Chapter 1032： Valdai Lake Discovery Program

Spring ploughing is coming to an end, and overworked people will take a good rest for a while, and then continue to work in various ways to gain benefits and improve their lives.

If the major cities of the kingdom are going to be under construction, these idle people are the best migrant workers.

If the kingdom is going to wage war, they are again conscripted as warriors.

In order to prevent the Smolensk from attacking in the north, Rurik, who had expeditioned to the west, faced the dilemma of the emptiness in the rear, and had to mercifully fully arm the Slav peasants in the Novgorod region. Poor quality but large cast iron spears were widely distributed, they were not even sharpened, and many of the spears were not wide. The sharpening and binding of wooden poles were handed over to the villagers, who were ordered to hold on to their homes.

As a result, the war in the rear did not break out, and the spear pieces that were distributed now were not recovered.

To Rurik, a piece of worn cast iron was nothing, but to the average farmer it was enough to change a lot. Armed with iron spears, this group of forest dwellers suddenly had courage, and they dared to team up to hunt bears in remote forest areas.

A freshly peeled brown bear skin can be sold for at least twenty silver coins, and the income from just one skin is enough to improve the life of the hunter. While bear meat can be eaten, bear bones, especially the whole bear head, are sold separately.

There are more than 30 farms that the army forced them to relocate. They left the forest and got a better life by the lake, but they couldn't really let go of the old days.

Living in the forest, they had to build some low walls for the old camp to prevent wolves and bears from attacking as much as possible. They suffer from the fact that most of the tools at hand are wooden and bone tools. In the face of crazy beasts, although they always win, they fail once. Someone is injured or killed, and injury often means a more painful death.

The blacksmith Kamnee, who Rurik had carefully trained, has taken charge of himself, and the whole person has become extremely strong. The thin, short child became a young man with a square chin and a beard. His arms were strong and advantageous, and he could strike a thousand times against a red-hot iron ingot with a hammer.

Kamne's parents were killed by a bear attack. The simple idea of ​​the villagers teaming up to hunt bears is to eliminate such beasts that feed on humans in exchange for safety. Now that bear hunting has obvious benefits, why not do it?

Every soldier in the standing army should have a tin helmet decorated with a bear's head, and the upper jaw of the bear's fangs should be used as the soldier's sun hat. The king has such a long-cherished wish, so there is a large consumer market for bear products in the army, and economic interests drive the Slavs with a large number of iron spears to rush into the forest.

Not only them, but the old and new Rus Jianyongs are better at hunting.

The collective "winter hunting" of the Rus has become a thing of the past. In front of them is the vast Valdai forest, and in the big field, it is the dense forest that continues to the Ural Mountains.

The vast world has not been developed. The so-called "hidden people" have been found in large numbers and forced to migrate. After passing through Lake Valdai, they continue to go east. In theory, the human beings that can be encountered are rare and scattered Finnish tribes.

A large number of men entered the forest, and they also carried a large amount of dry food, intending to stay in the forest for a longer period of time.

The straight-line distance between Vardai Lake and Yinermen Lake, where Novgorod is located, is 90 kilometers. It seems that it takes a dense forest to get there.

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Due to the past exploration of the "hidden person", there is a path in the forest that enters the lake in the east in a more tortuous way.

Medvedt and his army, who entered the forest to perform forced immigration work, eventually followed this path to conquer the settlers of Lake Valdai. He did not take full responsibility for relocating the locals and let them continue their current lives. After taking some tributes, he left, explaining the new changes in the Western Great Lakes region.

The village of Valdai Lake has opened up farmland, and the local people were forced to continue their journey after the failure of the power competition in Yinermen Lake in the past. Living on the shores of Lake Valdai isn't a paradise, and the beasts to watch out for here are pretty much nothing but the abundance of wood available. They had no iron, and since there were no stones in the country, their tools were sharpened bones.

They did just fine with the beasts attacking, and wisely surrendered without a fight against Medved's iron-clad warriors.

Today, the village of Lake Valdai has been recognized by King Rurik as the most eastern settlement of the kingdom, which proves that the further east is unexplored.

The hides of big beasts and the tender hides of cherished small beasts are what hunters yearn for.

But the road to the local area is not just the forest road pioneered by the ancestors.

Most of the old Rus people brought their families and immigrated to Yinermen Lake, and then built a large settlement on the banks of the Msti River east of Novgorod. It was the site that the old pine needle manor had already developed, and Rurik's own large-scale official land was also there. Sitting on thousands of acres of fertile land, and continuing to explore upstream along the Mustihe, is still a forte of the Rus.

And so, an adventure happened.

