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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Thu 28 Jan, 2010 11:39 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Tom King wrote:
I remember an exerpt from some saga descibing a gift of "reindeer hide shirts... that could turn a sword better than mail" )

Only after they had been magically enchanted.
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Thu 28 Jan, 2010 11:41 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Hadrian Coffin wrote:
p.s. Concerning Ninjas... This is not the same sort of argument, there is absolutely nothing to suggest Ninjas ever came into contact with Vikings. Whereas there IS evidence to suggest leather armour existed.

We had this discussion before. You produced nothing that could be confirmed as leather armour
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 4:20 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Boyd C-F wrote:
Back to the Stuttgart psalter; there are lots of images with a scale based armour, coloured grey like the sword and spear blades and the helmets, so it could be possible that they're made of some kind of metal! Does anyone know of finds from this period that match these scales?

This image shows damaged equipment (either broken on purpose or due to combat) interestingly the scale corslet is not coloured grey

http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/digitalisate/cod....n/088r.jpg

@ Jeroen;

I wonder if that shield would be good for trapping weapon blades?
I don't think trapping, as in blocking. But I can see it being useful to redirect thrust by capturing weapons and redirecting them by turning or moving the shield. Or it can also be used for directing over shield thrusts to the opponent. Potentially it could also merely be a fashionable flower shaped shield (early example of flowerpower by a hippy Frank Wink ).
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 6:18 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Hadrian Coffin wrote:
...Part of the problem is determining exact definitions of what constitutes armour as opposed to clothing. If armour is defined simply as a garment worn to battle, the textile clothing is armour (unless you are suggesting Vikings ran into battle completely naked). If armour is defined as a garment specifically designed for use in combat, everything and nothing is armour....


If cows are defined as chicken, you can eat steak at KFC. Are you just here to banter semantics?

The original question was to find out what was KNOWN about organic armor in the Viking Age--"i would like to see what was real and what was legend." We know of one reference to magical reindeer shirts, and we know from archeology and other written sources that leather of various sorts was used for a number of different non-armor uses. We KNOW leather and hide were used for shield facings all over the planet, and we have archeological remains such as the Clonbrin shield (Bronze Age Ireland), King Tut's scale armor, the Dura Europas lamellar fragment (250 AD), and even the crocodile coats from Egypt if you want to count those. Plus literary references such as Homer's description of hide shields, and inventories of Bronze Age rawhide scale armor from Nuzi. Oh, throw in Chuchulain's war belt, if you like, and his layered linen body armor.

But very little of that has any bearing on the Viking era! There just isn't anything else for that except endless groundless speculation. No one has to prove the absence of anything--the burden of proof is on those who advocate the existence of something. Portraying the norm as a reenactor is always a good rule of thumb, but it is hardly a requirement. I also tend to urge reenactors to be as historically accurate and well-documented as possible, but frankly, there is no law to prevent someone from dressing as a gypsy ninja with a tutu and swimfins and calling himself Erik the Red.

All we're saying here, as we've said many times before, is that for Vikings and many other medieval societies, the use of leather or other organic armor is supported by VERY little reliable historical evidence of any kind. That's the flat answer. Sorry, but even for the sake of academic banter, there doesn't seem to be much point in building assumptions and leaps in logic into a house of cards.

Matthew
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Gregory J. Liebau




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 7:36 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

My good friend Descartes once told me that there are such things that we can claim to know with certainty. These are our basic foundations of knowledge, and must be reflected on carefully to determine whether they be true or not so. Once we have established these basic understandings, we can use our higher power of learning to discern for ourselves what may be true that lies outside of our realm of foundational knowledge and strive to learn new things based on evidences that cannot be refuted. Think geometry.

Using this very good idea, as I think it is, we can say that armor is an item of protective quality that is worn both to battle and also under less extreme conditions when it is permitted or most useful to do so. The purpose of it is specifically to remove harm from the wearer through the protection it offers with greater effect than the normal clothing worn by the person.

