story identification - Book about a magic blacksmith

I read a trilogy of books 5-10 years ago (it could have been an old story by then though) and went to recommend to a friend - but I can't for the life of my remember the author/titles.

In this world, magic and blacksmithing are linked somehow - "mastersmiths"enchant their creations while making them. There are few true "mastersmiths" who can craft in this way, and are held in high, almost god-like esteem.

What I remember:

The main protagonist is recruited by a mastersmith who teaches him the trade

it turns out this master is a bad guy, and he was helping him build some mega-sword of super-death

Later in the story he goes into a sort of self-imposed exile, not making anything too fancy

until someone talks him out of it? I think?

I'm hazy on the main plot details in this one, but

near the end of the book, he forges what to modern eyes would be an iron-man suit, possibly fighting a dragon...

Can anyone help?

Answer

Might be the Winter of the World series by Mike Scott Rohan (no relation). The hero certainly becomes a master smith, and leaves the land of his birth.

Chiefest among the Chronicles is the tale of Elof, who rose from a nameless foundling and serf to become a magesmith of ever-increasing art and power; and of the great skill, great knowledge, great love and great folly of which his life was shaped, and the awesome deeds he accomplished. How at first he fell into evil, was cleansed and, with the aid of his fast friends and the strange figures who haunted him, undid his ill-doing; how with those friends he sought a new home for his people across the breadth of a continent, and found that in his quest he was also pursuing the girl he had long loved, bond-servant of the Powers of Ice; and how he lost her once more, and went seeking her across the wide oceans of the world to the ancient home of civilization, and there found the destiny of the world in the balance; of these the first three books tell. And of how he won at last the name of Elof Valantor, Elof of the Skilled Hand, mightiest of all magesmiths amid the dark days of the Winter of the World.

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