The channel gradually narrows, which is not a problem for longboats with shallow drafts. They went retrograde all the way, and finally drifted to a lake. The unnamed lake is still the course of the Msti River to the east. It is better to enter the lake rashly to continue east. The daring explorer turned his head to the south and found that the lake was extremely slender and divided into several small lakes of different sizes. Waterway connection. Eventually, they see the settlement and they also meet the guy standing on the raft fishing.

The explorers were surprised that those people were not afraid of themselves, so they boldly rowed their boats, and they simply started a Norse conversation with each other.

So it has been found out that the upper reaches of the Msti River is in the Valdai Lake, and the so-called Valdai Lake is not a small lake, it is an extremely large lake area, even no less than Yinermen Lake, just a dense virgin forest cover up its true face.

Rurik's mind was once focused on the war against the West, and until now he is still concerned about the commercial expansion of the kingdom in the Frankish territory.

After all, the leather, linen, iron and other commodities produced by Ross need to be dumped in a larger consumer market, and commodities must be rushed to places with large populations. Exporting to Frank is the most cost-effective option at present.

The war took on the implication of a commercial war, which made it less important to explore the Valdai Lakes eastwards.

The returning warriors have heard the news that many ferrets have been found near the eastern lake.

The people of Mstissk were eager to move, and Arik was equally moved.

Although Rurik didn't have time to think about the Eastern Expedition, he couldn't help but his older brother came to look for him with a smile on his face.

After finishing the retreat, he finally squeezed out the most important chapters of "Rossaga", and together with other myths organized by Ella, a Nordic mythology system with as precise a logical chain as possible was officially created.

The rest is accurate proofreading, and then arranges people to complete the printing to achieve mass production.

He reappeared, and the people who had been waiting for a long time swarmed him.

Since the Triumph has already been completed in the capital, the expeditionary force does not need to spend any more time in Novgorod. The overall performance of the Triumph Division is a bit low-key, but a lot of loot will not lie.

Among the many eyeing people was Fodgen, the director of a state-run textile factory. This old guy wanted to eat all the wool of Flanders. This idea was immediately approved by Rurik, but he casually asked: "I I thought that after the ship docked, you would lead someone to unload the cargo, why haven't you done anything yet?"

The old guy happily went to the temporary warehouse to move the goods, followed by some processing, and finally produced a large number of woolen clothes. What is a monopoly? This is monopoly. The entire Novgorod is a textile factory, and the Verdegen family naturally enjoys privileges as property owners loyal to the royal family. After all, it was a state-run factory belonging to Rurik, which was expanded and changed property on the basis of the old workshop in Verdegen. The workers have a group of slaves, most of whom are slack female workers, including the Ragnar clansmen who are working part-time.

Fodgen is so anxious because in addition to his salary, he also has product dividends. The cost of incoming materials for the factory is almost all of the royal family, and he brings someone in charge of the processing, and the labor remuneration is also given by the king in principle. Fodgen is a professional manager. He doesn't have to worry about business risks now. He only has one task to do his best to expand production capacity, so that he can get more production capacity dividends, which is a promising amount of money.

Rurik recalled the promise he made to Ragnar when Fodergen personally visited him.

"Yeah, it's time for his clan to go home."

Rurik knew that Kagan and Carlotta still had things to do, and the three should pick a day to talk about it in detail.

The day is finalized, there is still some time before then, and two things need to be resolved quickly.

On a quiet night, there were only two brothers in the warm room, and Rurik was not ready to pretend to be a king for his elder brother. But now Arik is often deafened by his beloved wife and clever Aslaqi, and he has become more in awe of his younger brother.

But as he drank some spirits, the awe disappeared, and Arik shouted his opinion loudly.

"You know our most eastern settlement is at Lake Valdai. Now many people have discovered a direct channel to there, and the eastern lake has floated our fishing boats."

"Anything else?" Rurik's eyes widened in surprise.

Seeing his brother's reaction, Arik couldn't help but patted his thigh and continued to shout: "In addition to being soldiers, we old Ross people are still fishermen and hunters. Isn't the purpose of our annual north hunting to catch valuable ferrets? Now? There is intelligence that there are ferrets all over Lake Valdai."

"This is real?"

"It's true! The brothers don't lie. So I'm going to organize the brothers to go up the river to see if we can catch a lot of ferrets, won't we make a fortune? What do you think?"

Arik stuck his head, his eyes seemed to have light bulbs. The desire to make a fortune was written on his face, and Rurik had no intention of objecting to it.

As a king, Rurik wouldn't simply shout and get rich like his brother. It's a good thing to think so, brother.

In the past, when there were not many silver coins in circulation in Sweden, the price of tanned ferret skins was as high as two silver coins. The leather color of a ferret varies substantially with the seasons, from brown-black in summer to pure white in winter. People who don't understand will think that these are two kinds of small beasts, but savvy hunters know that they are the same species, and will focus on catching a certain hue according to the season. White mink is the most popular, but black is still wonderful.

