Rise of Rurik

In Eastern Europe, the Principality of Ostara was authorized to open up territory for Russia, and a new situation developed that Rurik could not predict at all.

Frank's civil war entered a new phase, and the Russian forces took the opportunity to fish in troubled waters and even made significant progress.

There is not much going on in the small island of Britain. King Ragnar of Denmark's malicious large-scale plunder completely disrupted Wessex's plan to invade Mercia in the north.

Looking back at the entire Baltic Sea region, most of the areas are calm and peaceful trade is in full swing. It seems that everyone is heading towards an era of prosperity.

It was impossible for Rurik himself to understand the great changes in Eastern Europe and the Frankish world in real time. The geographical isolation forced him to appoint trusted nobles to open up new territories.

He himself took his most important wives and concubines, holding Prince Osborne in his arms, and made a large circle on the newly opened inland river route to reach New Roseburg.

He set a very ambitious mission for himself. The capital city where he was located first deliberately carried out a ostentatious parade around the ring road to announce the arrival of the king to thousands of people, and then he was busy with his own major affairs.

As the autumn wind sweeps across the world, the New Roseburg Port Area is still developing its prosperity.

In the dry dock outside the city, the deck-laying work of the Sea Monarch, the largest sailing ship ever built in Ross, is still going on. The mast base of the battleship has been built long ago. Since the ship is so big that the main mast must be installed by splicing, the masts placed outdoors have to be installed layer by layer in a stacked manner. This will be a time-consuming and laborious task, and it is also the last step in building a large ship. big project.

For this big ship, Rurik has invested a huge sum of money and will continue to invest in the future. She was a big money eater. When she was launched in the spring of 842, she would immediately become the new flagship of the kingdom and could immediately carry out military and commercial missions.

This ship is the epitome of the glory of the entire Ross shipbuilding industry. Currently, only the Hotla family has been improving its shipbuilding capabilities as it has accepted high-standard orders one after another. Manufacturing sail cargo ships has always been the family's specialty, and now this ability has reached new heights.

But the family's old business was never abandoned, but the family's plan to build small boats was strategically abandoned at the shipyard in the capital. Stein Hotla was responsible for the establishment of the capital, and he and the entire team had already made a lot of money just from the construction fees earned by this big ship. A large number of his apprentices were directly subordinate to the king. What he was worried about was that this group of apprentices belonging to the royal family would be responsible for their own affairs in the future, fearing that the disciples would starve to death.

Slave does not necessarily mean suffering.

These apprentice slaves are all the king's ministers, and they will all become figures in the future.

An open secret is that King Rurik's earliest male slave, Kamne, was already the head of the royal smelting factory in the capital.

Kamne is a Slavic, and his brown hair is unique enough in the "golden world" of Northern Europe. His arms are as thick and hard as stone, even more powerful than his two legs. His upper body is thicker and thinner, and his overall shape is very strange. This is all due to the fact that he has a strong upper body through regular exercise. He is as strong as a bear and has a happy family. His generous salary has indeed brought significant output of metal tools, and his hard work has ensured a stable income for the royal family.

The shipbuilding industry in Russia is becoming more and more prosperous day by day, and the peaceful situation in the Baltic Sea makes people from all walks of life want to go to the ocean to explore.

There is a demand in the market and the environment is full of available shipbuilding materials.

The tide in the Gulf of Finland washed away the sandbar at the Kronstadt anchorage day after day, and most private shipbuilding workshops were located on the sandbar (today's Vasily Island).

Private shipbuilders adhere to traditional Viking shipbuilding skills. Even Danish shipbuilders set up shops in New Roseburg. They took advantage of the tax holiday window to set up their stalls and make a few quick bucks with their shipbuilding skills. Live the good life here.

The most traditional Viking longships still have a huge market. After all, most of the buyers are ordinary farmers. They have no plans to engage in ocean-going commodity trade. Fishing is the right way and then transporting some goods. Traditional longships perfectly meet the needs. The difference from the past is that the entire new longship is still assembled using a mortise and tenon structure, and a large number of iron nails are used in non-essential areas. Even the most critical cables that stabilized the mast were simply replaced with iron chains.

