said to be born on christmas day in 841 in nuremberg germany almost nothing is known about edmund records or any evidence of edmund's life or reign were likely destroyed by viking invaders accounts of his life were written some years later possibly fictitious stating that he was crowned as the king of east anglia when he was 14 years old it's also reported that he became a model king kind to his subjects and generous with his wealth a lot of these details were written by abba fleury an abbott from france who upon learning of king edmund decided to write a biography on his life so many of these details are to be taken with a pinch of salt but it's an interesting story nonetheless during before and after king edmund's reign it was a troubled time in britain with viking invasions coming frequently after a successful and bloody campaign in northumbria by two of ragnar lothbrok's purported sons iva and uber ragnason either or over the boneless as he was also known ventured south to the kingdom of east anglia in the year 869 iva's nickname is said to have come from some kind of bone condition or inability to walk upon returning to his wife austag after a long campaign ragnar lothbrok wished to consummate his marriage auslag being a kind of clairvoyant said that they must wait three nights before consummation in order to avoid a curse ragnar however did not wish to wait and thus iva was born with his bone disease upon entering east anglia ivor ragnason sent the messenger to king edmund he suggested that edmund submit to their rule and renounce christianity his messenger according to above fleury said the following my august master and unconquerable sovereign enguar a terror by land and sea having by force of arms brought countries into subjection to himself has landed with a great fleet on the desirable shores of this territory with the intention of fixing his winter quarters here and in pursuance thereof commands you to share with him your ancient treasures and your hereditary wealth and to reign in future under him but if you hold in contempt his power which is fortified by innumerable battalions it will be your own prejudice as you will be encountered unworthy to live or to reign and who are you that you should presume to oppose such great power the storms and tempest of the deep subverse the purpose of our fleet and cannot turn from the accomplishment of their settled intentions men who by grace and honor of the elements have never suffered injury from the awful thunders of heaven or from the off-repeated lightning flash submit therefore with all your people to the greatest of monarchs in the elements obey since he is repaired in his great clemency and all that he undertakes to spare the meek while he overwhelms the proud upon hearing the message king edmund called one of his most trusted bishops to his side to discuss the choices ahead the king heard him for a while and listened to the bishops pleased to submit to iva he was worried for the safety of edmund and so advised that they submit to viking rule he stood at the floor for a moment in silence gathering his thoughts and according to eber of flory replied to the bishop as follows bishop i have reached a point in my life which i never had any apprehension see a barbarous stranger with drawn sword menaces the old occupants of my realm and the once prosperous natives are reduced to size and groans and silence with that those who now live and dread of perishing by bloody death might be spared to survive amid the beloved fields of their country even though i should fall and that they might in course in time be restored to the brightness of their former prosperity the bishop replied how can you speak of survivors in the land seeing that the enemy sword has left scarcely won alive in the whole city their axes are blunted with the slaughter of your subjects you are left without a guard and they will bind you fast with thongs and therefore my sovereign dear to me is my soul unless you seek safety and flight or have recourse to the ill-omened alternative of surrender i fear the tormentors will soon arrive and you will forfeit your life through the unholy execution of their orders this i hardly wish and desire replied the king did i not be the only survivor after my beloved things are slain in their beds with their children and wives by these pirates it was never my way to flee i would rather die for my country if i need to almighty god knows that i will not ever turn from worship of him nor from his love of truth if i die i live after those final words to the bishop it is then said that king edmund undaunted turned to the viking messenger and spoke reeking as you are with the blood of my countrymen you might justly be deemed to death but to speak plainly i would follow the example of christ my lord and refrain from staining my pure hands and for his name's sake if the needs arise i am willing and glad to perish by your weapons therefore return as fast as you can at once to your lord and take forth with this message to him son of the devil never in this life will edmund submit to either the he the more leader unless he submit first the belief in the savior christ which exists in this country the messenger returned to either ragna some of the king's reply which obviously wasn't particularly pleasing to his ear he came and surrounded edmund with soldiers and ordered that he'd be bound and brought out it's reported at this moment that he was savagely beaten with rods and taunted before being tied to a tree and lashed edmond however in what was now a depleted voice still called out in refusal to submit this further angered the invaders and so they shot him full of arrows filling his body with gashes and wings and taking him beyond any state of recovery still a resolute voice came from the king's mouth and so over the boneless on the 20th of november 869 ordered that he be beheaded upon departing after the murder of king edmund the vikings hit his decapitated head in the woods so that it couldn't be buried with his body the locals decided to do a thorough search of the thicket spreading out and shouting where are you in hopes of some form of reply eventually they heard a voice here here here and followed into an opening where a wolf sat protecting the head of the departed king with its paws king edmund's body was buried in a chapel near to where he met his fate later his remains were taken to bedroussworth which is the old name for modern-day berries and edmunds getting its name from said burial interestingly it was the vikings of east anglia who began the cult of king edmund the very people who were responsible for his death turned him into a saint perhaps in an attempt to create a viking saxon identity for the people of east anglia this of course goes against many opinions about edmund being the representation of anglo-saxon resistance to viking invaders though to be honest i prefer the idea of two communities finding harmony from the mistakes of the past it's an edmund shrine was situated in or near the abbey of barristan edmunds and for centuries was one of the most famous and wealthy pilgrimage locations in england visited by various kings even after the norman conquest in 1066 the course in edmond was promoted but unfortunately the shrine and abbey was destroyed and stripped for parts during the dissolution of the monasteries by henry viii sin edmund was actually the patron saint of england before edward the first changed it to sin george in 1348 if you visit berries and edmonds today you can still see many references to the marta king the grounds of the old abbey though now just ruined have become the abbey gardens its entrance is actually the abbey gate which i carried previously on this channel there are two sculptures at roundabouts in the town one of a wolf with a crown and the other with king edmund bound and full of arrows an archaeological dig began in 2020 under the tennis courts in the abbey gardens with some hope that king edmund's remains which were moved during the dissolution of the monasteries may lie there this carving took 90 hours to complete and is made from the limewood which is basically the uk version of basswood it measures one meter long 24 centimeters wide and it's two centimeters thick the technique you see me using here is that i'm sealing the limewood with a mixture of polyurethane and mineral spirits or white spirits and a 50 50 ratio so after i sealed the wood by going over it twice and now mixing up a wash with oil paints and mineral spirits the first ceiling is just to make the paint application a lot more easy make it so the paint doesn't soak in too far into the wood and so you can control the color a little more [Music] i always like to do a wash every time i finish a carving it just helps to show off some of the details and add a bit more color to the wood the lime wood that i have and generally limelight and password and lindenwood is quite a white word quite pale so quite often people will finish it with some kind of stain or color just to bring out all the textures and the carving that you've created on the piece of wood this is learned from a youtube video from my woodcarver called fred zavadil and he makes some incredible carvings and really knows how to control the oil paints very well i actually bought the same oil paints that he uses just so that i could try out the same technique and see if it worked for me and so far i really love it i've used on a few of my carvings so far you saw on the abigail carving as well as the carving of the anime character that i made they were using the same technique so i'm just applying it with a brush and then taking the paint away with a piece of tissue this is because i don't want too much of the color to sit on the carving to start off with i like to build it up in layers so i'm painting quite a lot on but then taking it off with the tissue or sometimes with my fingers or a different brush or something just to kind of take the color out of it a bit and turn it more into a stain and less like just painting acrylic straight on and in this technique here i'm just adding some highlights and moving it around with my fingers because i find that helps to add a little bit extra on there and if you push the paint in with your fingers a little bit you can then wipe it away afterwards with the tissue and it leaves a little bit of highlight so i'm just adding a little bit of a white highlight to the bottom of those flames there [Music] the center section i took quite a lot of time making because it's one of the pivotal moments in the story and one of the most important parts of the carving so i wanted that to be represented in the very center and sort of draw your attention to it a little because this is when king edmund refuses to submit to viking raw so in the background there i used a leather stamp that you'd usually use on leather but i decided to use it on this just to stamp the background a bit and bring the characters a bit further forward and then i use the stain on it again the same stain that i used before but just layered it a bit more it's a good thing about this painting technique you can layer on top a few times just to make things a little bit darker if you wait for the paint to dry and then layer on you can make it even darker even add highlights all this kind of stuff so the center section is really important because it enforces the the story that we're going with that he was a martyr that he he gave his life for his beliefs but there are other stories out there who portray edmund as a coward and said rather than him defying the vikings he ran away but it depends which story you go for and i think the martyr angle is a lot more appealing and a lot more interesting the oak tree that i've carved in the carving there is apparently a place called oxen in suffolk and there's actually a monument there to king edmund which is on the very site where the oak tree once stood [Music] where he was tied up and shot full of arrows i actually began to paint this part green but then soon realized that this happened on the 20th of november so those leaves would be very much in autumn colors by then and perhaps a lot of them would have fallen on the ground but i decided to go with this nice orange autumn color [Music] so with the painting on top of the carving of 90 hours it took around 105 hours to carve and paint and complete this project this one i've been planning for a long time and i've gone through many different designs trying to figure out how i wanted it to be set out which parts of the story i wanted to tell it's hard to get every single element of the story in one carving but i tried to display the main moments and give a feeling of what things were like back then and i took some influences on style from old medieval paintings and particularly drawings associated with erbo of flurries text that he wrote on king edmund the border was something that came up last minute really i looked at it for a while and kind of examined what i wanted to do and looked up some anglo-saxon patterns from the time and some viking patterns and i think this sort of pyramidal repeating square type pattern around the outside would have fit in back then with the kind of jewelry and trinkets and art that they used to make painting at a dark colour i think makes you focus more on the subject at hand i've lived near berry almost my whole life so going into bears and edmonds and seeing king edmund referenced all over the place it's uh really cool to see that history there and that just made me want to bring this even more to life really so not only did it bring out the passion and interest i have in wood carving but also for the local history the local legends and i want to say thanks to everyone on twitch who watched me carve this whole thing live including the painting and for sticking around while i was doing it i really appreciate your company and the support you've given me same with all you guys on youtube of course i have my youtube channel for quite a long time now and i'm glad you're able to share this wood carving kind of journey that i'm going on trying to express all the things i want to do and trying to improve every day so thank you very much for hanging around and i hope you really enjoyed this video and this piece and i look forward to bringing another carving your way soon [Music] [Music] you
