The Sons of Norway D5 Traveling Viking Chest is complete. It is similar to and was inspired by the chest I bring to my Scandinavian turning talks. (This is an evolution and synthesis of my Viking chest for my turning talks with an idea suggested by Burt Bittner three years ago to encourage cultural skills.)

Here is the Traveling Viking Chest.

The chest is seeded with a Viking drop spindle, a Viking bowl, and a Viking cup. 

The Traveling Viking Chest will be in the possession of the zone directors. The Chest will travel from zone to zone being exchanged at our board meetings. The zone director will take the Chest to their lodge meetings. Each lodge should make a reservation with the zone director. Each lodge would be asked to add one new item to the box, and a written description, as their rent. The item could consist of some craft, or even a recipe or photo, or something written, whatever a lodge thinks others might be interested in seeing.

Eventually, the box will fill up, at which point I will make another box. We will split the box and now have two traveling Viking chests. Hopefully the Traveling Viking Chest will inspire a sort of competition between lodges to add beautiful crafts or objects to the chest. Each time the chest is opened it will be different because the contents keep changing and increasing. 

The board will have to set up a schedule for the chest to alternate between zones. Gary Melby has the chest first for suggesting zone directors transport the Chest between lodges.

My committee recommended that I send either an email or letter to each lodge describing the chest, and explaining how the chest will move from zone to zone and lodge to lodge so that lodges can begin the reservation process. My committee also recommends that I keep the schedule up on the D5 website, and that I keep a list of items in the chest also on the website.

Schedule:
April to October 2013 – Zone 5 Gary Melby and Tom Maxson
October 2013 to April 2014 – Zone ?
Talk to your Zone Director to schedule a visitation with the Traveling Viking Chest