A leather area the size of a man's thumb nail can have 100,000 slender hairs. Mink fur is extremely smooth and warm. It is extremely noble and comfortable to use to make leather jackets. Mink has always been a hard currency in the Nordic world. It is not easy to catch, but now Ross has more tools to make more and more advanced traps for hunting small beasts.

So, will those Frankish nobles, big and small, want my mink?

"They must."

Rurik judged that even the knights of the village wanted a mink coat that felt extremely smooth. Of course, the gentlemen lack cash wealth. What they have is the food they scavenge from the people of the territory.

Food is always needed by the Rus Kingdom, and no one dislikes it.

The eldest brother's description was taken seriously by Rurik. He already wanted to understand. He asked tentatively: "Are all the soldiers willing? Obviously just finished spring farming, they plan to take a break and continue to be hunters?"

"Who doesn't want to have a chance to make a fortune. Besides, it's also good to catch a group of Minao brothers to make their own clothes."

"Very good indeed. How many people are you planning to launch?"

"This..." The dizzy Arik kept his mind, "Let's not fight this year, right? At least you didn't take the initiative to attack?"

"Of course. I just want to make a fortune quietly this year."

"Well then, I'll try to get the brothers to go. I'll also bring some young people from the youth city, if they want. Maybe five hundred people go to Valdai, maybe we'll spend the whole summer there. I found a strange village during the hunt, so I'll just attack and catch some slaves. Haha."

"Alright." Rurik smiled and nodded: "How many minks do you think you can bring back? I'm very concerned about your gains."

"Maybe a thousand, maybe more."

"Do what you can. Since you told me about this, I agree to it again. I... also give you some conditions."

"But it doesn't matter."

"I will send my scribes to follow you."

"Oh?" Arik shrewdly said, "Could it be that there is a tax on hunting leather? You can't do that."

"Hey! What are you thinking? It's completely tax-free this year, I'll say no. My scribes are proficient in drawing and writing. Brother, we should be ready to explore the unknown world in the future. The team passed through those rivers and mountains. , try to draw the terrain. If you encounter those strange animals, you should also draw them. Also, what happens every day, how is the weather, and the problems that the brothers have encountered, write them all down. This is convenient for summarizing after the exploration. "

"This... it's too troublesome. What's the matter, just come back and talk about it?"

Rurik shrugged: "I'm afraid that you will encounter too many things and forget a lot. My clerk will record what you have encountered."

"Okay. One more person is not a problem. I'm afraid your clerk won't **** his pants when everyone encounters a bear."

"Is this possible? A bear really appeared, didn't you shoot the arrows with your crossbow?"

"Haha, that won't work. We'll hit the bear with our spears. After all, only the perfect skin can sell for a good price."

The action plan has been approved by the king, and the king has to put people to participate in it. The exploration of Lake Valdai was not known to be a fortune-seeking journey of hunting wild beasts, and Rurik wanted to take the opportunity to conduct land exploration. uukanshu.com even this exploration comparison is primitive.

Because Rurik also has a long-cherished wish.

He knew very little about the vast Eastern Europe, and he was no better than his own people. Now the Rus Kingdom has basically understood the direction of the Dnieper River and the Smolensk tribal alliance that occupies the main waterway in the upper reaches of the river through commercial trade with the Pecheneg people and the Kyiv people.

Where is the very important Volga? This big river is somewhere further east, and there must be a large number of tributaries that converge on the main channel. The explorers of Ross did not have to insist on finding the main river channel. Any river that flows eastward as a whole has a high probability of entering the Volga River.

Rurik knew that the final mouth of the Volga River—the Caspian Sea. What is certain is that the narrow riverside plain in the estuary area is now completely occupied by the Pecheneg Khanate.

It would be great if the allies could be reached by shipping, and the cost of trade between the two sides would be much lower.

Thinking of this, Rurik made a request for an update to his eldest brother. "You try to explore as far east as you can, there is a very wide river in the east. It is wider than the Rhine. I call it the Volga. If you find it, we will establish a settlement at the place of discovery. We will be there. To build ships, go down the river.

"Where will it end up?" Arik asked casually.

"The territory of the Pechenegs."

"Ah! A miracle."

Rurik's face was serious and he didn't mean to joke at all. His younger brother was always a prophet, and he often received revelation from Odin. The "Volga River" is completely inexplicable to Arik. If you explore to the east, you can find it, and then find a channel to directly contact the Pecheneg people? It would be great if it was successful.

Arik has always been willing to be an explorer and hopes to make more contributions for this. He was full of promises to his brother's additional claims.