This is true for the shipbuilding industry in the capital, but the shipbuilding industry in inland Novgorod has new tricks.

Traditional long boats are still used for living, but there are different markets for mini boats suitable for fishing in Jinghu Lake and barges made of assembled long boats. Even human-powered waterwheels, which rely on pedals to drive large waterwheels, are being built.

Everyone in the industry knows that in order to extend the life of a ship as long as possible, oak keels and ship ribs that have been dried for ten years are a key.

Even if we are now actively looking for felled oak (Quercus) for shade drying, we will not have to wait ten years for a very long life.

This is why Ross's original big ship, the Aurora, had to be decommissioned after ten years of use. She can now only be used as a training ship. This old ship is no longer of use.

Even the largest ship under construction, the Sea Monarch, must have faced this problem since its birth.

Rurik is not unscrupulous and really expects this new ship to be domineering for fifty years. Her ten-year lifespan is enough. The Sea Monarch is Ross's first galenic ship. It is important to build her to accumulate shipbuilding experience. So far, it seems that there have been no major problems.

The prosperity of the shipbuilding industry has led to the prosperity of the materials market. Logging, textiles, linen cultivation, metal processing, and any industry that contributes to shipbuilding are prospering like never before. People have something to do, and the capital has given birth to a group of industrial people who are divorced from agricultural production. Even though most of them are engaged in handicrafts, the value they generate can be better than farming and fishing.

They spend money as soon as they earn it, and the market for consumer goods is also developing.

What Rurik sees now is that the capital is developing every day. The business atmosphere here is strong. Since it is a free seaport, all ethnic groups in the kingdom can do business here. The three-year tax holiday granted by the emperor even attracted people from Pussy. Cove's guest.

The capital has reached considerable proportions, and although the written code has been promulgated, the core terms are still standing in the square and made public. All this is not enough.

Just like the words he said to the queen when he stood on the top of the palace attic and had a bird's eye view of the entire capital and harbor.

Although Rurik was intoxicated with the prosperity and prosperity of the capital he founded with his own hands, he was also very worried that it would become increasingly difficult for him to control this prosperity.

Perhaps his biggest concerns would be completely eliminated with the printing and publication of the Ross Saga, he hoped.

"Rossaga" is a collection of myths and legends from the Viking world that Ella painstakingly collected and organized. Finally, Rurik personally reviewed and revised them, and even added some new content. Its target is each "Gospel", making "Rossaga" a classic of the kingdom and unifying the thoughts of the kingdom.

There are heroes, courage, sacrifice, love, the beginning of all things, and Ragnarok. Rurik deliberately invented a wonderful Asgard and defined what kind of people can go to this soul's destination.

There is always a lack of entertainment in daily life, and a book is a treasure that everyone desperately needs to pass the time.

The key to the problem is how to turn the manuscript into a real book. This is a problem or not, Rurik knew that what he wanted to do was to create an organization-the Royal Printing Office.

Wooden type printing technology was born at the same time as papermaking technology, and they had to demonstrate their strong strategic value.

In the capital, all printing equipment was made by the royal smithy. The strong-backed Kamne was the person in charge, and his main job was to be responsible for the smelting and forging of various iron tools.

In the past few years, there were only printing workshops in the capital, and there were no big orders. The workshops printed some vulgar jokes and posted them on public websites, and then printed some so-called newspapers, which also printed simple pornographic jokes, and some from far away places that had passed. Current news, limited sales of this information to earn a little profit. The printing workshop was managed by Governor-General Conuson, but the governor was unable to cope with the ever-increasing expansion of the capital. Rurik, who returned, noticed that even if it was printing some pornographic jokes, the printing workshop had not done it recently, and a few workers returned with their salaries. Picking your feet idle.

A few workers were living on empty wages, but they weren't really wrong. The crux of the problem is that a workshop is just a workshop, and they do not have a responsible manager whose rights and responsibilities are currently unclear.

