Over the last few months I have been 3D printing and painting models to build a Dark Age Scandinavian Harbour. All of the ships, walls and buildings are from Iain Lovecraft’s Viking Saga Kickstarter that launches on Tuesday 13th September.
Before I started working on the project, I did not even know that there were Dark Age harbours, as I shared the popular image of Vikings running flat bottomed raiding ships up onto open beaches. However Danes and Swedes were only Vikings when they went out raiding. For the rest of the year they were farmers, miners, merchants and traders and this developing society needed an infrastructure to support it.
It would be fairly easy is you had a crew of 40 in a Drakkar flat bottomed raiding ship and little cargo to launch from a beach. However, if you were a merchant and you had a Knarr for trading and you only had a crew of 10 and you were carrying a cargo of several tonnes of Ore, you were going to need a pier or a quayside to come alongside to in order to load and unload your cargo. Iain Lovecraft has been working with several Viking museums in Sweden to get the detail in these models 100% right. At the bottom of the page I have included a photograph of the museums model of a Dark Age port that has inspired my own, very much condensed wargames version.
The beach has been converted into a quayside by sinking a row of logs into the ground and then terracing behind. A typical dark age wooden roadway has been laid, leading up a ramp to the higher level. Logs have also been sunk to form retaining walls.
A typical Viking wood and earth bank wall has been constructed around the perimeter of the settlement.
The short video shows the settlement from all angles.
Links to previous Viking Saga Articles:
Midsummer Avalanche – A Pulp Alley Adventure in Viking Village
Viking Saga – The Village Grows (Buildings, Mine & Pier)
Viking Saga – Getting started with the terrain
The inspirational museum model that was the start of the project.
Links to Viking Museums
Link to sign up to be notified when Iain’s Viking Saga Kickstarter goes live.
What size did you print Iain’s miniatures at? I’ve backed them – but on my slicer they look rather big – I’m running a test print at 80% full size to see how they compare to other 28mm minis?
Iain’s STL files are for 32mm miniatures.
We reduce to 85% when we produce 28mm metal or plastic miniatures from them.