In the huge chief priest's house, the fire pit heated the entire house so warm that the people inside could cope with it wearing only ordinary linen clothes.
There are only a few priests in the tribe, and they are all women. In order to take on this job, they also gave up their rights as mothers.
They are all people who receive support from the tribal people. Except for performing sacrificial activities on necessary days throughout the year, they spend most of their time in the longhouse of the priest.
Many priests spent much of their free time weaving their own clothing with flax and boiling animal fat to make flammable lamp oil.
When Rurik was invited to enter this area, he immediately smelled an alluring aroma.
Although the entire longhouse is warm, it still has a lot of loopholes. The air heated by the multiple fire pots seeped out from the gaps on the top floor, and the cool air from outside also penetrated through the gaps in the lower floors. There is no possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning here, and the indoor temperature will drop quickly because the charcoal in the brazier is extinguished.
The younger priests built a simple stove on the brazier, and placed some seal fat in the thick cast iron basin.
Otto happened to catch a few plump Baltic seals when he returned, so boiling oil was naturally a necessary operation.
When the bay is frozen, drilling holes in the ice to catch seals is also part of the tribe's normal work.
The meat and offal of these captured seals are all used as food, the skins are used as clothing, and the seal oil is naturally an excellent fuel.
The aroma of roasted fat made Rurik very comfortable. He was not hungry now. He came to the priest's longhouse today and learning that knowledge was his first priority.
Rurik came with a great purpose, and so did the priest Vilia who would serve as his one-to-one teacher.
But every great achievement has a small beginning.
There was light snow falling in the sky, and Rurik knew that his father was going to lead the tribe to the north for collective hunting. According to years of experience, they would be able to return with a full load of prey in more than ten days. With luck, I can eat venison all winter long.
Rurik had his own job, and while he was very young and had a lot of free time, it was best to learn that knowledge in a short period of time.
He entered the warm long house, sighed at the warmth, and put aside the leather jacket he was wearing.
Vilia, who was on crutches, was as kind as his grandmother.
"My child, you arrived as promised."
"Yes, great priest." Rurik bowed deliberately and was very respectful in his words.
The tribe does not bow or even have explicit ceremonial gestures.
Of course, Vilia felt very comfortable. She couldn't help but stretched out her old and skinny right hand and covered Rurik's head with golden braids.
She couldn't help but praise: "You are indeed different from those children. Let's get started! I will be satisfied with cultivating you into a talented person for the rest of my life. This is the biggest task for the rest of my life."
"Start studying now?" Rurik immediately raised his head.
"Yes! From now on, there will be time in the future. Since you intend to learn, tell me clearly, are you willing to master all the wooden boards in that room?!"
"Of course." Rurik replied without hesitation.
"Good. That's a lot of knowledge, I hope you keep your word."
Lots of knowledge on the board? Rurik didn’t feel it at all!
The Babylonians recorded knowledge on clay tablets, the ancient Egyptians recorded knowledge on straw paper, the Greeks recorded knowledge on sheepskins, and very far away in the East, bamboo slips and paper.
However, by this era, paper should be widely used in Europe.
Rurik estimated this. How could the situation be so ideal?
The real historical process, from the third century to the thirteenth century, for a thousand years, the best carrier of recorded documents and books in Europe was parchment. Until the invasion of Menggu, papermaking technology from the East spread. In just a few decades, the entire Europe began to use cheaper paper for writing, which objectively promoted the rapid spread of the Renaissance.
Because ordinary people can buy cheap books without spending too much money. They will no longer be kept dumb for a long time because of the priests' monopoly on knowledge. They can have their own understanding of the entire world through books and have their own independent thinking.
In the first half of the ninth century, due to the decline of the Tang Dynasty, the order of the trade routes from Dongtu to Dashi and even Eastern Rome became increasingly worse. Commercial activities were hit by the war, and those desperate merchants were more willing to transport silk, tea, porcelain and spices with higher added value. Various types of paper, which were not expensive in the East, were not the main commodities. Even for these goods, the nobles of Eastern Rome flocked to them. After they bought them all, it became difficult for Western Europe and even Northern Europe to obtain these supplies.
