No angst in this house

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

the female gaze

I've got a crush on you 💘

POV you’re interrupting mbart media time. rude, honestly :/

stills:

After three weeks of back-and-forth and a bit of confusion at the local print shop, I'm pleased to announce that June postcards for Postcard of the Month Club over on Patreon have gone out!

Literacy crisis WHO? This was said in the most vocal fried Californian accent ever. I hope The Girls enjoy some Russian lit this summer.

Living in Australia, I'm kinda always at the mercy of my posts lining up with crappy timezones, so when I came back to Tumblr and realised there was a fully in-built post scheduling system, I was very excited...only to happily realise that even with that in mind, Tumblr has a much more 'time-blind' and relaxing approach to posts. It lifts my spirits whenever I see that somebody's gone through my catalogue or liked a post that had been put out days or even weeks ago, and it appears that that's a far more prevalent phenomenon on this site compared to anywhere else. A guy could get used to this more easygoing posting experience, although of course that's all thanks to folks like you! Thank you all. BONUS: