Hello good people.

When i have worn my viking shoes in the woods in wet conditions, it has been very difficult to stay on my feet.
In uphill situations it is even worse of course. Even in dry conditions it has its challenges, I have tried walking in a different way, with landing on my front foot instead of heel but there is no grip so it is the same result.
What is it that we are missing, our forefathers would not have walked not to even mention fight in such slippery footwear?
Do we have such underdeveloped muscles under our feet that we are not conditioned to enhance the grip our selves, because of modern rubber takes care of that for us?
Did they carve lines in the sole to create some friction as is done on modern rubber soles or did they grind down the soles with stones to create a rugged surface, as we in modern times would do with sand paper (if one were to experiment)?
I know they wore spikes that was attached to the shoes by winter time to walk on ice, but in other conditions what were they doing to enhance the grip on their shoes?

All you reenactment guys must have come across this problem many times, what are you doing to solve the problem?

Many thanks for responses.

Håvard

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This is an interesting question. I don't have a lot of experience walking in leather soled shoes, but from the little I do have I know it can be extremely slippery. Recently I have been looking into roman Caligae which have iron studs on the bottom to add grip, but this also makes them very slippery on stone. I don't believe Scandinavian turn shoes had suds, so there must be another way that they added grip to their shoes. There are other cultures that have used leather shoes into more recent times. I wonder if looking at Inuit or other culture's shoe making traditions would help answer this question.

Sorry, not many answers, but an interesting question which I'll be following since I hope to make some turn shoes in the future.

May not be historically plausible, or even something that might work today, but how about covering the soles with some sort of pitch or natural resin or tar and then rubbing very small stones into the the resin ?

This might have to be repeated often as the stones and resin wear off ?

Just a weird idea off the top of my head. ;) Any historical use of this idea at any time at any place in the World that we know of ???

I've heard this question quite a few times, and all I can say is that in several decades of reenacting (Bronze Age through American Revolution), I rarely had much problem with traction. I suspect it's just something they were used to!

That said, leather soles WILL have less traction on things like wet grass. And we do have accounts of, for instance, medieval archers shooting barefoot for better traction. Plus a famous story of a Roman centurion in the fight for the Temple at Jerusalem, who slipped on the pavement in his hobnailed shoes and fell flat on his back. Modern tiled floors are practically suicidal for hobnailed footwear! Ice is literally better.

I sometimes wonder if the soles of our reproduction medieval shoes might be too thick, preventing us from using our toes to "dig in" for better traction. But that doesn't make sense for late medieval shoes which had 2-layer soles, as did a lot of ancient Roman and Greek footwear.

But even if people in the past did have to watch their step more than we do, consider the thousands of Youtube "fail" videos of people slipping on wet steps or decks, falling on ice, sliding on carpets or slick floors, etc. There was a time before rubber pads that rugs could be downright dangerous, yet any house had them all over the place. We just knew to be a little careful. "Don't run in the house, you'll slip and fall!" (Sure, Mom was more concerned for her antiques, but...)

There really isn't any suggestion that I've ever seen that shoe soles were scored or patterned in any way for better traction. Many cultures just used plain leather or hide, some used hobnails. Not much in between! I have seen *one* Roman shoe sole that was laced with thong through a pattern of slits, to make a sort of "hobnail" effect, but that's one out of literally thousands of surviving Roman shoes, so it obviously was not a common idea.

Anyway, watch your step!

Matthew

I too was baffled by slippery leather shoes, until just a few weeks ago. I was at Days of Knights and the guy that brought me to the event heard me complain about slippery shoes. He told me to just go shuffle around in the parking lot and scuff up the bottom some.

It instantly made a world of difference! Walking uphill didn't feel like playing Russian Roulette, and I was even able to play some medieval football on grass later that day and juke some guys without looking like Scooby Doo. They still didn't feel as grippy as modern tennis shoes (but a little bit of slip has it's own advantages), but it was a huge improvement.

In a historical setting go scrape the shoes on a wall, a road, or your favorite rock.

Crampons for shoes are fairly common archaeological find from the Medieval period, and are mentioned in Sagas among others, that's for sure.

I honestly suspect a large part of this in practice is just not being used to 'actively' using the foot. Particularly in a softer shoe, if you're used to wearing minimal shoes your feet and toes will be doing a lot of dynamic work to adapt to whatever is going on underneath you. In normal hard-soled modern shoes, this is both unnecessary and impossible, so those habits don't develop.

Matthew Amt wrote:

There really isn't any suggestion that I've ever seen that shoe soles were scored or patterned in any way for better traction.

It is discussed occasionally in textual sources - some medieval discussions of arming mention shoes with enhanced traction (IIRC one suggestion is having twine stitched to the soles, but I don't have sources to hand). However it is rare.

