Re: Is that a saw that I see before me? (was Forest Navigation) (ALISON PLACE)

From: Dr Stuart Mousir-Harrison <loosmoos_at_mousir.org>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:00:01 +0000

> Now, it turns out that the real reason that forests
>quickly needed stewards to protect them in the Middle
>Ages was the need for wood in iron smelting. One
>furnace (usually located in the forest) needed 25m3 of
>wood, in the form of charcoal, to turn 200kg of iron
>ore into 50kg of iron. It was estimated that a
>furnace running for 40 days could consume a 1km radius
>of forest as fuel. (Quick example of a wood shortage:
>in 13thC Douai (northern France), poorer families had
>to rent a wooden coffin, which was reclaimed by the
>undertaker after the ceremony was over.)

An important fact to remember is that woodland is a renewable resource and that careful management wood stocks by coppicing and pollarding should be more than adequate for Gloranthan needs. These techniques have been around a very long time and I have always presumed that they are known among the Heortlings. They certainly are to my Balkoth tribe, who have very little in the way of woodlands in the dry Yellow Hills.

>Or maybe Heat Metal spells
>are saving the forests of Sartar.

BTW had anyone picked up on the issue of the definition of forestry? (I haven't had a chance to read up all the posts) In European medieval usage a Forest was NOT a dense tract of primeval woodland or wildwood, but a condition of land ownership, that while often wooded was not necessarily so. (Just look at "Dartmoor Forest" in the SW of England - there has been no appreciable woodland cover there since Neolithic man discovered the power of the axe!)

Quadruped Erat Demonstrandum



The (learned) Dr Moose (who did some if this in his PhD!) www.mousir.org

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