 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Krudt og kanoner |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Guns and gunpowder – The Ho research group on the Medieval Centre By Peter Vemming February 2007 In 2001 the Medieval centre in Denmark decided to make a project on the socalled Loshuldt gun, a small Bronze cannon found in Loshult in Sweden and of many considered one of the oldest guns in world. Up till then the main interest of the centre had been the mechanical artillery and thorugh a period of nearly 10 years most of these machines had been reconstructed at the centre and tested through series of controlled experiments (Hansen, Peter vemming 1992: Experimental reconstruction of a medieval trebuchet. Acta Archaeologica, Cobenhagen). Many scolars dismiss the Loshult gun and other early canons as primitive contraptions with poor accuracy and little destructive power. However a surprisingly high number of early guns and munitions were kept in armouries throughout Europe, according to existings records. This documentary suggested that early firearms were found to be useful in warfare and may have been more effective than previously imagined. The medieval tested a copy of the Loshuldt gun together with the danish army, using different medieval gunpowder recipies and different types of ammunnition, ranging from big arrows, grapeshots to a small lead bullets. Thorugh these experiments the Loshult gun appeaed to be a very effective light canon. It was capable to fire different types of ammuntion depending on the tactical needs of the medieval battlefield and there is no doupt that it was highly effective at dispersing dens formations of attackers. (Hansen, Peter Vemming 2001: Rekonstruktion og skydeforsøg med Loshultkanonen, Middelaldercentret) The weakness of the dansih experiments were that modern materials – sulphur and salpetre - were used to create the medieval gunpowder recipies. The centre had been to Iceland to collect sulphur, but at that time still hadn´t solved the problem producing salpetre. In England simultaniously with the danish experiments Royl Armouries i Leeds made experiments with the Millimete gun, as shown in a 14th century manuscript, and managed to fire arrows with this replica. (Smith, Robert D. 1999: The reconstruction of firing of a replica of a 14th-century gun. Royal Armouries Yearbook vol 4). Unfortunately this english project didn´t have the same possibilities of testing the guns as the danish project, so the two project formed a group of international scolars to work in Denmark. The group at that time consisted of the following persons: Robert Smith, Ruth Smith, Peter Vemming, Bert Hall, Lars Barfod, Klaus Leibnitz, Gunar Bentzon and Jens Christiansen. This group of scholars met at the Medieval Centre once a year to conduct experiments with gunpowder and shooting experiments. The Danish Artillery School in Oxbøll very generously housed the shooting experiments and asssited in the documentation process by letting the group get access to the military radars. After every session in Denmark a report of the experiments were made and publsihed on the webpage of the Medieval Centre. Some important results were produced these first years. First of all we could see that the medieval gunpowder recipies were nearly as effective as modern ones and furthermores it was obvious that these recipies were very specialized. Some were effective for propelling and arrow from a bronze gun, where it was possible to slowly build up presure, while others were effective shooting with other kinds of ammunition. Another important thing the group worked with were the fact, that even though early on they had very effective gunpowderrecipies, this new weapon didn´t dominate warfare until much later and the old mechanical arttillery existed side by side with this new and very effective weapon. The reason for this of course were that the europeans had problems getting the rawmaterials. Sulphur would come from Iceland and the salpetre in the beginning from Bengal in India, while the charcoal you could get evverywhere. To try and answer how this trade with rawmaterials were organized thorughout time the group started to work together with Akureyri museum in Northern Iceland, and museumsdirector Gudrun Kristinsdottir became a member of the group, and the gathering of the ”Ho gorup” as it now were called (Ho is a small village close to the army shooting terrain i Jutland) toke place in Iceland this year (2005), where sulphur were collected from the great Nama fjöll (sulphurmountain) and cleaned using the originals methods. By this time the group needed to sit down and have a careful look of the work of the previous years, and luckely the Danish Research Counsil for Humanities granted the Medieval Centre money to hire Robert Smith for a period to write together the result of the Ho group. This work resulted in a application for the Danish Galathea 3 expedition. Every 50 years or so the danish goverment sends out a ship to sail around the world filled with good quality research projects. Members of the Ho group – Peter Vemming, Robert Smith and Lars barfod – got on this expedition with a project on Suphur and salpetre for gunpowder making. The expedition took the group thorugh the inner Iceland to collect sulphur samples from the sulphur sources which has been used in historical time for making gunpowder. Also the group went to west Bengal in india, to try and find out how this area succeded in becoming the Salpetre Chambre of the world. In India the Ho group Worked together with Conservator Torben Sode and professor Barla Supramaniam from the Indian Institute of technology. Finally The galathea Expedition took the group members to Sicily to look at the major sulphur resourses which has been exploited for gunpowder making. The Ho Group will continue to work on the Medieval Centre – even though we have worked with this subject for a number of years now, we have only opened a small window into this fascinating subject. Follow the work of the group on this webpage ! February 2007 Peter Vemming Director, The Medieval Centre |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
