We all know that we find lot of coat of plate in Visby, but do we find lot of mail too ?
I mean, do they wear coat of plate without mail most of the time ? Because mail was much more expensive than plates ?
Thanks for reading
Alexis

There were remains of 200-300 mail coifs, making them the most common armor found at Wisby. There are a couple of mail forearm guards (musekins?), and only a few complete shirts. You must remember this was a rural militia, many of whom may have had no armor at all. While the knightly class might have worn plates over mail and aketon, the lower classes might have only had plates and an aketon at best.

Randall Storey has several price comparisons. The major cost factor on the pairs of plates is the covering and material for nails and buckles. The variance in costs of mail includes material (iron vs. steel), size of rings, and area covered. The prices of the two could be comparable, though higher quality of either will be more than the lowest quality of the other.

Also keep in mind that mail corrodes more readily due to the larger exposed surface, so when it's is found, it often appears as nothing more than red gravel.

If you want info on Wisby armor, get this book. It's basically an archeological reference on the armor.

http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&s...C%25201361

---

 Attachment: 21.65 KB

Online copy of the first edition:
Volume 1: http://michael-engel.io.ua/album329328_0
Volume 2: http://michael-engel.io.ua/album331513

One of the mail shirts:
http://io.ua/13608173p

If they found a couple of hundred mail coifs at Visby, I'd have expected a least a couple of dozen mail hauberks to have survived - after all, preservation conditions would have been pretty similar, So, to my reasoning, the lack of much mail body armour indicated that they weren't wearing it. Does that sound a reasonable assumption on my part ?

If they found a couple of hundred mail coifs at Visby, I'd have expected a least a couple of dozen mail hauberks to have survived - after all, preservation conditions would have been pretty similar, So, to my reasoning, the lack of much mail body armour indicated that they weren't wearing it. Does that sound a reasonable assumption on my part ?

As I understand it..after the battle, the victors continued to chase the surviving losers. By the time anyone returned to the battlefield, the bodies were too badly decomposed to strip them of the armour, The remains were simply shovelled into pits and left, hence the survival of the coats of plates and coifs. Yes, there were some probable mail armours there when excavated..but no-where near the numbers compared to the coifs.

That a lot of maille was found at Wisby indicates that in the hot sun the bodies were too bloated to strip them of their armor before covering them with dirt, the sight and smell of which I care not to imagine.