Otto made an agreement with the great businessman Gould. He told his son Rurik the whole story, and he also informed the priests about the huge order for soap.
According to the agreement, the priests would be paid eight hundred silver coins to produce a thousand bars of soap before the sea ice melted.
The person who earns the most here is Rurik himself. The big businessman's order fee is four thousand silver coins. Rurik himself does not need to provide any production costs and labor fees, just because he provides the so-called "wisdom from Odin". He got 80% of the wealth from the simple priest, that is, as many as 3,200 silver coins.
It's not over yet.
Rurik even signed an agreement with the blacksmith Klavason. Although this agreement was far less violent than soap, each steel sword earned him five or six silver coins, which was a huge profit in total.
A full month has passed since Otto took more than a dozen elites from the tribe to make an appointment with Gould.
In just thirty days, great changes have taken place within the Ross tribe.
Rurik, his own small wooden box could no longer hold the influx of silver coins. He had to replace it with a bigger box and a bigger lock.
It's interesting to say that he got both the box and the lock because they were gifts from the big businessman.
And Rurik himself soon saw the true portrayal of the "rich Swedish businessman" in this time and space.
Over thirty days, the yellow-white sulfur soap, which exuded a special odor, was neatly piled up in an independent dry and constant-temperature cabin.
By late March of the Julian calendar, the time was ripe. Otto personally took his son and brought Gould, who was attracted by his reputation, into the room.
That's a lot of yellow-white solid matter! They exude a stench, just like the neatly knocked and stacked stone bricks used to build a stone house.
Otto proudly introduced: "As you can see, they are worth one thousand two hundred yuan. As long as you continue to wait, more will be created."
"Wow, there are already so many, I thought you didn't even..."
"Doubt our strength?" Otto deliberately showed off, "Our strength is comparable to that of your Onkras tribe. We are very capable."
"No! You are really strong. Maybe even stronger than the Melalen tribe. Do you know, great leader, you have earned 3,600 silver coins from me because of these yellow and white soaps!" Gul Virtue's words express praise directly.
Then, the well-dressed businessman began to use his delicate and fat hands to examine the texture of these soaps. He couldn't help but touch them with his hands to feel the delicacy.
He walked around the wooden house two or three times and suddenly asked: "Chief, are these actually created based on Rurik's wisdom?"
"certainly."
"Oh. It's wonderful."
Gould turned around and approached the short Rurik with a big belly, with excitement in his eyes.
He suddenly took off his broad ferret hat, instantly revealing the nature of his bald head, and placed the hat on Rurik's head.
"Future leader Rurik, please accept my precious hat."
Otto felt something was wrong for a moment. If it was just ferret fur, it was not extremely expensive. The most important thing was that the hat was decorated with a sapphire.
"Gould, is that appropriate?"
"Very suitable. Great leader. Don't you think today's scene is very special? There are so many yellow and white objects piled here in this world. They are actually excellent washing tools. In fact, I know it without you having to say it clearly. , you definitely used sulfur to make this thing. Ah! The sulfur turned into a treasure for washing clean clothes, what a miracle it is!"
Rurik endured the bald head's oily smell, raised his huge velvet hat, revealed his big blue eyes, and watched the businessman Gould shaking his fat body and dancing.
Gould jumped for a while, then continued to look at Otto and asked: "Are they all these yellow and white ones? There should be some ordinary brown ones."
"Yes, they are stored in another cabin."
Hearing this, Gould couldn't help but swallow deeply: "Is it also that many?"
"No. Ordinary soap only costs five hundred pieces, Gould, and compared to these, those are not of the highest quality."
"That's true. Compared with the one I originally bought, the shape you made now has become very smooth, and each piece actually has the name of your tribe on it."
After all, four months have passed since soap production began in late March of the Julian calendar!
The Russians living in Northern Europe seem to be a very backward and barbaric group of guys. After all, they are all living people, and their IQ is not fundamentally different from that of humans a thousand years later. Both have the same wisdom, but the difference is that people after a thousand years have generally received a good education, and they can also obtain various advanced knowledge that has been born since the Renaissance.
The current Russians cannot enjoy the happiness of acquiring a lot of knowledge at all, but if they can get a little bit of the powerful imagination that they have as humans, they can develop something with it.
