Travelling smiths were once extremely common; for a legendary refernce, just check out the legend of Weayland/Wayland/Volund the Smith. Most small communities could not afford to kepp a smith going year-round, so the smiths travelled from village to village.
I say smiths of any kind were never extremely common. The lengendary reference of Wayland the Smith is not much in the way of evidence. Most small communities could not afford to keep a smith going (good economic thinking Guy) so they had to send people to the next village where there was a smith. This is all just the two of us making statements without more than suppositions to go on. Do you have any evidence? I can try to come up with some idea of how many people a smith needs as customers, but this will first be based on RW examples. In Glorantha there are repair spells, which would cut out a lot of the work of a RW smith, so maybe there are travelling smiths in Glorantha, or just a lot fewer smiths. Another thing a smith could do would be to send some boys around thru the villages to collect things to repair, and take orders. Paper mills used to send people around to collect rags to make paper from, but they wouldn't send a skilled worker to do that. Anyway, if you can find a reference to travelling smiths I'd be interested.
I hope to hear more from you, Guy, as you seem to at least have some ideas. Daniel Fahey
Powered by hypermail