This is an interesting article, but riving is not specifically Viking. It was the primary method of producing workable wood blanks from tree trunks in every civilization that used wood blanks. Which is to say, it was used all over Europe and Asia (at least), for at least the last 2000-plus years. I'm not as familiar with the woodworking traditions of Africa or pre-European-contact North or South America, so I don't know whether they used wood blanks.<p>It's also used today by "green woodworkers" - woodworkers who specialize in building using non-dried wood. This mostly includes chair makers, but also some others. You can buy riving tools from a lot of places. Lie-Nielsen makes a very nice riving froe. You can also find antique ones at almost any antique woodworking tool show.
<a href="http://www.greenwoodworking.com/RivingArticle" rel="nofollow">http://www.greenwoodworking.com/RivingArticle</a><p>Jennie Alexander, an amazing woodworker who just passed away last week, wrote on this topic extensively. Check out her books 'Make a Chair from a Tree'
I do this kind of woodworking as a hobby. A lot of the material I use has been riven or split from firewood or yard trees. I mostly use dry or half dry wood, but sometimes also green stuff.<p>It is a bit time consuming, but not that much when I take into account that I don't need to be transporting stuff to a sawyer and back home, then to a shop with jointers and planers and whatnot. I can do it all in my home shop with a handful of tools whenever I want.<p>Here's a gallery of a firewood project I made for a contest earlier this year: <a href="https://m.imgur.com/gallery/TCgqd" rel="nofollow">https://m.imgur.com/gallery/TCgqd</a>
Riving(rive) means tearing or splitting in Norwegian and English. The word comes from Old Norse and is commonly used in Norwegian, but I didn't know it also was an english word.<p>To me "I couldn't open it, so I had to rive it." sounds like Petter Solberg(known to mix norwegian and english) trying to speak english. "It's not the fart that kills, it's the smell" (fart meaning speed in norwegian, and smell meaning crash)
A while ago, I ended up watching a video about making roofing shingles using hand tools, which uses the same technique, but on only ~footlong logs.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/UZA1J8RHltY?t=555" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/UZA1J8RHltY?t=555</a>
If you want to go down the rabbit hole on cool old school woodworking techniques, check this out: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/home/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/home/</a>
Reminds me of a scene in "Happy People", a documentary about life in the Russian taiga, where the hunter fashioned a pair of skis by splitting a tree.<p>Link if you're interested: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cPhWpprLmM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cPhWpprLmM</a>
Planks created by riving can have a triangular cross-section rather than a rectangular cross-section. The first picture at <a href="http://lumberjocks.com/MattNC/blog/37466" rel="nofollow">http://lumberjocks.com/MattNC/blog/37466</a> is a good example.
See also this technique in the making of an English longbow:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68L7n5Shd3I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68L7n5Shd3I</a>
You need wood that'd fit into your stove but only have (maybe fallen) trees around?<p>Well, duh. That's what you do. You cut it to the convinient length, take an ax and split 'em.<p>The crafts and stuff grow from that. How do you think boards were made before sawmills?<p>I mean, really, people were building log cabins for thousands of years before vikings. How do you think the logs were cleaned of bark and brought to more or less uniform diameter for that? This same technique and instruments.
The modern equivalent still common in Australia and probably other countries where you turn one log into 5 fence posts: <a href="https://youtu.be/rILXrWcav_Q" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/rILXrWcav_Q</a>
I recently acquired a gransfors bruks axe for a sculpture I was working on - and I have discovered a newfound love for scandinavian woodworking tools. My arsenal is almost entirely Japanese but I might convert over the next few years.
I wonder if there are people revisiting non powered 'machinery'. Instead of using your hands directly (which are probably super inefficient), why not make rail to guide the force ?