Rise of Rurik

Obviously, the "Book of Rome" in Villa's collection is indeed a rare treasure, but its content is written in classical Latin throughout, and Rurik is powerless to understand its content.

Unless a Roman priest who was proficient in ancient Latin taught him personally, it would be very impractical to think about it.

After looking through it, Rurik made a decision.

"I'm going to find a new wooden box to keep it, maybe it's the best place to keep it in a dry room. If it's in my home, I'm afraid it will be damaged."

Villa nodded: "Okay, I will find a new lock. I hope you will keep your promise."

"I will. But I'm a little curious. The writing on the book seems to be a kind of animal skin." Rurik said this on purpose. He guessed that it was parchment, but he didn't understand the Latin or the parchment. Pronounced in Greek.

"It's made of sheepskin. It's better than our oak board. Unfortunately, we don't have a way to make it." Villa sighed slightly, "If we can also use specially processed sheepskin as a writing material like the Romans did. If you look at the wood in this house, it can actually be turned into several books.”

Rurik deeply felt Vilia's yearning and respect for the far south. Perhaps it was this emotion that made her accept the gift of the man in black.

It was late, and Rurik finished his supper in the high priest's house.

The so-called dinner is a little boiled wheat porridge with salt, and some pickled meat.

The dinner was bland, and the people of the entire Ross tribe had not seen the real delicacies of the mountains and seas. A little honey on the tip of the tongue could make them feel that Valhalla was nothing more than that.

Rurik had to get used to all this, and only when he grew up could he display his personal ambitions for the tribe.

No one understands what kind of prosperity he is doing to "bring prosperity to the tribe".

Everyone's concept of happiness is very simple. Every small family of each tribe can live in a warm house, and they will not be hungry and full all year round. There are enough comfortable clothes and daily necessities to have multiple children and the whole family is healthy. There is more wealth on this basis.

However, in the current era, Scandinavia is macroscopically a barren world.

The most adventurous mind demihumans, the Swedes, leave their natural homeland.

Those who stayed, the crazy "Viking Age" that ended, could only continue to live in the still barren Svealand region, until the Swedes' monarchs thought of trading as a nation. Selling their own iron products for a profit made the Swedes a fortune hundreds of years later. They further strengthened the processing technology of iron products, actively developed ocean trade, and eventually became the first industrial power in Northern Europe.

These are the glory of the descendants of the Confederation of the Thinking Tribes a thousand years later.

Unfortunately, these honors have nothing to do with the Ross tribe.

Just because they moved their families.

The resources around Roseburg have been consumed on a large scale, and mad hunters have kept large beasts from approaching the fjord. For the development of this underground mine, the blacksmiths in Roseburg did not have any more ideas.

Perhaps the tribe's departure does not require any external stimulus, leaving is fate. Just like nomadic peoples, when a grazing pasture is eaten up by sheep, the migration of the entire tribe is inevitable.

After Rurik officially came into contact with the wooden boards that recorded the writing, in the days that followed, when he woke up, he would hurry to the long priest's house. His carved letter version is a "translation board" that can be used at any time.

He was pleasantly surprised that the "ancient books" compiled in the rune alphabet have punctuation, so it is not difficult to read.

In fact, in just three days, Rurik had read through all the wooden boards in Veria's collection, which also made him proud to spy on the Rus' past.

them,

Including myself, is a real Swede!

It was another cold morning, and although he didn't have a clock, Rurik guessed just by feeling that he would wake up at ten o'clock in the morning.

It was really just a feeling, because he felt that the sun would be at its highest in no time.

Even though it was noon, the angle of the sun was really bad.

It was this morning that Rurik told Veria how he felt after three days of study.

"Grandma, I think my mind is very smart. I read all the planks you have stored, and I have written down everything. I also know everything about our Rus's past."

Villa was very surprised for a while, "My child, you mean, you have fully learned that knowledge?"

"Yes. For example, I know that we moved to Roseburg seventy years ago, and we drove the Finns away. Our homeland was in the South, and it took a hundred and fifty rost to get here."

In fact, Rurik was also very surprised that the Ross tribe, or the entire Viking group, had clear weights and measures.

He wasn't quite sure how far the unit of length word rost, transcribed in Roman letters, was, considering its meaning was "half the distance of a traveler from one resting point to another", its definition was too vague, after all By no means a very short distance unit.

Rurik estimated that this rost was the basic unit of distance commonly used by the Rus.

It is indeed very "basic", because it is the equivalent of the concept of "kilometer" commonly used by the Vikings, and its length unit is converted into metric length a thousand years later, which is very similar to 1600 meters.

More than this, Rurik got more weights and measures concepts from those wooden planks of great historical significance. Whoever carved the text on the wooden board, I heard Veria's explanation, part of it was the masterpiece of her predecessors, and most of it was herself.

Rurik asked by the way: "Grandma, I now know exactly what money I should pay to exchange hides and cloths with distant merchants. How to determine a distance from our Roseburg to a distant place. I even Can know how to determine my own height. It seems that you have this information engraved on the board."

At this moment, Villa was very moved by the young Rurik.

She said bluntly: "Yes! Those are all carved by me, just to ensure that people in the future will not suffer losses when exchanging animal skins and get lost when sailing. I think all clansmen should know the unit of length best. , so that when they fell trees to make boat keels, they would not fail to estimate the length wrongly, nor cut out ill-fitting clothing.

Unfortunately, they would rather believe their common sense, but they don't know that the simplest things often need to be clearly settled to prevent slow changes from going against the original intention. "

Rurik nodded, he really understood what Veria meant, and he was also quite emotional. He never imagined that an old man who lived in the ninth century, who was over seventy years old, was very aware of the importance of ensuring the standardization of weights and measures. significance.

Regarding weights and measures, each country and every nation often has its own unique definition, but world trade is converging and internationalizing after all.

Merchants are always calculating, in order to pursue a fairness between buyers and sellers. Then the conversion of different measurement units often saves some fractions, so there will always be people who will suffer. Perhaps, the influence of Rome can still cover the whole of Europe, the weights and measures of Rome will continue to be used, and the trade situation in ancient Europe will be better.

Of course not!

The Frankish Empire had its own set of rules, as did the Visigothic kingdom. In the chaotic British countries, weights and measures can be described as varied.

The Eastern Rome, which still has a huge influence, is far from the unified Rome of the past in terms of weights and measures.

Even the Circum-Baltic region has its own unique system of weights and measures, which is used by Rosberg, and the inhabitants of Novgorod, the "servants" of the Rus, also have their own system of weights and measures of the Slavic tribes .

Therefore, business people must have good enough verbal calculation skills, otherwise they will suffer a big loss!

Based on these factors, Rurik asked tentatively: "Grandma, should you be able to measure my height? You should have a hemp rope that is only one stika (about 98 cm) long?"

Vilia's eyes lit up, she told Rurik to wait for a while, then stood up from the hide where she was sitting, and soon brought a thick hemp rope dyed with dark red moss over.