From there, using my dear friend René's delightfully simple method of clarifying truth, we can look at the physical evidence or literary prose regarding actual armor consisting of organic materials dating to the era in question. Upon finding that this evidence is extremely vague on archeological grounds and can be interpreted in several ways and that the sagas give implausible, magical qualities to such armor to make it viable, the consensus should be thus -

That organic armor during the Dark Ages should be considered beyond the scope of history, is to be regarded as conjecture, and until further evidence is procured it is moot to argue in favor of its existence using rational modes of consideration. Those who do have not an understanding of the processes by which theories are postulated in the sciences. There are threads that have already covered this topic with careful analysis here, on the Armour Archive and elsewhere. If you are one of those who believes your notion of truth and knowledge is beyond the scope of normal rationale, then I cannot help you by pointing out such limitations in our psyche. Proper historians, however, have scruples and methods regarding the way they discern facts from fiction. This topic, as far as the precedence of evidence suggests, still falls heavily under the fictitious category. I beg those who think otherwise to go find those well-researched and lengthy topics on this forum and others regarding the matter, where many knowledgeable fellows chimed in time and again to refute such nonsense based on sound judgment and understanding of proper historic theory-craft.

EDIT: I will add that such debates can me worthy of merit! The burden of proof lies upon those posters who support the ideas being presented in the topic. When you post here and say that you believe such organic armor could have existed, if you do not provide a citation to a contemporary bit of evidence or to a modern expert's work that is readily accessible to those interested in the claims being made, then your post is not worth the time of day. SHOW YOUR EVIDENCE! I came to this thread hoping, in my vanity, that perhaps someone had made such a post... Instead, I am faced with Matt and Dan and Jeroen huddled in a corner, showing pictures of pop art and making analogies to cooking of the good colonel, may he R.I.P.

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Last edited by Gregory J. Liebau on Fri 29 Jan, 2010 8:06 am; edited 2 times in total
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 7:58 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Yep. You know, there's archeogical/historical evidence of the use of horned helmets, double axes, wearing of animal hides with hair on and long beards from various periods and cultures. That doesn't mean that this supports that the following reconstruction of a Viking has any historical accuracy:



If you base your reconstruction on things that can't be supported by archeology, that's what you are ending up with in levels of historical accuracy. Now naturally even if we use all the archeological evidence we do have, we will still often end up with something that would looking like a 20th century reenactor wearing a WW2 helmet, Nikes, bermuda shorts and a blazer jacket riding a WWI plane. Unless, you use pictorial evidence that is. That's why these psalters are so incredibly important. But first you need to establish that what you see in these pictures actually represents the look of people in the appropriate location and time. This can be done by first checking the date and place of creation of the images, and comparing it with archeological evidence from the same time and period. This you also need to be able to interpret what you see in the pictures. Unfortunately, they don't show very well what material things are made off f.e. So that makes proving whether anything you see is made from leather f.e. You can look at the colors for that, but those are quite deceptive, as they often are not realistic. The Stuttgart psalter seems pretty accurate, but there are examples were you will see red and green horses f.e. indicating that color was applied more randomly to accentuate things from one another (unless you're willing to believe that they painted their horses). Regarding the images and armour, you have to keep in mind that leather could be dyed, so even if you see f.e. green, and it is the natural color, it can still be leather. So you will need to look for other clues then just color as well. Basing on memory from looking at the images, I can't remember anything that stood out as potential leather.

However, the following does make me wonder. Below is a scene featuring Charles the Bald, Gold Codex of St. Emmeram, Hofschool, around 870AD. Munchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (CLM 14000, f5v):





It could just be clothing though (luxury clothing as royal guard?), which I actually think is the most likely. At any rate, those helmets are quite interesting Happy

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Jean Henri Chandler




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 8:46 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I think there are two issues here which are getting entangled. One is leather armor, for which there is little evidence anywhere in Europe at any time, and the other is textile armor which we know did exist.

On leather armor,

What we typically do see more commonly than Hollyywood "sword and sandals" style leather muscle curirass or Dungeons and Dragons / computer game style leather armor, is lamellar. We know animal hide was one of the materials commonly used or lames in armor worn across the Asian Steppe, in Japan, in South Asia and the Middle East, along with other materials including horn, bone, wood etc. But as far as I can tell 'leather' armor usually actually turns out to be hide armor, from other animals like Chinese water buffalo. As we know cow leather hasn't turned out to be very effectiive protection in modern tests. Hide based lamellar armor was apparently fairly good protection but it was never popular in Europe.

