Making a Viking Lur with hand tools

The Viking Battlehorn!!!!!!

above: Feb 2021: Chopping down a Willow limb from which I will make two traditional Viking Lurs

The Lur was the battle horn of the Vikings; first mentioned in the Icelandic Viking Sagas. Here I will detail the design and construction methods I used to make two Lurs.

First some background information, then I will get to Lur making. In the Bronze Age around 1000BC, curved metal horns/instruments called Lurs were made and used in Denmark and elsewhere in that region; this was long before the age of the Vikings. Fast forward to the age of Vikings (around 800AD), and Lurs had evolved (or devolved) into straight wooden horns. Here I will concern myself with the version of the Lur that was a Viking instrument made from a Willow tree. They have been found in Viking burial ships from 800AD (Oseburg Lur, Norway) along with other times, and were possessions of Viking warriors told of in the Icelandic Sagas. From the sagas: “The warriors were summoned to battle with the Lur”! Lurs have been found from 30" (78cm) long to 42" (107cm) long and were about 2.75" (7cm) diameter at the bell end. They were frequently held together by 5 rings of willow wrapping. The wood was split in half, the inside hollowed out to form a tube, and the halves were put back together to make a solid tube. There is not a mouthpiece, the small end of the Lur itself is the mouthpiece. Later, Lurs continued in use by farmers and shepherds in Scandanavia, and these were made from birch and wrapped in birch, but are not to be confused with the earlier Viking Lurs.

34" Viking Lur made from Willow, with 5 Willow wraps around the outside surface; oiled finish. The build log for this Lur is below.

I'm not sure which tools Vikings had available to them, but I will make this Lur without any electricity. I will use an axe to gather the wood from a Willow tree and will use: Axe, hatchets, shave, saws, and chisels to make this Lur.

This Willow tree grows in my yard in Merton Wisconsin. It is -10degF today and its a chilly day but I am going to go harvest a limb.

This limb was leaning to close to the house, so I chopped it off with my Hults Bruk axe, which is a great axe.

Some sections of a Willow limb. I will make Lurs from the bottom two pieces and the top two will be firewood.

I debarked the limbs with a hatchet right away after the wood was cut down.

Debarked Willow in the process of becoming a Viking Lur!

Using a chisel to square off the ends.

Willow limb cut and squared off with a chisel.

Carving and tapering down the Lur. This was easy to do when the wood was so green. This was same day as the limb was cut down.

Here is the Lur trimmed to length and with a rough carved exterior.

Now the wood needs to dry for at least 2 months. The internal moisture will exit the ends of the wood much faster than the sides and this will shrink the ends quicker and result in significant cracks at the ends. To prevent excessive moisture release from the ends, I dipped them in beeswax. I make beeswax candles, so I just dipped the ends of the wood in the wax a couple times.

Both ends of the Lur are so coated, in order to achieve an orderly drying of the wood.

Same day (or within days) of chopping down the limb, you can strip off the flexible willow for using later as wrapping. I took this long branch and debarked it the day after it was cut down.

I then used a spokeshave to shave off long thin strips from the fresh Willow branch.

Here are my long willow strips shaved off of a freshly-cut willow branch.

I took all the willow strips and wound them around a stick that was similar in diameter to the Lur. I let them dry this way so that when I go to wrap my Lur with them, they will already be curved to the right diamater.

After a couple months the moisture content was about 6% and the willow Lurs that I had been drying were noticeably lighter with the moisture evaporated. I took a thin kerf pull-saw and sawed the Lur straight down the middle.

Here is the Lur split in half

Starting to hollow out the Lur with a curved gouge.

On the right you can see one half of the Lur gouged out by hand with a gouge chisel. I decided to taper the inner bore from the mouthpiece end out to the bell end. At the Bell end the wall thickness is about 3/16". I sketched out the mirror image on the half on the left and I will carve that one out next.

Both halves of the Lur, hollowed out. The Willow carved so nicely! I didn't carve all the way down through the base of the mouthpiece, as I want a smaller diameter hole at the base of the mouthpiece cup , which I will cut out later.

Now I will carefully carve the mouthpiece. I clamped the halves back together and trimmed 1/2" off the end with a sharp hand saw.

Next I carefully carved out the mouthpiece. The hole at the base of the mouthpiece should be about 1/4" (in my opinion). Look at the crack at the top of my mouthpiece end. I will need to glue that.

Gluing the two halves together. I'm keeping this Lur as authentic as possible, but I don't know what the vikings used for glue and I don't know what clamping mechanisms they had, though I doubt they had screw-clamps. One could lay the Lur on the ground and then lay heavy logs on the top to hold the pieces together. Anyway, I used Titebond III glue and clamps at this step.

After the glue dried I unclamped the Lur and carved the entire outer surface smooth with me knife. I like this carved look and I don't think the vikings had sandpaper, so I left the finish at this stage.

This is an exiting stage! I glued on the willow wrapping rings. They worked perfect and I was glad that I had dried them wrapped around the stick.

Couple coats of penetrating wood oil, and the Lur is complete.

Completed 34" Viking Lur

Sound of a 34" Willow Viking Lur: