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JOHN HAYES WAS tasked with carving Marty Morrissey’s head from a block of wood at last year’s National Ploughing Championships.
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This year, John and his team at Special Branch Carvings wanted to go a step further. Quite a few steps in fact… They’re carving a 23-metre Irish Douglas fir into a 23 metre Viking Sword.
They’ve been working on the project since July of this year, and John’s hoping that tomorrow it will be officially confirmed as the world’s longest carved Viking sword.
John – who also gave us a masterclass in chainsaw carving at the Co Offaly site last year – talked us through his handiwork (and through a few hundred years of Viking history, while he was at it).
Video by Nicky Ryan
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@Joshua Walsh: Absolutely class, love it. The classic image of the Viking as raping and pillaging is not all they brought to Ireland, the also brought framing techniques, shipbuilding, established many of the towns and cites in Ireland and began a tradition of trading. They established the system of using coins, previously unknown to us. Rather than leave in a mass exodus after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 the majority had already integrated into Irish society so stayed here.
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