Hi All,

My interest lies mainly in swords, but I have now started to branch out a bit and have grown increasingly fascinated not only with other arms, but recently with armour as well. Particularly maille. Now, I've done some reading on forums and in books, but I was wondering if some of you good folk could help me out with a couple of questions. As a collector i'm not interested in this for reenactment purposes, but if I were to start building a kit, I'd like it to be as accurate/ plausible as possible.

Firstly, I was wondering about the progression of maille. At what point did it change to just a shirt; to a shirt with aventailed helmet; to a shirt and coif all-in-one combo, to seperate shirt and coiff? And at what point did the length of hauberk and sleeve-length change?

Also, I was considering the development of the round viking/ anglo-saxon shield into the medieval kite-shield. I have seen various viking kits where the tear-drop kite shield is used instead of the round shield - is this right? I really associate the kite shield with Normans at the earliest.

So, really I suppose I'm asking what combination of each could I get away with? Ideally I'd like a short-sleeved/mid-thigh hauburgeon, aventailed spangenhelm and tear-dropped kite. Would I get pointed and laughed at with that combination?Are there even any hard and fast rules for this kind of thing?

Stopping now as I'm beginning to waffle!

Cheers in advance,

Ant