The wooden molds for the latest soap making by the priests were made of oak boards joined together with pine gum. Each small piece of board has been finely polished to make the box quite smooth, so that the soap bar that comes out of the mold is no longer just a cube as it was originally.
The most subtle thing is the word "RUSSOPA" spelled out with runes, which changes from the yang script to the yin script. It was no trouble simply because the priest had carved the underlying wood board, which ultimately made the writing on the soap legible and indelible.
Coupled with the pure air-drying and dehydration treatment in a constant-temperature darkroom, the surface of the huge amount of soap bars piled in front of Gould remained smooth, with no cracks at all.
In fact, the huge orders forced the priests to devote all their time to soap production, and they had to find ways to improve efficiency.
The priests who had become somewhat wealthy were led by Bona. In the name of priestly work, she recruited some girls from the tribe and gave their parents a silver coin as a reward, allowing the girls to work until the sea ice melted.
The Ross tribe is very similar to other tribes in their attitudes towards boys and girls. Many girls are cruelly abandoned by their parents when they are still infants, just because they cannot become future warriors and bring huge wealth to their families.
There are also some who are not so cruel. They will raise their daughters until they are at least twelve years old and then hastily get engaged to them in order to get some betrothal gifts.
Life is such a reality. A girl who thought she could be a seamstress actually still has the chance to enter the holy domain of priests? ! The priests even promised that the girls would play important roles in the spring rituals! Because by temporarily handing over his daughter to the priest, not only does he not have to worry about the food his daughter consumes, but he can also get a silver coin for it, which is much more valuable than buying and selling.
So Rurik was surprised to find that Bona's mentality changed very quickly when faced with huge production pressure.
In the small world of the chief priest's house, the situation here essentially made Rurik feel for the first time something familiar from the world a thousand years later.
Perhaps, this is a "soap company" in the world and a sprout of capitalism.
Rurik felt that it was crazy to obtain huge profits by providing "intellectual property rights", so what Bona did now was even crazier.
There were not many girls in the tribe, something Rurik had always regretted. He knew the tribe's attitude towards girls of his own tribe, and felt extremely uncomfortable with the barbarism of the tribesmen in this regard.
If you become the leader, you must punish any family that dares to abandon their babies. But the essence that forces many families to abandon their daughters is that in the distribution of extremely limited materials, an optimal solution that is beneficial to the family must be achieved. No moral ethics can soothe the horrific hunger caused by a large family. feel.
If a tribal girl can earn some wealth for her family through labor at a young age, and her employer even provides food and accommodation, then the original family will be crazy and abandon their daughter.
Bona didn't think her decision was so great. Seeing that Vilia was getting older day by day, Bona would soon be the new high priest.
She recruited ten tribal girls and ordered them to participate in the arduous work of boiling oil and mixing soap.
Who thinks it’s inappropriate to exploit child labor in this time and space? On the contrary, because children can suddenly work to earn money to support their families, this is actually an improvement compared to older times.
Of course, when some nations realized that their children determined their future, the act of squeezing children's labor was prohibited by legislation.
The orders from the priests stimulated the tribesmen to rush to dig holes in the ice to catch breathing seals. The priests bought the seals whole at a low price. A large amount of seal blubber was boiled into oil, and the remaining seal meat became everyone's meal. food.
The most precious seal liver was enjoyed by the priests. Those girls ate a lot of seal meat, and they felt that their lives were not bad.
In Rurik's view, they were the most pitiful child laborers. The priests did not hesitate to squeeze their value. In addition, the priests personally went to battle to obtain these huge amounts of soap.
By now, soap was thrown into production.
For the time being, Rurik doesn't want to change anything, let alone want to carry out some social transformation of the Ross tribe, relying on the title of "Odin's Blesser"? No! If you don’t have money in your pocket, that’s absolutely impossible.
Gould looked at those ordinary soaps again, and they were indeed not as comfortable in appearance as sulfur soap.
Gould is a businessman who gets things done quickly, and he is also facing a certain amount of pressure now.
