Award Medallions, Viking-style

I learned a few years ago how to make acid-etched, resin-enameled medallions from Master Artemius in Delftwood. They’re awesome, but also very modern-looking. (I keep having this problem; as my knowledge of period arts and crafts increases, I get a corresponding decrease in my tolerance for non-period “stuff”, be that shoes or medallions or arrows or pouches or whatever. I try and keep a handle on it when in public.)

I wanted to see if I could use my knowledge of stamping and hammer-forging silver to make more period-looking medallions. So far, I’ve made a Keystone (Æthelmearc’s Order of Merit for Service) for Lady Vedis Aradottir (my pocket scribe):

and a Gage (Æthelmearc’s Order of High Merit for Heavy Fighting) for my buddy THL Bjarki:

I needed to do a Master Bowman medallion for Lord Godzimir the Golden, another good buddy from down in the Pittsburgh area. These are rank medallions, not strictly speaking awards, as they’re earned, not given, but those of us who are serious archers prize them pretty highly.

I ended up casting a flat round slug from about an ounce of silver, hammering it out a bit more to make it more coin-like, stamping all the details on, riveting on a bale, and finally hitting the indentations with a little liver of sulfur to blacken them. Hung it on a silver chain I had on-hand, rather than constructing one this time. Ended up looking like this:

The actual badge is supposed to be yellow and red (you can see it in the title image of my blog’s front page), but I just can’t get behind that modern-looking aesthetic for us early-period personas. We’ll have to wink and nod and pretend we know it’s there.

I think these are pretty neat, but they’re only okay for a pretty specific subset of personas. Fortunately, everyone and their uncle wants to be some kinda Viking these days in the SCA.

Tell me how you feel about these in the comments! Would you like to get one of these? Are they too rough-and-rustic?

-Snorri