I'm planning to spend an irresponsibly large amount of money on an Ulfberth mail shirt and I don't want to get kicked off the field because my chain mail is the wrong style. Viking age mail seems to have been a blend of round riveted rings made from wire and flat rings punched out of metal sheet. Nobody that I know of makes that style of mail. Ulfberth has four basic styles of mail:

• Butted
  
• Round Rings Dome Riveted
  
• Flat Rings Dome Riveted (mixed solid riveted)
  
• Flat Rings Wedge Riveted (all riveted)

Nobody seems to make mixed round/flat ring mail these days and the butted mail seems to be inauthentic for the period so that's off the table. The round rings riveted mail looks pretty authentic(ish) but it is heavy. The Battle Merchant RRR version of the shirt I'm interested in weighs 22kg. The Flat Rings mail I'm not sure about. Viking period mail did have some flat rings but they are not as flat as the flat ring mail for sale in this day and age. The flat ring shirts equivalent to the RRR version I mentioned above are significantly lighter with the both versions weighing only ~14 kg as opposed to 22kg for the RRR version and I'm guessing on a hot day in summer I'm really going to feel those 8 extra kilograms of the RRR shirt.

So, my questions are:

• It's very tempting to pick the flat ring shirts because they weigh less but there is the accuracy concern. Exactly how horribly inaccurate is the flat ring mail from Battle Merchant or other modern vendors? Is this the kind of 'lilliputian soda can ring' mail that people here keep talking about?
  
• Which kind of mail is easier on gambesons/aketons, wedge or dome riveted? Or is it the flat joint surfaces on the mail rings that tear up the fabric? I just finished laboriously hand sewing a gambeson because hand sewn garments are a requirement for some events I go to and while I know my precious new gambeson will get torn up I also don't want to tear it up any more quickly than absolutely necessary.

I'm putting on my rubber shoes for what may be a very slippery slope to come. For a long time people have touted the soda tab Indian riveted mail as "more authentic" than butted rings. It is no more authentic because the processes used to make it, the materials used, and the final appearance are not historic. The only thing it has going for it is the rivet itself. It's like putting a Ferrari emblem on a Hyundai and saying "it is more authentic," vs a replica Ferrari without the emblem. Yes, the Hyundai has the emblem alright, but it does not look like a Ferrari. In fact, well made butted mail armor LOOKS more like historic examples of mail than ANY of the soda tab riveted mail available. In my opinion, since neither type is the "real deal" I just go for looks and make my own butted mail since I am not relying on it to save my life in hand to hand combat. Remember though: most combatants were NOT armored at all, especially vikings. A tunic, breeches, shield, belt, axe or spear, and period shoes would kit you out completely and believably. You could even grab a helmet and a knife of some sort for extra flair.

You could always spend several thousand dollars for more authentic mail, which is also a historically accurate decision if you could afford such a kit.

(No disrespect to anyone with Indian riveted mail)

I look at things from the viewpoint of doing one-man school demos (among other reenactments!). If I have to hand a piece of butted mail to my audience and then explain how on the REAL stuff at least half the rings were riveted, it's a pain. With Indian-made riveted mail, I don't have to do that. They can see the rings and rivets, and you can see the understanding in their faces. Certainly with *some* audiences I can get more into the nitty-gritty of ring shape details, etc., but for them I can always carry the scrap of Erik Schmid mail that I have.

So Yes, I would go for "bad" riveted mail over butted any day, if I could afford it.

That said, 22 KG??? They can keep that! Even if that's just a *shipping* weight, it's too much. There are certainly other suppliers out there, so I'd say shop around. I could swear I've seen round-wire rings with round rivets, alternating with flat solid rings, too, not that I've actively hunted for it. SOMEone has to be making it.

At a massed reenactment I often go without armor, just because as has been said, most guys didn't have it. But if it's just me doing show and tell, I absolutely want a mailshirt with me, with a spread of weapons, helmets, and shields far greater than any single warrior would have! Just to show as many options as possible.

Happy shopping!

Matthew

I got my round ring round rivet, flat solid ring mix hauberk from a company called Armoured Up, in the UK. He is on Facebook, so might be worth checking him out if that is what you are looking for. Build quality wasn't the best, but reasonable price.

I got a butted spring steel chainmail haubergeon (12 kg) from Battle Merchant years ago (made probably in Pakistan for Ulfberth) and I'm still quite happy with it. It lost a few rings, true, but those could be replaced with little effort. The steel used looks and feels great and holds up to quite some rigor.

Earlier this year I also got a flat ring riveted / flat ring punched mix (FRM, 8 kg) from the same company and exporter. Sadly the quality is absolutely shoddy and I'm having it returned. The flat rings were flimsy as all hell, rivets stick out horribly, making the mail stick to each other, especially while dressing up but also even while just moving around (sleeves stick to body, body sticks to body if you bend over etc etc), quite a few rings do not have rivets in them or have lost them due to the rivet tearing out the ring.

Curiously my reenactment group's leader also has FRM mail from Battle Merchant, bought two years ago or so, and that one is pretty good. Rings are of much higher quality, rivets are closed properly and don't stick out nearly as much and rarely ever is a rivet missing.

Hit and miss and hit, apparently.

As for historical accuracy: from what I know anything outside of wedge riveted mail would be period accurate, but butted probably wouldn't have been the armor of choice even in the early middle age, and thus at best rare.

Vegard Vike's done the analysis of the Gjermundbu mail. The solids should be punched, and nearly square in section, and the riveted rings should be round wire with round rivets. Perhaps some of the lorica hamata replicas are made this way?
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IMO a shirt made from alternating rows of butted and solid links looks a lot better than the Indian maiI. If I needed something to show an audience then I'd have some patches of well made riveted mail to hand out.

When the weight of some of the items in various museum catalogues were checked, they turned out to be different to the weights in the catalogues. It has happened in the MET, Wallace, Higgins, etc. Best to ask a curator to double-check the weight before relying on the figure in a catalogue.

Although we're still waiting for detailed information from the museum (Museum of Polimlje, Berane, Montenegro), there is the reported 18.5kg of the hauberk from Donja Rzanica, Montenegro. If it's an accurate wieght on a genuine find, it will be the heaviest of which I'm aware.

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I purchased some Turko-Persian and Indian pieces from antique dealers. Still looking for a European piece at a decent price. I also have some pieces that I've made myself and a patch of the Roman scaled mail that Erik included with the 2nd vol of his MRS Journal.

FWIW I can't stab a knife through my butted-solid mail no matter how hard I hit it.

Oh, yes, that's the one I had through my hands. I advised the owner to hold onto it till we could find out more about it, but unfortunately he didn't. I've been meaning to post a lot more data about it, as I think it could be very important.