Related Web Sites
Designed / Contributed to by Darrell Markewitz

ASSOCIATIONS
The Dark Ages Re-creation Company seeks to create an environment that stresses historic re-creation of the Viking Age through the use of strict authenticity guidelines and interpretation at a 'role playing' level. The Company intends to provide a resource of skilled and experienced historic interpreters and physical demonstrators to museums and educational programs.
Find out more about DARC
ww.darkcompany.ca Web site design by Neil Peterson
The artists of An Droichead - The Bridge are a group of artisans of divergent media and shared out look who are inspired by Celtic historical traditions. The work that they create utilizes the age old techniques and tools of enamelling, stone carving, stained glass, silversmithing and blacksmithing.
Travel the Bridge
(Note - this takes you off the main Wareham Forge site.)
An Droichead web site design by Catherine Crowe
the Early Iron Experimental Group is an expanding group of reasearchers and practical experimenters who are interested in direct process bloomery iron smelting furnaces. Although originally sparked by the 'Early Iron' Symposiums in North America, the movement has expanded almost world wide.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITS
Grave Goods was the third exhibit hosted at the Woodstock Museum. It ran September 6 to November 1, 2008.
The virtual tour of the exhibit, featuring images and descriptions from the participating art works, can be seen HERE.

Out of the Fiery Furnace was the second juried exibit I curated at the Woodstock Museum in September - October, 2005 . Each of the contributing artists must have personally manipulated materials at high temperatures during the creation process. Individual works are produced from forged steels and bronze, blown and lamp worked glass, cast and fused metals.

Go to the Virtual Tour of the Exhibit

Fiery Furnace

The World of the Norse was a major project I undertook from April to October 2003. This 1000 square foot exhibit was commissioned by the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills MI. It consisted of three realistic room settings containing about 175 individual replica objects that portray daily life in the Viking Age.

the World of the Norse

Reflections of the Conquest was a juried exibit I curated in February - March, 2002 at the Woodstock Museum. Artists were presented with the striking imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry as well as encouraged to step outside the framework of the Tapestry itself to consider the historic cultural traditions of the various peoples who were directly involved: Anglo Saxon, Viking and French.

Go to the Virtual Tour of the Exhibit
(Note - this takes you off the main Wareham Forge site.)

Reflections of the Conquest

Traditions and Innovations was a special group show organized and curated by my friend Catherine Crowe in 2003. It featued recent work by eight Ontario artisans, mainly drawn from the 'celtic underground'.  Thise related web site was the first virtual tour package I designed.

Go to the Virtual Tour of the Exhibit
(Note - this takes you off the main Wareham Forge site.)

Traditions & Innovations
ARTICLES & CONVERSATIONS
Hammered Out Bits is the blog I started winter of 2006 . This allows me to publish many of the long detailed e-mail descriptions I write in the response to questions every week. The primary focus is topics that relate to the Viking Age, blacksmithing and experimental iron smelting.

There is a title index available
(Note - the blog is located off the main Wareham Forge site.)

available through

'Iron Blooms to Working Bars'
Was supported by an Ontario Arts Council
Crafts Projects - Creation and Development Grant
.

This grant, from Feburary 15 - May 15, 20012, provided dedicated time to allow development of a practical understanding of how to covert raw blooms into working bars, and if time permited, into finished objects. Part of the process was to document the ongoing project, and publish the results via a dedicated blog, this web site, and through demonstrations, formal papers and journal articles.

(Note - the blog is located off the main Wareham Forge site.)
SPECIALIZED SECTIONS
the Norse Encampment is a series of related living history programs which I have designed, constructed, then implemented, stretching back to 1993. I maintain the 'unofficial' documentation for the program seen at L'Anse aux Meadows NHSC (Parks Canada). This separate area of this web site will be of interest to re-enactors and those interested in the Viking Age.
Experimental Iron Smelting has been a major research area since 2001. Assisted by members of DARC, Wareham is the major centre into experimental archaeology related to Viking Age direct bloomery furnace methods for North America.

All text and photographs © 1998 - 2008, Darrell Markewitz, the Wareham Forge.