There are as many as 3,000 foreigners living in the Ross tribe. Among them are a group of fur hunters eager to capture more ferrets in the north. This is the fur processing industry spawned by northern fur, as well as a group of professional cobblers.
There are also some professional shipbuilding customers living here. They just want to find huge pine trees in the area north of Roseburg to build bigger ships. Because when the Rus made long boats, their keels must be made of a special-looking oak tree. This kind of wood is really hard to find. However, the biggest requirement for ship ribs and ship planks is that the cross-sectional area of the tree must be large. Over hundreds of years, as the Vikings' navigation skills became more advanced, the demand for "shipbuilding wood" among all Viking tribes also increased. Going to remote areas to find good shipbuilding materials was the motivation for many shipbuilders.
Some craftsmen make a living from this.
Different from those huge warships, ordinary fishing boats are only four to five stikas, which is only four or five meters. It does not need any special-shaped oak keel. The whole body is made of pine wood, the main parts are spliced together using a mortise and tenon structure, and some gaps are fixed with rivets and sealed with pine glue. A good pine fishing boat is completed.
Such a fishing boat would cost thirty silver coins at the very least.
Shipbuilding is tiring work, and craftsmen always make themselves sticky when applying pine oil. Soap is the perfect solution to the most disgusting things they face when building ships. This winter, at least fifty fishing boats are under construction in coastal docks, and all of them will be taken south and sold.
The shipbuilder family was another group of wealthy people who purchased a lot of soap, and many of them decided to buy more in order to transport the soap to the south in person and sell it at a good price.
Now, Gould has more than twenty followers with him, including strong and brave warriors, people who specialize in inquiring about information, and two maids to serve him.
Gould was very grateful that Otto did not sell the huge quantities of soap to others, and he had no intention of raising the price.
"Everything is in accordance with our original agreement. Great leader, please come to my residence soon, and I will give you all the money. But after that, please help me take care of these soaps. When the ice and snow have melted almost, I will send The men carried them to my ship.”
Otto nodded deeply and praised deeply: "I just admire your generosity. I also want to thank you for the hat you gave my son, but it is too big."
"No! This is a symbol of our friendship, and also a symbol of my friendship with Rurik." After that, Gould patted Rurik's thin shoulder and further praised him in front of the child's father. "My youngest son is not only not as beautiful as Rurik, but he also does not have the love of God. But Rurik gave me the opportunity to gain greater wealth. He and I are already friends, don't you think so?"
Rurik looked up at the old guy who longed for wealth and nodded slightly. "We're friends, and if you pay the money now, we're best friends."
"Aha! You really love money." Gould laughed wildly, causing Otto to laugh too.
Gould was actually very satisfied. For businessmen, it is too hypocritical to talk about the comradeship of bloody battles like soldiers. As a businessman, we talk business, hand over the money and deliver the goods, and happily trade and complement each other. This is what "businessmen do" their friendship”. Although Rurik is young, he is obviously wiser than many adults.
"Then it's settled, I will give you the money soon. Just like this, wise Rurik, and the great chief. When evening comes, I invite you into my mansion, and I will treat you with the best food I will entertain you with fine wine.”
drink wine? Otto was almost instinctively elated.
"Gould? Is it a lot of mead?"
"Oh, it existed at the time, and it was our favorite." Gould said with a smile, "I also have other tricks."
"What is it?"
"Red wine, cranberry wine. I bought it at a high price. It is a genuine product that I keep privately for my personal enjoyment. Great leader, looking at the shares of more than a thousand pieces of soap, I am very happy to share my of these treasures.”
Otto drank wine and knew that it came from the southern world where the so-called "never gets cold" actually refers to Eastern Rome.
Originally, wine was not expensive in the Mediterranean, and the Eastern Romans did not think it was precious. However, just like the cheap salt in Eastern Rome and Italy, it would suddenly make huge profits when transported to the northern interior.
Even more so with wine! Following the land trade route heading north, merchants who dared to take risks sold it to the Danes for huge profits. Danish profiteers secretly sold it to the hostile Siiyazhong tribe for greater profits.
Otto really understood the preciousness of wine, and he was eager to try the dinner.
However, this Gould, the most precious wine in his collection, is not just wine!
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Chapter 115 The Birth of Ross Soap Industry
