To piggy back on this, I'd be interested in knowing where blacksmiths got their ore well prior to the 1700s - when the ability to basically travel around the world (Australia was officially discovered in 1606 and the East India Company was founded in 1600, for instance) was a somewhat established thing. I'm assuming the earliest blacksmiths used things like locally available bog iron but it would be interesting to see how the sourcing of ore proceeded from this through the years.

Related Question: To what extent did blacksmiths still exist by the end of the 18th century? Did blacksmithing decline during this period, or was that a later phenomenon?