One other hide armor was Rhino and Elephant hide armor worn in the Indian sub-continent, where cattle skin would have been taboo. This was apparently reasonably effective protection.

On textile armor.
We don't have a great deal of literary evidence of anything in Northern Europe between the gradual fall of the Rome and the re-emergence of literate culture in the Middle Ages. Even the Icelandic sagas are not Viking Age literature precisely, since they were written down in the 12th Century.

I personally think it's unrealistic to assume that no textile armor was ever worn partiuclarly under mail, since we know it existed in Europe before the end of the Classical era and again afterword. I think textile armor has existed as long as textiles have. But the truth is we don't have much direct archeological or literary evidence, other than the hotly debated reindeer hide armor reference and a few fragments like the 11th Century Irish leather. (This does correspond to how textile armor was used by the descendants of the Norse in the Hebrides a century and a half later, with textile 'aketons' made with an outer layer of doe skin covered in pitch for waterproofing). The issue is that artwork and written literature did not exist in this period and textile materials do not endure intact enough to determine their structure for centuries in the soil. It is a little off IMO to insist passionately that there wasn't any textile armor being worn simply because this was a period in which there could not have been much evidence either way.

I'd also like to add that don't think it's accurate to claim that the Varangians and the Vikings are utterly different, we know for a fact there was a great deal of movement between the Russian steppe and down to the service of Byzantium and back to Scandinavia, as perhaps most famously demonstrated in the story of Harald Finehair. It's always tricky to talk about the 'Viking Age' because most people tend to focus on a very specific zone, and usually a specific time period, which is often a much more narrow slice of the 8th - 11th century period in the vast region from Ireland to Spain, from Finland to Armenia, where the Norse were active... This is particularly significant because the Byzantines, the Khazars, the steppe Nomads and the Rus themselves appear to have had many types of armor and other kit in use which were rare in Europe, such as lamellar armor, recurve bows, and maces.

We have had this discussion before, and this echoes other similar debates, such as whether "the Vikings" had lamellar, which it now appears from evidence at Birka and other places, that they indeed did at least have access to it. I think Lamellar didn't spread widely to the West because because it was not as well suited as to the type of warfare practiced on the Steppe. But that didn't mean it wasn't available.

It would be nice to be able to conduct discussions like this with less heat and more light, but in the past it hasn't gone that way around here. Many people from various places around the world often chime in to these discussions with interesting local archeological evidence but it tends to get drowned out in the debate. Our ultimate goal should be to learn more and I suspect the truth is there is a great deal of evidence out there which as not yet been fully aggregated or synthesized which could shed light on this.

J

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Last edited by Jean Henri Chandler on Fri 29 Jan, 2010 4:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 1:05 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jean Henri Chandler wrote:
We have had this discussion before, and this echoes other similar debates, such as whether "the Vikings" had lamellar, which it now appears from evidence at Birka and other places, that they indeed did at least have access to it. J

There are no "other places". Birka is it, and it has been shown that the armour was not Scandinavian and unlikely to have been worn by a Scandinavian .
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Jean Henri Chandler




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 2:28 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Jean Henri Chandler wrote:
We have had this discussion before, and this echoes other similar debates, such as whether "the Vikings" had lamellar, which it now appears from evidence at Birka and other places, that they indeed did at least have access to it. J

There are no "other places". Birka is it, and it has been shown that the armour was not Scandinavian and unlikely to have been worn by a Scandinavian .


You have an amazing knack for representing your opinion as fact, even when you know better.

I'll quote from another thread you particcipated on here on this very forum (bold emphasis is from me):

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...mp;start=0

Paul Mortimer wrote:
This statement seems a little unreasonable when looked at in the light of the Birka graves. Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson concludes that the graves associated with the metal lammelar were of Scandinavian warriors because of all the other grave goods. She suggests that the warriors were of the Svear - although it is likely that they had adopted the culture of the Rus. She goes on to say that the Rus, themselves were mostly - but not all Svear.


There were also incidentally three sites near Birka where Lamellar armor was found, it is assumed that members of the Birka garrison wore it.

