Posts: 1,420 Location: New Orleans
Tue 27 Jan, 2009 10:57 am
I have worn a padded gambeson for sparring in 90 degree heat and high humidity here in New Orleans just to keep from getting bruises. They do it routinely in big SCA fights too that are held in the US South. So it's not
that much of a hindrance, and I have no doubt it could be worn in battle to save people from getting their lungs punctured. In fact we know it was later in history. Plate harnesss breathes much less and is much hotter to wear than either mail or linen. So no Dan the segue about Towton is not relevant to the Viking age.
But both of these are diversions from the issue, namely heat IS affected by climate and weather (and things like the availability of water) but would at best be a circumstantial impediment to the use of any historical armor at best, it would not rule out the use of it for hundreds of thousands of warriors across four centuries. They certainly wore plate harness in spite of the heat issues, in fact we know the Crusaders wore mail with gambesons* in the Middle East. They wore rhino hide armor in India for gods sake.
Also, I disagree Gary, there is one major difference between the Iron Age battlefields and the later Medieval battlefields. The primary threat for most troops in both cases was not spears at all but missiles. In the Iron Age these would be mostly low-energy missiles, i.e. primarily javelins. Thats not to say they don't hit hard especially thrown at short range, but at longer range could be stopped with
shields. By the Medieval period increasingly very high energy missiles; long bows, very powerful winch spanned crossbows, recurve composite bows, and by the time plate armor began arriving, firearms and cannons. These cannot be stopped by the kind of light shields used by the Vikings and increasingly were threats even to
mail armor (with or without padding)
Finally while I do agree with Jean that this debate includes the usual misunderstanding of positions what I saw on the start of this thread were a lot of categorical denials of textile armor being used by Vikings, which now seems to have evolved into a slightly more nuanced position that it's unlikely. Bottom line is we don't know. But I'm sick of people trying to shut down these discussions as if by religious fiat, and sorry Dan, if you don't have proof of your position you can't state it as fact whether it's a negative or a positive. If I say there isn't any iron in the core of the Earth I'd still have to prove it.
We have a lot of people here with a lot of knowledge, we are all interested in history, why does everyone have to get so personally invested in so many of these types of discussions? Outside of re-enactor group politics which I could care less about, does it really matter to us whether Longbows could pierce platemail or not? No it doesn't, because whatever the actual fact is,
IS what happened. We can't go back and change it, it is part of the history that made us who we are and got us here to argue on the internet. We can't change history no matter how much we'd like to. We can't control history because 'the truth will out". I think we'd all get along better and have more fun discussions if rather than trying to bend history to suit our own wishes, we allowed ourselves to search for what it actually was, the chase is challenging enough for many lifetimes, it's an elusive target we will never quite catch.
J
* arming coats whatever you know what I mean