The weather is still okay, so we take the open carriage when we show Iselin's parents to their new home on the other island, which means we have a small entourage of guards plus Caecilia, and we introduce them to people we meet along the way. The small valley with its arable land of about 250x200m and with a shallow bay to the south, and is theirs to farm or do what they want with for the rest of their lives, and Iselin show them the house with its fireplace and water system plus the big nice bed and furniture, before showing the animal barn. Iselin informs that once they have settled in, we will buy them animals that will be theirs, they just have to decide which they want. What they produce or make is theirs, but they don't have to work the land or take care of animals if they don't want to, since we will provide them with food and firewood. Iselin is so happy to show and explain, and say she will pay someone who can help them with everything or just make fences and so on. Iselin mainly want her parents to make themselves at home and get used to their new life, and a few quiet months over winter will help. She would have liked to give them their own slave since it is a status symbol, but like many she wants the islands to be slave-free in the future, and it is quite likely that she will buy someone that her parents can free for oath bound servitude when spring comes and there will be much more work to do.

Hrappr is preparing to deliver food and has already delivered firewood, and Iselin and Ida will show them around the islands and introduce them to the other residents, and also teach them to use all the stuff in the house like the oil lamp and fireplace. We reassure them that they will never have to worry about food or clothes again, and that they of course are welcome visit the mansion whenever they want.

They have a huge adjustment to make.

The detour to Iselin's parents valley didn't take long, so the shooting continues so we will finish before it gets dark. It's late in November so the days are getting shorter and shorter, and the mountains and low arcing sun mean that we're partially in the shade. This time, Gunhild and Hillevi get to join us, and both get to shoot the musket twice. Gunhild likes it and is pretty much as attentive as Alith have been, but Hillevi is impressively bad at hitting the target, but this is after all her first time. Of course, Iselin gets to shoot several shots with both the musket and a rifle, and Alith gets another shot just because she is like a kid in a candy store. Alith is getting surprisingly good, but her muscles certainly help, and that she really listens to what I've said about shooting position, grip and breath control and following through. Alith is the best shot after me, and incredibly proud of it.

I hit the target well at two hundred meters, and carefully I make a proper 200m notch, and we do the same for 300m. In the future I'll add 400 to 600m as well, but I'm more interested in doing those ranges when I got the scopes and they aren't finished yet, and it will save time and black powder to do those alignments at the same time. I am keen to try many different iron sights like a rotating rear aperture sight for 100-600m in the style of a H&K G3 battle rifle so I can improve the 100m sight for low light since hunting will often happen during dawn. Maybe I'll just modify this rear sight, so it gets both a range adjustable aperture and a fixed 100m with larger hole for faster shots when hunting, or a wide V with some white marks. The rear sight is removable just to give me future options, and I didn't trust Olafr to get it 100% right. Before we call it today, I make sure to mark all the ram rods so that it is easier to determine if the weapon is loaded or not. Forgetting it's loaded and adding another load on top feels very dangerous. I will also make an oblong hole in the other end of the ram rod so a piece of cloth can be pulled through and the ram rod can be used to clean or dampen embers for faster reloads.

According to the island map I can make a permanent 600m shooting range here on the beach to the south west, but that sort of ruins the fields towards water for animals and horses and is less than optimal as I may want to build a small simple road to the south. I don't want to be shooting towards where people might be walking. Instead, I can build a shooting range to the south that cross the bay and use the mountain on the other side of the bay. The distant mountain is an okay back stop without much use and bay is just shallow water and deep mud with sharp shells hidden. I want some discretion from the road, and if I leave about 100m of trees and meadows before the shooting range booths and probably some kind of fence, there is room for a 200m shooting range towards the water, and I can make some kind of half floating 300m target that can be winched in. I can also add 500m and 600m targets against the mountain on the other side of the small bay. If I move the firing point forward to the 200m target, those targets become 300m and 400m, so I get the full distance scale from 0 to 600m. It will be annoying to go and inspect the targets across the bay, as I have to walk around the bay which is more like 800m, but I'll probably have to live with it and exercise is good. Or maybe I'll use the solution that some military shooting ranges use, with one person standing in cover to lower the target down and mark it. 100m and 200m feel like the primary distances to shoot at in the beginning, and then we'll see what is possible with the rifles. I suspect that the bullet loses a lot of energy so hunting will probably take place at a maximum of 200m anyway, and it is difficult to aim with iron sights at 300m. I want that magnification and focus that scopes give, especially as I'm probably going to starting having vision problems in a few years. I can do a couple of short range shooting ranges towards the mountain this side of the bay for shotguns and in the future probably pistols. That would be cool, and with a couple of shielding ramparts between short ranges, I can do some tactical shooting practice too. Yeah, this have been a good day, and those ranges will happen. It's hardly much work to make.

Iselin has arranged a little gift for me which is a very nice version of that game I heard about when I introduced Chess - Hnefatafl. Again not the most easily pronounced name, like much here, which is why I keep thinking of things in my own Swedish or English terms, but it is a pretty interesting game that can be played in different ways. One is to brag about who can escape with the king in the least amount of moves and then prove it, or you play twice and switch, and whoever escaped in the least amount of moves wins. The rules are fairly simple and I have played it before and it only took a couple of games before I was pretty good at it, much to Hillevi's frustration when she asks if I wanted to play my new game and I beat her. It was partially luck, but her being a bad loser makes the win a little sweeter. But Hnefatafl is probably another game she will no longer want to play against me.

We have a nice evening, and besides games, there is so much talk about tomorrows hunt with Olafr. Alith and Bodil will come along, but we can't be many if we want to have a good chance of seeing anything. I will use my rifle and Olafr the musket with shotgun pellets. Hopefully we'll shoot something tomorrow on Large Ackerek, but we will hunt on Orusingen the following day. That will be a real hunting trip with my entourage along, although most won't participate in the hunt and just stay and see Kari's properties and prepare food and so on.

Iselin remembers to tell me that the man I hired to look for saltpeter found more than 4.5kg during the days she was away and is back on the island again, and when I check the jars it seems to be good saltpeter. So I send Ida to fetch the man and give him the task of travelling around on Orusingen and Tosra, and then further into the region if the weather seems okay this winter, and buy all the saltpeter he can on my behalf. I might as well buy up all the saltpeter I can get my hands on, especially since I already have a cannon and ordered another, and there will also be more fireworks in the future.

Saltpeter is also useful come summer, since together with ice, it should be able to make ice cream. What can be scraped from walls will probably be enough for most future need I have, and I'm not keen on starting to separate it from stable soil, urine, etc, even though a significantly larger amount would become available and cheaper. There will probably be few cellars or stone walls here on the islands that grow saltpeter, but it is worth sending someone to buy it, and the terrain is hilly and mountainous.

The evening is cold and with a clear starry sky, so the staff set out a few buckets of water in the hope that it will freeze, while I take Iselin out with me so she can try the spark gap transmitter and receiver. They really work impressively well. As a surprise I open the spark gap transmitter and remove the spark gap cover, and in the dark a tiny spark is visible, and Iselin thinks it is absolutely fantastic and extremely manly. Her future husband can create thunder and lightning just like the God Thor, and it doesn't matter that mine is on a much smaller scale. What other woman who isn't a goddess can say the same? Alith and Bodil had NOT expected that the transmitter use tiny trapped lightning, as that is something I have kept secret even though they've heard the sound. Spark is one of those words and concepts that the Norse language didn't associate with electricity, so it didn't tell them anything. As far as they are knew you get sparks from flint and steel, or hammering on iron. They knew I can make 'thunder', and that I've made it rain indoors - Alith understands how the 'rain' was made but she refuse to reveal that even to Iselin, no matter how much Iselin wants to know - but now I also make lightning and keep it trapped and hidden inside a box. To quote the movie Predator 2: 'Voodoo magic! Fucking Voodoo magic man!'. I've said that enough times that Jane generally just rolls her eyes at my bad Jamaican accent, and Alith knows it by heart.

We head back to the mansion, and find Olafr just sitting at the bench by the sundial and looking at the mansion and enjoying a beer. With so many of its windows lit up by oil lamps it really is a strange sight to see in this world, since every where else it is dark. There is no lights from distant houses glimmering across the water, and no street lights. Most houses have a fire in a firepit and few windows, so not much light slips out. The mansion is like a beacon of sejd and wonder underneath the starry sky.

Before Iselin and I go to bed for the night, we have a little music evening with dancing, and Iselin loves the updated blue tooth speaker. She thinks it's so wonderfully magical that it can play music from the mobile, and control the mobile without there being anything between them. After all, she has just learned about wires and cables, and accepted that so much impressive music can come from a tiny little plastic box, and led into her ears via wires, and now it is wireless. Like Jane's weird earplugs. When she talks, I realise that Iselin practically lives Sci-Fi each day, with plenty of what is magic for the rest of this world.