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sidhewrites · 4 years

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WORLD BUILDING. Approx 1100 words. I had some ideas for the culture of Kellu, the village in which our main character grew up, which of course shaped her values and personality. Pieces of it may or may not change depending. Approx 1100 words.

Content warnings for; mentions of food and alcohol, mentions of infant death/pregnancy/birth.

Architecture: Houses are stone and waterproofed/weather proofed, well-insulated. Usually built around a central hearth, even if it’s just a small fire pit in the ground. The outside is usually plain, with rugs and the like inside. Narrower doorways for most, occasionally wider ones. The kitchen is the largest if not the only room (sometimes folks just sleep on beds around the oven/on top of the oven), and there’s small hearths in every room.

Big city fancy pants houses have heated floors. This is not a city tho.

Population is just big enough for you to not know everyone on sight. Idk, 300 or so?

Life spans are probably shorter than in the city. 50/60 years or so?

Economy:

Bartering, favors, and honor systems are the main forms of trade, though coin isn’t entirely unheard of. It just doesn’t help as much as, say, a new door for looking after the kids for a day so you can hang out with friends.

Everyone has a trade or contributes what they can. Most folks are food producers of some sort -- fishers, farmers, shepherds.

The nearest settlement is a sizable township/city that’s a good few days’ boat ride north. Occasionally merchants will travel and sell wares and bring back news, but most folk never leave home.

Diet: Rye and oat for bread and meals. Barley. Beer especially, some vodka, kvas, etc. P much anything that can be fermented. Berries, leafy winter greens. Cabbage, potatoes and carrots, beans, peas. And fish especially. Salmon mackerel, herring, and the occasional octopus, crab or squid. Hot teas.

Coffee is a delicacy rarely seen in kellu. Occasionally given as gifts in weddings.

Mobility Aids: Wheelchairs or crutches as mobility aids in the summer. Snow chairs pulled by goats or sheep or occasionally yaks if youre brave enough in winter -- essentially a wheelchair strapped to a sled so it doesn’t sink into the snow. People dont love it because goats are DUMB and smelly why cant wheels just work on snow??? Crutches and canes tend to get similar weight distribution attachments. It’s common for folk with free time to paint or carve intricate patterns into the wood.

Fashion: Bright colors and vivid dyes. Multiple layers of wool and furs -- stockings, underwear, skirts/pants shirt, undercoat and overcoat, hats and scarves. Mittens, boots. Some people like to layer skirts so it’s rainbows etc. Some teens wear certain colors to suggest flirting or openness for marriage, but it’s not universal. Shorter skirts/coats are occasionally worn by teens in their rebellious phase, since you Dont Expose Skin (because snow).

Hair styles incorporate braids, beads, etc, and often are long plaits down the back if not pulled up under a fur hat.

Hair long enough to braid is common in every gender. If you don’t have hair or cut it short for whatever reason (usually a sign of someone to be shunned and mistrusted, a common punishment for people who do BIG crimes etc), people often have a plait of yak fur or wool to your hat or coat. Braids are one of the many methods to sort of passively ward off trolls, as well as the color red (?) and it’s just fun and artistic.

Weather: Summer is temperate, usually 60-70s at most, and winter is often brutal but they have lots of ways of coping. Bonfires and heavy coats, often have smaller animals sleeping inside for extra warmth, so its’ not entirely uncommon for a yak to just be chilling inside someone’s house.

Animals: Most everyone has a mousing cat. There’s probably a folkloric tie-in as well. Sheep and Yaks are most common livestock/work animals, and graze on scrub brush at the edge of the woods for the most part. Sheep are regularly shorn. Cleaning, carding, and spinning are some of the most common activities to do in down time.

Occasionally used for meat/furs, but usually milk for cakes and wool and warmth and work

Music and singing are paramount to passing time. There’s shanties, working songs, and plenty of homemade music as well.

Bells: EVERYONE makes bells. From cowbells that hang from the necks of their livestock and heavy iron bells to hang over doors or windows, to small bells made of metal blanks folded around scrap metal/beans/stones/nuts. If you’re not making bells, you’re working with wool, you’re fixing clothes, or you’re weaving cords on which to hang the bells.

Weddings: Marriage has LOTS of bright colors. While most people wear their best dress/coats instead of a single dedicated outfit, there are brightly-dyed cloaks and veils loned to you from family members/neighbors for the occasion. The happy couple make a red cord for bells for each other, with gold or white dyed thread woven in and two or three bells, tie it around the other’s wrist as a sign of engagement.

Babies: Not named until after they survived their first winter. People try to arrange it so that babies are born in mid to late spring so they have as much chance of survival as possible, so there’s a mother’s festival every april or may to celebrate. Gifts of booties and clothes and other baby materials are given to every mom, doubly so to new mothers. The naming ceremony is probably in the same event, and it’s like a week or two of celebrating babies. Maybe when the first calf/lamb is born? Midwives are sent for if there’s an unexpected number of pregnancies that year, but everyone has some basic knowledge of how to help in a standard birth, because it’s hard enough to survive that process much less if you’re unprepared and the witch or midwife is busy already.

If the child is ill, has NO chance of surviving, etc there’s a special funerary ceremony. (Not sure what it is yet) but it is NEVER left to die. Even if it’s born out of wedlock, it’s seen as better to raise it anyway with the shame than abandoning it in the woods. While Mylings exist, if you’re found to have been the parent of one, it’s doubly worse. The world is dangerous enough. You don’t need to subject infants to that, and/or make it worse for everyone else too.

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