Some days ago i had a discussion with my neightbor about vikings. And then we came into the topic chainmail. He means that the chainmail the vikings used was to heavy and nonflexible to walk in...
So, my question is; how heavy was (is) chainmail? And how flexible is it?

If it was as heavy and inflexible as he said, it would have been utterly useless. Chainmail is actually highly flexible, it consists of thousands of rings that all hinge in four directions (or 6). The problem can be however, that the weight of the armour slows your movement, it can only be helped by regular exercise in the armour. It is quite heavy, but any type of metal protection that can cover your whole body is, and chain mail is no exeption. the weight is quite evenly divided over your body though, but tends to get a little heavy around the shoulders when worn for a long time

The looseness of chainmail is as big a probem as the weight. The stuff flapping around our limbs kind of saps your power. If you set a bunch of chaps running in just maille against some with maille and belts, the difference is obvious. I know of re-enactors who run leather thong around their arms to cut this down, but I don't know if there is any evidence for this. A custom made shirt would sort this out, but there is loads of evidence of armour being passed on.

I don't think people here have had much experience with historical examples of mail. Historical mail is much lighter than the butted mail that more reenactors wear today. Historical mail was often heavily tailored to fit a particuilar individual. As such it does not flap around or hinder your movement anywhere near as much as the "tubes with sleeves" that people wear today.

I fight in maille every week. I find it neither too heavy to move around it, nor too inflexible to fight in. Granted its taken abit to get used to, but I am finally reaching the point where it doesn't weigh me down too much.
My riveted hauberk weighs about 21lbs. I also wear a good belt at the waist to take some of the weight off my shoulders.

If maille was that inflexible and heavy nobody would wear it that wanted to live very long :). Like said further above true riveted maille is suprisingly light. I am working on tailoring three (or four I can't remember) shirts right now and not one of them weighs more than 8 kilos (17.6 pounds). And since it is evenly (for the most part) distributed around your body you don't really notice it all that much.

Maille is super flexible within limits, which is why body armor is built with some stretching room in it. Nothing better than putting on a shirt and finding out that you exceed the maximum stretch for a garment! I can move just as well in my maille as I can in a long sleeved t-shirt.

A little talked about property of maille is how it can keep you cool. This benefit isn't so great in the winter though :). All that surface area cools down very fast. Also, you are wearing a shirt full of holes so it doesn't really trap heat at all.

I'm just glad that there was a question that I could finally respond to :). Sword typology and distal taper I'm still learning, maille I know :).

My $0.02

~ Joe

Here's a look at Viking and later mail -
Ring weave
A metallographical analysis of ring mail material at the Oldsaksamlingen in Oslo
By Vegard Vike
www.vikingsna.org/translations/ringweave.pdf

Aaron,

I did not mean to imply that you were not referring to true riveted maille in your posts. Honestly I had not even read your posts at that point, so I apologize for the confusion generated in my post. I should probably not have used true riveted maille as a descriptor, I was just attempting to make a distinction between butted maille and riveted maille. Again, my fault for the misleading descriptor.

I do question your assertion of a shirt with integral coif well exceeding 50 pounds though. First some information from documented historical examples in the Wallace Collection:

Quote:

Those comprising the bulk of the main body are of a slightly thicker (0.052”, 1.31mm) material, while the links of the last eleven inches of the body and the lower portion of each sleeve are marginally lighter (0.031”, 0.78mm). Wallace Collection A2 shirt The links of the body (Figure 10) are of very high quality, having a round or slightly oval cross-section with only a small amount of flattening occurring at the lapped joint. The creation of links using wire of this thickness (0.027”, 0.68mm) and diameter (0.187”, 4.74mm OD.) must have required a great deal of skill. Wallace Collection A7 shirt Under each armpit there is a section of mail constructed of a much heavier wire (0.040”, 1.01mm) than the wire used for the links of the sleeves and body (0.027”, 0.68mm). Wallace Collection A7 shirt. The collar is composed of very fine links woven so tightly that they are completely fixed and unable to rotate (Figure 23). This situation is similar to the collar and underarm links of A7. Link thickness is the one aspect that differentiates them (0.040”, 1.01mm for A7 and 0.035”, 0.88mm for A9). Schmid, Erik. "Link Details from Articles of Mail in the Wallace Collection." The Journal of 1(2003): 2-20."