What will happen next? This is the fundamental reason why Rurik must bring along the "Supreme Clerk" Ella.

Ella will not be the director, and the group of subordinate scribes she trained have reached the point where they must take charge of their own affairs. When she came here, the two followers who endorsed the manuscript came under Rurik's eye.

Don't waste these two people. One was appointed as a principal and the other as a deputy. After that, they took root in the capital, married a wife and had children. Their job was to manage the Royal Printing Bureau, making everything regular and turning it into a true printing and publishing department.

The vision was wonderful, and Rurik rolled up his sleeves and really started to implement it.

First, low-cost wooden movable type and clay movable type must be replaced by strong and durable lead movable type, and the production of standard styles of lead movable type must be implemented by blacksmiths loyal to the royal family.

The strong Kamni knelt down on one knee to perform a warrior salute to the inspecting King Rurik. The blacksmiths were also of the same size. They were all shirtless and wearing one-piece suspenders, with a large, strong hairless head hanging on their chests. Protected by deerskin, the arms that should have been thickly haired were now bare and shaggy. It was obviously due to long hours of forging in a hot environment, and the hair follicles on the hairy arms were burned to death.

This group of guys were loyal to him, and Rurik felt reassured by them. After all, most of them were legally his slaves.

The blacksmith slaves have a very high living standard. When they were taken in, they were all a group of skinny little boys. Now they are as strong as bears, and their biceps are too thick.

Rurik had promised them long ago that those who were loyal and obedient would get wives when they grew up.

He has implemented it in this way. The earliest batch of blacksmith slaves have already married and had children, and the backward people are also full of hope. Their descendants will receive cultural and military education, and then inherit their father's business and continue to work for the king. But they are not just blacksmiths. Once there is a war in the kingdom, these technical talents will immediately participate in the war as engineers. The more technical units like this, the better. After all, just look at their extremely strong arms. This kind of person puts on heavy armor, carries two hammers for blacksmithing, and rushes into the enemy's formation. They are unparalleled berserkers.

Kamne, who was ordered by the king, was originally used as an additive in smelting lead, but now alone produces a large number of movable type. Making movable lead type means smelting specific strip-shaped lead ingots. Kamne has done this in the past, and now he wants to make more to meet the demand for large-scale use in the future. Therefore, it is not a transformation from zero to one, but an expansion from one to a hundred.

The Russians obtained lead purely as a by-product of northern mining, with iron being the most important mineral, followed by copper. Then came Glauber's Salt, Lime and Lead. The production capacity of lead is the smallest, unless silver mines can be found in the north. After all, silver mines are often associated with lead mines, and the conditions associated with other minerals such as lead are really not ideal.

Lead acetate has a pleasant sweet taste, and no one in the north really wants to make it. The Kingdom has a better choice - honey. The production of honey from Novgorod exceeds every year. This is also due to Rurik's strategic layout many years ago. The villages living along the lake need to increase their income and have big customers to buy their agricultural products. Beekeeping in tree holes is a traditional business in the area near Yin Ermen Lake. Due to the kingdom's increasing demand and real cash, every Slavic farm has begun to expand this business as long as it has the ability.

Beekeeping in tree holes does not require the full attention of professional beekeepers. The hibernation of the bee colonies in winter seems to have never existed, but in spring, swarms of bees are active in the woods. Wheat harvest time is also the time to collect honey. The Slavic farmers, all covered in veils, went to the marked tree holes and wooden boxes to collect honey, keeping some for themselves, and most of them were sold in Novgorod. In the end, most of the honey was sold in Novgorod. The capital gathers.

The ships transporting pig iron ingots from the north are transported steadily, so the blacksmith shops in the capital are always busy with workers.

At least iron is absolutely state-owned, and it is difficult to stop people from privately mining and smelting iron. However, large smelting institutions are all under the control of Rurik. The absolute advantage of scale prevents private blacksmiths from taking advantage.

In the northern places of Fort Ross and Ellenburg, Rurik set pig iron ingot purchase guide prices for local institutions. Naturally, finished utensils of mild steel and wrought iron can also be produced locally, and the prices of related products are also determined.

