This is a collaboration between me and my friend Owen Bush. Owen forged this blade out of multiple complex pattern welded bars for a National Geographic tv show about the Staffordshire hoard called “Saxon Gold”. This is a very big blade and when we talked about it we imagined it …
Beyond the lightning veined clouds stands the ancient hall of the gods, Valhall. Pillars carved from the bones of the first giant hold up the moss grown roof. Upon the roof an ancient stag Eikþyrnir lifts his head to graze the leaves of the world tree, and the dew from …
“Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.” -Ursula K. LeGuin This is a bronze sword I made for the upcoming exhibition, “The Sword- Form and Thought” at the Deutsches Klingenmuseum in Solingen Germany. It is …
Vardhllokur – spirit song 2009 A viking sword from across the border of myth. This sword is a 3 bar composite pattern welded construction. The edge billet is 61 layers and the two center billets are 9 layers each, the steels used in it’s construction are 1075 and 8670m. The …
Winter like a crushing hand, like a fist, like a weight on my shoulders, on the house, the hills, the sky. Winter unending. Storms bred from a nest in the hills. You could see them swirling out and screaming down from the northeast and it was so cold the snow …
This drawing was inspired by Harald Wiberg’s beautiful paintings in Astrid Lindgren’s Tomten book about a kindly tomten who looks after the animals and children during the long winter nights on a Scandinavian farm. The svart-alf, however, is of a different nature than the friendly tomten, he comes up from …
I’ve always loved Norse myth and especially the figure of Odin who is willing to go to any length to achieve wisdom. This drawing depicts the stanzas of the poem Runatal in which Odin hangs himself from an arcane tree in order to find the secret of the runes. It …
Sun rises over spruce ridged hills through morning mist, hummocks and trees cast long shadows. Leaves hold the light like lanterns or translucent hands, their veins showing. It’s been fire weather lately, my chimney trails a white plume, the Jøtul in my shop is back to work, and so am I. …
I’ve been carving staffs since I was eight years old. I’ve spent many happy days hunting for suitable trees. Searching through the hills, rooting through thickets, lying on my back with my cheek against a sapling sighting it’s trunk for straightness. It’s not easy to find the right sapling for …
Autumn seems full of secrets. Flame colored leaves cast the forest in a different light than the clear light that touches the fields. Mist hangs over the trees where the hidden brook wends its way through the valley. It’s a time for bonfires and gathering the last things in— stacking wood, …