hand it would be bloody near impossible to tell friend from foe.

The children or archers would go searching for arrows at the end of every battle for any that could be reused. Most would be damaged of course. Anything to increase supply was worth it as they fired so many.

Hope that gives a flavour. :)

<quote>I get the idea if it became hand to hand it would be bloody near impossible to tell friend from foe</quote> Indeed, England had lands in France throughout the period. Checking if they spoke English wasn't a reliable indicator.

https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten Looks to me like blacksmiths made lots of buckles for horses, arrowheads, needles, small knifes, and jewelery.

This is silly. If you asked anyone what medieval blacksmiths did 9/10 would say horseshoes.

T'was blacksmithn, I reckon. In ancient times it was the highest responsibility in the village, next to the druid's, administering judgement and a good ol' smitin', collecting funds, preparing or war.

If you step back from this article and read the comments, it is actually really funny to see how passionate people here are about accurately characterizing blacksmithing hundreds of years ago. I say this as someone who has done a small bit of blacksmithing and am an interested party in this conversation. The intensity of the comments here is hilarious.

I absolutely agree with all the comments on how much of a puff piece this is. Are we going to waste our collective time killing websites that says "birds are cool" next? Can we please flag and kill this.

Does no one proofread anymore? I'm interested in the topic, but I can't read this article. Every other sentence has a spelling or grammar error. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

I wonder why Smith is such a common family name in many languages.

Smiths were common, and occupational surnames were common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surname

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