If the pig iron ingots produced by the northern soil blast furnace cannot be digested by local workers, there will be no need to ship them to the capital for secondary processing. Roughly processed iron ingots or finished utensils need to be transported to the capital with an extra layer of freight. Therefore, if customers purchase finished utensils in the capital, the price must be higher than in the place of origin. The higher price is not much, and the transportation fleet also has a scale advantage in terms of transportation capacity, which makes the products of private iron smelting always lack a price advantage.

The northern iron smelting agency transported the goods to the capital, and the capital agency immediately paid for the complete delivery of the materials. After receiving the cash, the northern institutions purchased the grain, linen, etc. needed by the north on the spot.

The old Russian people left their hometown on a large scale, and Rossburg, the hometown that carried the Russian people's life for hundreds of years, was completely transformed into a fiery smelting center.

Prisoners of war and criminals worked as slave labor here, while some nomadic deer herders (Lapps) gathered here to work as miners, and some other deer herders turned summer settlements in the northernmost Murmansk into permanent settlements. point.

Different from the battles and adventures in the southern world, the depths of the Gulf of Bothnia in the north are peaceful. Ice, snow and heat are the themes here, and iron and leather are the specialties here.

The Swedish world in the narrow sense is now fully integrated into this commercial and trade landscape.

The kingdom's stalls are spread out on a large scale, and labor is needed everywhere.

Those young Swedish people who were imprisoned in a small space, as the second and third sons of the family, were destined to leave Lake Mälaren to make a living. In the past, the way for such young people to rise was to directly participate in war and plunder. They now have a wealth of choices, and those who dare can directly travel to the Danish world, or even immigrate to Rotterstad at the mouth of the River Inn to settle. If you want to make a fortune steadily, you can rely on your strength to work as a miner or iron smelter in the northern mines, or go to New Rossburg, the capital of Ross, to work as a various clerk.

They needed a job, and Rurik gave them one.

Smelting iron to produce a large amount of high-quality ironware is the basis for Rurik to grant its citizens a three-year tax exemption. It controls almost all the steel production capacity in the northern world. It makes a steady stream of profits for the state treasury, and it also provides livelihoods for all kinds of people. .

Smelting requires good carbon. Before coking coal was developed, carbon was still the only smelting fuel. With the support of a blower, the earthen blast furnace can make charcoal burn molten pig iron. Its efficiency is not good, but once the blast furnace is fired, it cannot be interrupted without any good reason. It is like a charcoal-eating beast and requires a stable supply of large amounts of charcoal.

Due to this rigid demand, the forests in the area near New Roseburg are disappearing. A number of charcoal-burning workshops have appeared on the banks of the Neva River. Loggers personally transport newly cut wood to these workshops. Due to real involution factors, the market price of wood is not high. Even so, this is the easiest way for ordinary people to make money. Business.

Even remote Finnish tribes such as the Vips and Rudys, and even the Finnish Counties with a large population. They just have to wait for the sea and Lake Ladoga to freeze over and the earth to be covered with ice and snow again.

In this way, they were dressed as thickly as bears, and they could drive their own reindeer, dragging felled pine trees and sliding on the ice and snow to the capital efficiently.

Among them, the most fetching oak tree is the oak tree. As the easiest type of oak to find locally, small ones are sold to the Huotra family's shipbuilding factory, and small ones are sold to self-employed shipbuilding businesses. They will peel off the bark in advance, so that the bark can be sold at a better price as a raw material for papermaking, and shipbuilding workshops of all sizes are more willing to buy the peeled oak wood.

Metallurgy, shipbuilding, and leather textiles are the three main economic pillars of New Roseburg, from which dozens of businesses, large and small, are derived.

As forests continue to be cut down, more farmland and grazing pastures appear, further stimulating the capital's planting and animal husbandry industries.

New Rossburg is worthy of being the economic center of the Ross Kingdom. It integrates the east, west, north, and south of the kingdom, and development is still continuing.