We can only speculate here. My guess would be that 'medieval shoe crafting' is still in its infancy in reconstruction circles, there is little historical material available (kind of like HEMA was 20 years ago) and people are making a lot of mistakes. So the shoes you have are most likely simply poorly designed. I personally have zero knowledge about artifacts when it comes to viking and middle ages shoes so take this into consideration. Maybe we sometimes mistake house flip-flops for shoes when it comes to those very old historical finds in poor shape, who knows.

A lot of it depends on the season and surfaces which dominate in the area. You will want shoes with different features for dry and rainy climate, Summer and Winter, rocky terrain and grasslands, city shoes and hiking shoes when carrying heavy loads. Apparently, wooden shoes have been popular for ages so we shouldn't assume that leather is the only option here.

Based on my experience you want tough and thick soles if you walk on a rocky mountainous terrain, especially if you are carrying a load. If not you can probably manage with moderately thick ones, like some traditional ones that people still use nowadays sometimes. Wet grass, especially when going uphill is always tricky, even for most modern shoes, so is ice. I also don't think there is a huge difference between walking/running barefoot and in shoes but keep in mind I don't use those modern running shoes with 4cm thick soles nor prosthetic ones :)

I find most of the explanations where people try to assume that medieval people had some amazing walking skills that modern people lack silly ;) Especially when it's based on a singular experience. I remember a video of R.Warzecha where he claimed that everyone in the middle ages walked differently than people walk nowadays, everyone tiptoed and never started a walk with a heel :) Apparently all of it was based on an academic paper, no doubt a very interesting one, but making those broad claims can be a bit dangerous. Afair he changed his mind later. Our passion for history can sometimes lead us into dangerous territory but that's part of the learning experience.

Apologies for the rant. I personally think there were plenty of local adaptations to make shoes more grippy that we just don't know about anymore. Like the tar and stones or cord idea. Or maybe we do know about it but it's simply not a widely published research. Anyway, thanks for an interesting topic, I hope people with more knowledge will chime in.

I'm not sure we can say shoe reconstructions are in their infancy. We actually have lots of leather shoes from various medieval contexts across Europe now and some of those collections have been studied in detail. People have been making reconstructions based on them for some time. Though, it has to be said, as with all things re-enactor, there are differing qualities of reconstruction on the market.

As to whether people walked differently in the Middle Ages, it is something we can't really know. But walking technique is likely to reflect shoe design e.g. the presence of a heel.

Interesting question though - a day-to-day aspect of medieval life that would have been so familiar, no-one would have thought it needed describing.

Thanks for the lesson. Looks like I was completely wrong when it comes to historical artefacts and research. I should've done some reading before posting that. I was also not aware of how professional historical shoemaking has become.

A few extra random observations. It was probably extremely common for poor people to walk barefoot for most of their lives and they managed to live with it somehow. It is not much fun (except in our funny times when companies can make money selling 'barefoot' shoes or training to people with 20 pairs of shoes who want something different ;) but it can be done. I remember some examples from 19th century Polish and Russian novels that mention that. Was probably the same in England and now we have the hobbits.

Mountain hiking for extended periods of time in thin soled shoes (weeks not days) is also not much fun for your feet, especially when you carry a backpack. Its especially true for gravel type rocky trails. But like you mentioned, it's not an everyday activity.

We have plenty of us who walk in cheap thin plastic flip-flops (probably worse than medieval leather shoes) and we manage to survive so it's not really that difficult. The problem with comparisons we are trying to make here is the standard one. Comparing people from some period of history to a 'modern man'. But there are 8 billion of us on the planet. Some are super fit, others obese. Some have had plenty of sports activities as children, others had to wear poorly fitting shoes from older siblings. The first have developed healthy bodies and habits, the others have health issues that plague them all their lives. And so on and so forth. The conclusions are obvious.

When it comes to running (and shoes) there is so much talk online. I spent months, if not years following it. A lot of things to learn but also an endless pit of misery and wasted money ;) With years of experience I have now managed to build a healthy distance from it. Shoes do make a difference just like different physiques, just to state the obvious, but a healthy run is almost instantly visible to an observer. People who are not very good at running make a lot of unnecessary movements that impact their balance and make them use extra energy. Your stride depends mostly on the speed of the run, slow jog is different that a fast one which is different from the sprint. We can all see how differently modern runners look and run depending on their specialized distance. But it's still a run in the end. And I don't think anyone who has ever been anywhere close to modern athletes can state that they are weak and unskilled people. Probably quite the opposite, athletics seems to be at it's all time best now. Barefoot running can be tough at first when you are used to running in shoes but in the end it's the same thing. Especially recommended on the beach. Apologies for not adding much historical info here.

My impression is that our modern leather is different in character to historical examples.

This often come up in discussions on scabbards. Veg tanned leathers tend to be stiff compared to naturally tanned leather. So what we see in scabbards- especially the belts- are more stiff than what you would have seen then.

I've never handled natural brain tanned leather so I'm not even sure how it differs from veg tanned.

I imagine the same is true of modern reconstructions of period shoes.

The Roman military had hobnail footwear.

FYI
Nepalese sherpas have their own name for boots - "blinders"