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Maurizio D'Angelo




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PostPosted: Fri 29 Jan, 2010 3:40 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Not by the merits of the matter, but regarding the influence that businesses have had with their weapons.
David Nicolle writes:
"By the 12th century those with a more regular curve, and thus more in common with the Gibraltar example, were still rare but usually had Scandinavian associations. This should not necessarily cast doubt on an eastern stylistic origin, since Scandinavia in the so-called Viking Age had strong commercial and, in terms of military technology, surprisingly strong cultural links with both Byzantium and the eastern Islamic world."

Of course, I remember Ninjas post , but here, he talk the weapons influence, not trade only . Is there a possibility?

Ciao
Maurizio


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Nathan Beal





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PostPosted: Sat 30 Jan, 2010 6:21 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Ben Mudd wrote:
There's a fragment of leather with what very much appear to be quilting lines in it, generally interpreted to be part of a leather-faced gambeson, on display in the Kildare Street museum in Dublin. I believe this dates from the early 11th century? In any case, this is certainly not evidence for leather armour and may not be part of a gambeson at all.


Does anyone have a citation for, or image of this?

N.

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Juan Cocinas




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PostPosted: Tue 02 Mar, 2010 11:15 pm    Post subject: hides?         Reply with quote

Scandinavia is cold, yes; especially when snowing. Must not vikings have worn furs and layers of woven garments for regular day to day wear? Layers, hides and furs: decent armor. Layers, Hides, Furs and Maille: very good armor. Good versus arrows, spears, axes, swords, what have you. I find it hard to believe also that vikingr(aside from bersrkr) would not have worn some kind of protective clothing, whether he possessed maille or not. Must say, however, is very hard to argue with dan as he makes good points. Unfortunately, we have no preserved finds of viking era gambesons, jacks, or hardened leather armour. Maille thrashes on clothing pretty good without padding, yes?
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 4:01 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Why must protective clothing be worn? There are documented examples of Scandinavians, who had plenty of money to buy any kind of armour they wanted, who chose to fight with nothing but a helmet and shield.
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Stuart Thompson




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 4:12 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I do not claim to know nearly as half as much as most members here but my two pence would be, just because there is a lack of historical proof doesn't mean it did not exist.

They had minds like us, if I were a viking i'd have liked a leather 'jerkin styled' vest to cover the chain mail. IF mail was worn, if not then all the better as it offers a poorer man some protection. Protection that offers more than a few linen/wool layers. I'd expect to se the Scots/Picts or Irish wearing heavier leather armour but like Jean Henri Chandler said that can be the Hollywood view..especially with the Scots, downtrodden underdogs, poor people who stand up against the English. So Braveheart comes to mine *faceslap*

I think it's possible, especially to the lower classes who might not have been able to afford mail or even those who wanted that extra bit of protection. Then again we have too look at their fighting style, the most feared warriors of their age so we assume they fought hard, means being able to move quicker, hit faster and harder so having a tight or hard leather vest/jacket/leggings might have been a disadvantage.

Like I said I don't know anymore than you do, but I can't see a swine-herder armoured up to the gills, maybe leather was affordable. Who knows?
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Luka Borscak




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 4:16 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Big shield is your best defence. Without it, you are dead anyway.
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Stuart Thompson




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 4:25 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Luka Borscak wrote:
Big shield is your best defence. Without it, you are dead anyway.


Big can also be un-wieldy, although your spot on some reenactors claim thats all the protection you need par-your weapon obviously.
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Tom King




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 5:55 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:

Only after they had been magically enchanted.
You have obviously never worked with reindeer. It took a yeoman friend of mine months just to stitch a quiver. The stuff is tough. And "enchanted" means killing a animal and bathing the garment in blood. I think that the characteristics of the material rather than the blessing from the allfather made them notable.
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 7:11 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stuart Thompson wrote:
I do not claim to know nearly as half as much as most members here but my two pence would be, just because there is a lack of historical proof doesn't mean it did not exist.


I don't want this to sound mean or a personal attack, but that is exactly the sort of approach that we have been trying to eliminate, here. As I pointed out before, the question was, what is *known* about organic armor. We have been trying to do this in a reasonable and scholarly way, looking carefully at any pertinant *historical evidence*. That's how it's supposed to work. It is not up to us to prove that something did NOT exist. If you want us to support theories that come from your modern-biased imagination, it is up to YOU to provide historical evidence, and not just baseless assumptions on medieval life.

