MAKING A SET OF TURN SHOES

Vikings did a lot of walking and went through a lot of shoes over the course of their lives. Reenactors are no exception. The shoes I am sharing are actually my second pair of personally crafted turn shoes. The first pair of shoes were made back in early 2006 for my trip to England and participation in the 940th reenactment of the Battle of Hastings, as a Norman archer.

To be honest, they looked pretty bad. While I have decent leatherworking skills, I’m by no means a cobbler. I still have them and use them as “loaners” for prospective members of my viking reenactment group, The Vikings of Bjornstad. I did learn from that experience and have made couple of more shoes over the years. I even made a three toggle “granny” boot for my wife. She wasn’t excited by them, so I traded them off for a piece of blacksmithing equipment at the gathering at Ravensborg’s Return of the Dead in Missouri, in 2016.

Well, I seem to have digressed from my original intention. I wanted to do a “step-by-step” tutorial for the below Jorvik type 2 viking boots.