Here we have two shirts with wire thicknesses varying from 1.31mm (0.052") down to 0.68mm (0.027"), lets average the data and call it 0.945mm. The A9 collar has rings with a thickness of 0.88mm.

Compare these rings to a modern recreation from Steve Forth of Forth Armoury. These stats are for a full hauberk approximately 36" [91cm] from shoulder to the hem. The sleeves are tapered, narrowing towards the wrist and are approximately 23" [58cm] long:

Quote:

Weight: Approximately 27 Lbs [12.2 Kg] Ring Dimensions: I.D. ~3/8" [9.5mm]. ~1/32" [.8mm] thick Forth, Steve. "Haugergeons." 4 Apr 2007 <http://forth-armoury.com/Product_Catalog/hauberks/hauberks.htm>. Weight: Approximately 3.5 Lbs [1.6 Kg] Ring Dimensions: I.D. ~3/8" [9.5mm]. ~1/32" [.8mm] thick Material: Unplated low carbon steel Forth, Steve. "Coifs." 4 Apr 2007 <http://forth-armoury.com/Product_Catalog/coifs/coif.htm>.

The shirt and coif from Steve would weigh in at 30.5 pounds. I would doubt that a wire thickness difference of 0.065mm would make a huge difference in weight. Unfortunately I do not have access to the weight information for any of the above referenced pieces in the Wallace Collection so I can not make a direct comparison.

I've worn a 45-ish pound butted maille shirt and I could move but not very well. I tired very fast in 15 minutes of simulated combat (performing Fiore's set plays 1-8) because I weighed much more than normal. Now I am not a trained warrior but I am in good physical shape so I don't think it's unreasonable to base my response on my personal experience because the average soldier is not a Navy SEAL. Put this in perspective with the length of some medieval battles and you can see that wearing anything that can tire you out in 15 minutes of activity might not be the best idea. Basically, if you can't move aggressively for a long period of time you were dead.

My respectful $0.02
Joe

My entire 13th cnt. armour, including chauces, hauberk, coif, arming coat, and kettlehatt weighs about 20 kg.
I can wear it for the better part of a day's worth of fighting without any problem.

It does slow you down ever so slightly. However, the added protection is definitely worth it.

In response to maille flapping around and sapping the power of a blow maille was made for one person hence it's tallored to them a shirt being inherrited can easly have rings added or removed to fit the wearer so there would be minimal excess of sleeve imparing the wearer also there is pictorial evidence of what has been dubbed the varangian bra which is fabric tied around under the armpits and the over one shoulder to take weight off the shoulders and arms (i have tried this and after a full day fighting the difference is extream)
also having worn a suit of maile 75 pounds and fighting in it the weight is not all that noticable with both the varangian bra and a belt

Hi Joe.

No apologies necessary. I just wanted to clarify where my information was coming from.

As for my weight estimate, I might be off a little as it was just a rough estimate. However, if you look at the link in Jeff Pringle's post it might not be that far off. The shirt labelled as C455 in that post has rings that are about 1.5mm thick on average with an OD of 11-12mm. That would put the ID around 9.5-10.5mm, and it says these individual rings weighed around .30g on average. It also estimates that shirt (short sleeve and a little past waist length) at around 27,000 rings. If you use these rings as a guide and add full sleeves, a coif, and drop the length down to the knee you would end up more around 60,000 rings, which would put you over 40 pounds using those rings. Still not over 50 pounds I guess, but still heavy enough.

The A2, A7, and the stuff that forth makes are examples and recreations of 15th-16th Century stuff. I can't say that I've actually seen any examples from the 13th Century or before and studied it, but estimating from these documented examples I don't think the 45-50 pound range is too far off for a knee length, full sleeve shirt with integral coif made from 1.6mm thick wire rings with a 7-8mm ID. Again, only an estimate tho. I may be wrong.