I'm really not trying to ream you out, here! Just explaining how we're thinking.

Quote:
They had minds like us


Not that I have seen! We have solid evidence that dozens of cultures over thousands of years were perfectly happy to go to war with nothing but a spear and a shield. Why would Vikings suddenly be afraid to do that? It kinda sounds like your visualization of people in the past is heavily influenced by modern pop culture. The more I study the ancients, the more alien their minds seem to me.

[/quote]Then again we have too look at their fighting style, the most feared warriors of their age so we assume they fought hard, means being able to move quicker, hit faster and harder so having a tight or hard leather vest/jacket/leggings might have been a disadvantage.[/quote]

I'm not quite following your logic, here. Vikings tended to fight in lines, like everyone else in Europe. You can do that naked, and we know that at times some people did. We know that many did that in just regular clothing. We know that in later times some people did that while completely encased in steel. What made the Vikings feared was largely their ability to strike anywhere, anytime, in their ships, and be gone with loot and captives before the local organized resistance could respond. Governments that were able to meet the Vikings with a comparable military force were able to stop them. Even the threat of a stand-up battle was often enough for the Vikings to allow themselves to be bought off, rather than fight. I believe there is even an English account (or Frankish?) that says that the Vikings struck less frequently in combat, but hit harder. So again, you may need to reexamine your assumptions about medieval people and combat.

I hope that helps, some!

Matthew
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Luka Borscak




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 2:45 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:
Stuart Thompson wrote:
I do not claim to know nearly as half as much as most members here but my two pence would be, just because there is a lack of historical proof doesn't mean it did not exist.


I don't want this to sound mean or a personal attack, but that is exactly the sort of approach that we have been trying to eliminate, here. As I pointed out before, the question was, what is *known* about organic armor. We have been trying to do this in a reasonable and scholarly way, looking carefully at any pertinant *historical evidence*. That's how it's supposed to work. It is not up to us to prove that something did NOT exist. If you want us to support theories that come from your modern-biased imagination, it is up to YOU to provide historical evidence, and not just baseless assumptions on medieval life.

I'm really not trying to ream you out, here! Just explaining how we're thinking.

Quote:
They had minds like us


Not that I have seen! We have solid evidence that dozens of cultures over thousands of years were perfectly happy to go to war with nothing but a spear and a shield. Why would Vikings suddenly be afraid to do that? It kinda sounds like your visualization of people in the past is heavily influenced by modern pop culture. The more I study the ancients, the more alien their minds seem to me.

Then again we have too look at their fighting style, the most feared warriors of their age so we assume they fought hard, means being able to move quicker, hit faster and harder so having a tight or hard leather vest/jacket/leggings might have been a disadvantage.[/quote]

I'm not quite following your logic, here. Vikings tended to fight in lines, like everyone else in Europe. You can do that naked, and we know that at times some people did. We know that many did that in just regular clothing. We know that in later times some people did that while completely encased in steel. What made the Vikings feared was largely their ability to strike anywhere, anytime, in their ships, and be gone with loot and captives before the local organized resistance could respond. Governments that were able to meet the Vikings with a comparable military force were able to stop them. Even the threat of a stand-up battle was often enough for the Vikings to allow themselves to be bought off, rather than fight. I believe there is even an English account (or Frankish?) that says that the Vikings struck less frequently in combat, but hit harder. So again, you may need to reexamine your assumptions about medieval people and combat.

I hope that helps, some!

Matthew[/quote]

I mostly agree with you, but it's not like vikings were stopped just like that. No army in Anglo Saxon england managed to stop Lodbrok's sons for a few years. From 865 to 870 Great Army was undefeated. In 871 they fought about 9 battles with Wessex and lost only 2 as far as I remember,
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Wed 03 Mar, 2010 3:42 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Luka Borscak wrote:

I mostly agree with you, but it's not like vikings were stopped just like that. No army in Anglo Saxon england managed to stop Lodbrok's sons for a few years. From 865 to 870 Great Army was undefeated. In 871 they fought about 9 battles with Wessex and lost only 2 as far as I remember,

That doesn't have anything to do with fighting style or equipment. It has to do with logistics and being to muster a large force quickly enough in the right area to counter the viking attacks.
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