Posts: 1,220 Location: Cork, Ireland
Sun 26 Mar, 2017 1:57 am
Getting back to the subject of arming garments in the Viking Age for just a moment. This thread has veered way off where I originally intended it to go, but I'm not complaining, I've enjoyed the discussion, and I'm glad that it managed to stay civil for once.
As I said earlier, one of the arguments why the Vikings "must have" used an
aketon under their mail, is because the Romans used subarmalis. I don't think that this is a good argument. There is no evidence that the Romans ever used a stuffed and quilted arming garment. The Pliny and De Re Bellicis references suggest that Roman arming garments were made from felt. Felt can be made very thick, so it doesn't need to be layered. Also felt doesn't need to be quilted between layers of cloth to hold itself together. I believe that there are traces of felt lining the inside of some of the surviving examples of Roman helmets and greaves.
So if the idea of arming garments under mail carried on after the Romans, and through to the High Medieval period, then this garment was probably a thick felt tunic, and not an
aketon-like garment. The idea of cotton stuffed arming garments probably came to Europe through contact with the Holy Land during the crusades. There is one well known reference to crusaders wear mail in combination with a thick felt garment, but unfortunately the author (Saladin's biographer) doesn't mention whether this felt garment was worn under the mail or over it. This could be evidence of a native European tradition of arming garment, which eventually got replaced by aketons.
Other than this, the only other evidence that I know of for felt arming garments in Europe, is that recently some 17th century "buff coats" have been found to have been made from felt, and not buff leather.
As for the argument that aketons were worn in the Viking Age because without them mail is "useless". Though this has not been argued on this thread, I've seen this argument so many times that I had to talk about it. As Dan Howard has pointed out on other threads the main threats on the battlefield in the age of mail were spears and arrows. Of course the first line of defence against these threats were large
shields. If a spear point or an arrow did get around the shield, and struck someone on their mail, then I believe that the mail was enough to handle it. Could the blunt impact of this strike cause bruised flesh and perhaps broken bones? Yes of course, but it still saved lives. A comparison could be made to modern ballistic vests. These vests stop bullets from entering a human torso, but do nothing cushion the impact. This is very similar to mail, and yet law enforcement officers wear these vests without any padding underneath.
The Maciejowski Bible and King's Mirror were brought into this thread to show that even in a time when aketons were used, they were not universal, and so in earlier centuries might not have been used at all. They have now become the focus of this thread, but as I said, I'm not complaining. I'm enjoying the discussion, so thank you all for the replies.