Unless, the various Viking tribes around the Baltic Sea have greater ambitions to trade with Eastern Rome.
The time is 828 AD. So far, no Viking force has truly had commercial contact with Eastern Rome.
Because now, the "Viking Age" has actually just begun.
Here, the most likely person to complete it is the Rus tribe branch of the Swedish Siya people alliance. If they move to Novgorod according to the historical process, the mixed Varyag-Slavs will trade with Eastern Rome. The era of competition also begins immediately.
Rurik is basically aware of this historical process, and he also knows very well that he should be the historical driver of this process. However, these inner words are too metaphysical and grand, and ordinary people may find it unbelievable to speak them out. Willia will probably believe it. So what if she believes it? In the end, she sighed with "Odin's blessing".
It stands to reason that the Russians could also use sheepskin or cowhide to make writing carriers, but they did not do so, probably because this operation was time-consuming and laborious.
If you think about it carefully, they don't seem to have a strong motivation to do so.
There are thousands of people in the entire tribe, and only one can count those who love learning book knowledge. The majority of people are not anti-intellectual, on the contrary, everyone understands the importance of knowledge.
Ordinary people disdain the knowledge recorded in runes on wooden boards, and because in order to understand the knowledge, you must first learn the runes, which discourages many people.
What they know best are actually some symbols marked with numbers in the runes. After all, trade requires understanding of decimal numbers.
Only a few of them know how to mark their names with runes, and that's basically all they do.
They pay more attention to technical teaching through words and deeds. Shipbuilders teach their sons how to build ships, and professional blacksmiths teach their sons how to select ore, smelting and forging. Women in the family also personally taught their daughters how to make linen threads, weave cloth, and process animal skins.
The living environment is so harsh that any young boy or girl must learn the most practical life skills and obscure theoretical knowledge in a short period of time. The male parents of the family are not willing at all for their young children to leave work and learn some "eating and worshiping" Obscure figures compiled by the priests of grain".
Yes, most people are members of the Rus tribe. Unfortunately, they don't even know the written alphabet of their own tribe.
It is not surprising that Ron letters have always been a niche text and are dying out rapidly.
Therefore, the entire tribe essentially dislikes books because they cannot yet understand the use of learning something obscure.
Without the help of their tribesmen, the historical development of the tribe must also be recorded. The Villians are afraid that their tribesmen will forget who they are after a few generations.
Based on her own memory, she selected some elastic oak boards, baked them until they were very dry, then polished them with a whetstone, and finally engraved ancient knowledge in rune letters.
But she had more than just this knowledge. Even the majority of the tribe members did not know that the young Vilia had the good fortune to meet a man in black who claimed to be from the "Warm Beach".
The men in black persuaded Vilia to believe in a supreme being, and Vilia told them bluntly that the only supreme being was Odin.
However, Villa still got a treasure, which was a book compiled from dozens of parchments in a small wooden box. The exquisite cover of the book fully demonstrates the Eastern Roman style, and the content is written in two sets of scripts-Latin and Greek.
As for the content, they all praise an apostle and the apostle's teachings to ordinary people.
Though her knowledge is known as that of a wise woman, Vilia's knowledge is still extremely limited.
She didn't want to be a follower of that apostle, she just wanted to be a servant of Odin. Villa respected the men in black from Rome, and based on her own understanding, she simply determined that the book that had been sealed in the wooden box for decades was the "Oracle Book" of the Romans.
Odin controlled the cold north, but the Roman south was beyond Odin's control.
Villa kept the book well because she felt that when the tribe had the opportunity to have further contact with the Romans in the future, this book would serve as a medium for friendly exchanges. After all, fighting-style contact was the last resort.
In addition, she marveled at the way Roman books and texts were preserved on soft parchment. How is animal skin processed into such a writing instrument? She didn't understand it at all, but she was envious but helpless.
She could only record the tribal knowledge on oak wood, because the region was cold and dry, and the oak wood was strong enough. Judging from the preservation time, the writing on the oak board was still very clear after decades.
