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Knowledge existed simultaneously in the Celtic area, before the Roman power in the Mediterranean.
Together with the method developed by the Chinese, there was an abundancy of objects in iron and steel,
in Rome for instance. But because of this huge market in the Mediterranean and the Germanic countries, we can
find Roman sculptures even here in Scandinavia.
Iron and steel could be found everywhere here in Sweden around 700 AD.
This also marked the beginning of the Viking Age.
Slashing weapons were made of steel.
Mainly axes were made during the Viking Age because swords were very expensive -
only farmers with a dozen of cows, warriors and the rich could afford a sword.
Axes and swords were made of iron which was very expensive during this period.
Since axes don't require as much iron, they were the weapons of the common man.
Warriors could also use axes with very long helves - this would increase their range while still keeping
the price way below that of a long sword.
Many people think the Vikings used two-handed swords but this has been disapproved by scientists and professionals
in the martial arts of history, claiming that the wielding of two-handed swords has too many disadvantages.
There are, however, sagas and poems from the period claiming that some may have held their sword
in one hand, and the wrist of the hand holding the sword in the other hand,
but they believe the Vikings usually used a sword that measured about one meter in one hand, and a round,
wooden shield with a round iron piece in the middle of it, in the other hand.
Blacksmiths created the swords out of many different layers - soft iron and harder and stronger iron.
They could accomplish differences in hardness by mixing different amounts of carbon in the iron.
Some sagas from the Viking Age mention that swords may have been bent during battle, so that the
combatants had to quit fighting to bend their swords back.
This may not have been the case of all Viking swords, however, but a solution would've been
to mix more carbon in the iron when creating the swords.
The first Europeans to see America were the Vikings.
Because of the lack of trees and lumber on Greenland, they sought new sources to the unknown west
because of the great dangers of sailing back to Scandinavia, despite the agility and speed of
the Viking ships.
During the colonization, yet small and short, the Vikings didn't only exchange warfare and death
with the Indian tribes, but also items and knowledge -
the Vikings taught the Indians of north-eastern America how to melt metal, something no one in
America north of Mexico knew before this.
Indians now knew how to create weapons out of copper, the resource available to them.
Small ovens were built in Indian settlements and it might be thanks to the Vikings that the
knowledge then spread south across America.
Samurai swords consists partially of Tamahagene steel, extracted from sand.
This steel is very impure and may easily break. Because of the fragility of the Tamahagene steel,
they folded the steel 16 times, thus purifying the steel and balancing the carbon.
Every time the steel is folded, the amount of layers is doubled. So a traditional katana
consists of 2^16 layers which equals 65536 layers of steel. The sword is made from
several parts, consisting of different steel mixtures, hardened to different hardnesses
which are then forged together. A hardy mixture in the middle, and a harder mixture
for the edges. According to the Japanese tradition, the sword is also covered in clay.
After different amounts of clay have been distributed on the sword it's then heated.
The clay gives the sword different isolation on different parts. The parts with less clay
get harder than the parts with more clay.
The harder the steel, the sharper it can be grinded. But when steel gets hard, it also
becomes fragile. Soft steel can withstand more, but doesn't get as sharp. The Japanese solved this
by making the edge hard and the inside softer. This made the sword both hardy and sharp.
Successfully made katanas were incredibly sharp and strong. Scientists who put a katana vertically
and then fired a .30 caliber from World War II on it saw that the katana split five bullets before breaking.
This proved how strong and sharp steel can get.
Three hundred years later the crusades have begun.
Steel is more common than iron in warfare, since new methods of creating steel made it
more worthwhile to use steel. Steel is also a lot more solid.
Steel is like iron with more carbon. It doesn't bend as easily but is more fragile.
That is why steel is a perfect material in dumbbells, but the bar has to be thick enought to support the weights.
The production of steel wasn't developed at all until the 19th Century.
In the end of the 19th Century, they wanted to exploit the iron ore in the desolate Norrland (northern Sweden).
Only sami and lone hunters lived there by that time. The vast iron ore source in the area had long been
known about. But they chose not to exploit the area because of its high concentration of phosphorus.
When British metallurgists found a way to separate phosphorus from iron in 1878, the Swedes chose to take advantage
of the, by the world market, coveted iron ore. This was also one of the biggest investments in Swedish history,
and resulted in the city of Kiruna and more.
To be able to extract the iron ore and transport it, a 500 km railway was built,
from LuleƄ to the Norwegian city of Narvik, straight through Norrland. They called it a
colony on the own land.
Kiruna was at first nothing but a shanty town. Simple shelters were built out of dynamite boxes, boards,
rocks and turf. Twenty men could've been forced to share a small shelter, and illegal alcohol from LuleƄ
was common. The mining company LKAB tried to prevent the building of a real town, and tried to only hire men without
women or families. Many women lived in the shanty town despite LKAB's attempts and it had more than a thousand inhabitants by
the 1900's. The same year a new director was appointed - Hjalmar Lundbohm, who realised they had to build a real town for the
mining to proceed. During the following twenty years, the soil of the tundra was drained and a sawmill, a school and a hospital
were built, and thus, Kiruna was founded.