Viking bushcraft trip - snow, making tipi, reindeer sleeping bag, cooking meat on hot stone etc.

Shelter building with wood, moss and an axe. Viking clothes. A lot of homemade gear and great wildernes. Open the full video description for more information.

This is part 1. Here can you see all videos from the camp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7XBc7SY2g&list=PLwMRed9dogc5_UttB-91fKNYylmA0hOn3

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Date: 16-10-2019

Day: 1°C (33.8°F)
Night: -4°C (24.8°F)

Location: Sapmi - the land of the Sami people in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Clean and remote classic northern wilderness. Fresh water rivers. Pine, spruce and birch forrest. Mountains, bears, wolves, eagles, reindeers etc. No wildlife is giving campers problems. I can't give you any information about my location, only that I am somewhere in Sapmi. You need to be the owner or get the owners permission if you want to do the same in Sapmi.

Consuming: Water and pine tea. Meat (cow).

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A few questions:

1. Why did you change the shelter design/shortened the long pole?
It was way too offen getting in my way. The plan was to keep one of the 3 Y-poles a lot longer and use it as pot hanger and to lean a fire reflector wall against etc. It's a common tarp setup and works great especially if the shelter is tall - a low shelter, like in the video, means you can't walk under the long pole naturally - I consided the pro and cons and decided to shorten the pole. If you want to make the same shelter design and you know you don't want the long pole is it of course a lot easier to start with 3 or 4 poles of the same length (just like a common tripod) and not one pole a lot longer than the rest.

2. Is reindeer skins warm enough?
Yes - absolutely. It is some of the best. Native people in some of the coldest areas of the world, such as Inuit and Sami, used reindeer fur for the warmest winter gear.

3. Is the water safe?
Yes - all can drink water straight from nature her in Sapmi.

4. Is leather shoes like that good?
Yes. The flexibility makes them very comfortable. In this case did I use wool socks and reindeer fur as inlays to stay warm. The leather is made water resistant with fish oil/fat and pine tar. Leather straps with a lot of knots was wrapped around the outside to create more traction. The shoes is homemade and this was one of the first trips and in general one of the first times I use shoes like this - so I have very limited experience, but so far am I very impressed with how well it works. More water resistant and over all a lot more comfortable than my modern mass produced boots I have used in the previous videos.

5. Why axe firewood up in the air and not down on the ground?
Just an efficient way to do it - keeps the log stable, you don't need to spend time making/finding a chopping block and no risk of the axe edge to hit the ground and get damaged.

6. Is the shelter water proof?
No - moss only keeps water away to some extent. You just keep adding moss until satisfied. In this case am I only planning on using the shelter in below freezing and just need the moss to keep snow away, so I can get away with only adding a small amount of moss.

7. Why cook on a stone?
The big benefit is that stones can hold so much heat that you can remove it from the fire and do the cooking away from flames and smoke. You do of course also don't need to bring any cooking gear along. If all is wet and you heat up the stone with strong heat and don't give it time to dry out first on low heat, will the stone most likely crack and just like in the video can't you move the stone without it falling apart and need to do the cooking on the stone in the fire.

8. Why use an axe and not a saw?
Because I am working towards only doing viking age video content and using axes is more authentic. Though did the vikings use saws, but it was tools used for detail work and not for cutting down trees or making firewood. So in other words is it not a matter of if an axe or a saw is the best tool nowadays, but a matter of what the common viking used.

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Website including gear list and other basic information https://www.runemaltebertramnielsen.com

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Video gear: Canon EOS RP, Canon 50 1.8, Røde videomicpro+, Zoom h2n, iMovie.

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