[Chase S-R]

[Nick Trueman]

Hi

There may not be any evidence for tunics being under armour, that is true. But there is extant finds of woolen tunics from the period being discussed. Padded textile armour has not survived.

I totally agree something was worn underneath maile. What I cant do is presume. Experimental archaeology sometimes is the only answer, so therefore we as reenactors, do wear gambesons under maile. But this to me is more of a safety precaution, not a statement that this article existed.

We do know that during this period the Byzantines were wearing a quilted type armour as described in the Praecepta Militaria. Still that is inconclusive that the Norse followed suit and made garments of the same pattern or material.

I try my best to follow archaeology as a means for recreating my impressions. It is my primary resource. Pictorial evidence comes 2nd if no archaeology can be found on a necessary piece of equipment. Accounts in Sagas do not rate at all and I base nothing on there writings.

With my Norse impression, the only thing I cannot document is my gambeson. All other pieces are based on extant finds. I will not make a piece of jewelery or a weapon unless I have all the measurements etc, to reconstruct the piece to the best of my ability.

Thats just the way I am.

Cheers

N

[Mikael Ranelius]

[Nick Trueman]

Hi guys

Good point Mikael

And heres another....I have discussed this in a thread maybe a yr ago when a similar question popped up. Ok we have extant finds for leather objects far spread over the Norse world and time period.
We have shoes, Bags, remnants of leather preserved around metallic belt fixtures. Gotland and Birka have leather knife sheaths still intact.The list goes on.

Now heres my point...all of these leather products are under 3mm in thickness. Especially shoes, these seemed to be made of very fine leathers.
Explain to me how such fragile examples of leather work have survived? And yet no leather armour of any sort has ever been found? One would think a leather armour would be made of a much thicker hide, and could have survived fairly well. Yet there is nothing.


We have lamellar at Birka....Its Nomadic, probably of Khazar or Magyar construction. It is not Norse nor is it Rus, it is a borrowed technology.

Cheers

N

[Nick Trueman]

[Nick Trueman]

Mail from the ‘Garrison’ of Birka

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/mail/birka_mail.htm


Consider also that a leather gambeson will not breathe like a woolen garment will. modern fabrics also dont breathe well. It is important to construct your gambeson from pure wool and linen....allowing for air to permeate through the fabric. This will keep your body temp down.

Cheers

N

[Jean-Carle Hudon]

The men of the Maritimes made use of leather, seal leather, any other oiled skin, to fight the damp cold. New wool , with the oil as yet not washed out of it, can be quite usefull, but again the wool is best covered with something more water resistant, which will hold oil or wax to fight the humidity. Vikings used boats. Vikings were on the Baltic and the North Sea, both very cold climates. They had access to leather and wax, and seals, and they could freeze just as well as any other human being. I think I would conclude, without any grave finds, that they most probably dressed in a cold ocean appropriate manner, and most probably different from what we know of seafarers in a mediterranean setting.
Now on to mail, and the wearing of iron directly on the skin. One only has to experience damp skin in contact with cold iron once in a lifetime to know that it is an experience one would not want to repeat. Maybe some berserk tourist in the south of France might let go of his clothes, but no sane adult would walk around with conducting metal as a shirt in climates such as they have in Scandinavia, and I am quite sure of this without the reassuring presence of archeological finds to confirm this opinion.
Now, inasmuch as one realizes that wool covered with leather, is better than wool alone on a snowy day, or one of those days between winter and fall, or winter and spring, where rain is mixed in with snow and ice pellets, one can safely assume that people who new about reindeer coats also knew about what is best to wear on a cold damp day. No point in winning a sword fight naked with mail sticking to one's skin, only to die of pneumonia on the long walk or boat ride home. Have we ever found archeological evidence that damp skin sticks to metal in below zero weather ?
No, probably not, so I guess I will cast my lot with those who believe that leather padding garments were used in cold climates, far far away from Jerusalem, Rome and Carcassonne. It is the nature of man to use what nature offers to conquer nature. By the way, the Vikings had contacts with the Innu, and the Laps, and neither had any wool to use, you have to figure that the Vikings understood that wool tunics were not the end all and be all.
ON a more amuzing note I would propose next february as the appropriate time to test the mail on skin theory, at a full week camping event anywhere north of Mont-Tremblant or Stockholm .Those without full medical insurance need not apply. Cheers, I'M going back to sit by the fire.

[Henrik Zoltan Toth]

[Chase S-R]

[Mikael Ranelius]

Jean-Carle, no one here has made any claims that the Viking-age Norse wore mail with nothing under it. Nor has anyone argued that they didn’t use fur and leather for some clothing; we know they did. The question is whether leather was used to make Viking armour, and also whether some kind of padded garment was worn beneath mail.

My belief is that leather armour was rare, if used at all. I haven’t yet seen any satisfying or convincing evidences to suggest Viking leather armour or padded garments, although I don’t find them to be inconceivable. But until more evidence appear, I will assume that my ancestors were happy to wear a sturdy woollen coat/tunic under their armour (for those who had), whether it was mail or lamellar.

Then as a side note, I think people here tend to exaggerate the Scandinavian climate. Denmark (including those parts that now belong to Sweden but used to be Danish) has a climate not unlike Britain, whereas the temperatures on the Norwegian coast are comparatively mild thanks to the warm Gulf Stream. Although the winters can be harsh (and even harsher in the past), it can get pretty hot during summer. Only the extreme north (present day Norwegian Finnmark and Swedish and Finnish Lapland) has anything like an arctic climate, and those parts were not inhabited by the Norse.

[Jeff A. Arbogast]

[Dan Howard]

[Chase S-R]

[Nick Trueman]

Hi Zoltan

let me have a look.......

Ok, why send you the picture when I can send you the URL with measurements and pictures.
Also discussed is the Balyk Sook Kurgan, Altai, Russia. The helmet was also of lamellar construction. The Balyk Sook Kurgan is a rich Oghuz/Turkic burial.

I have a whole paper in German about the Balyk Sook Kurgan.

Cheers

N

[Nick Trueman]

URL might help...sorry about that.

Cheers

Nick

http://www.vikingsna.org/translations/birkaarmour/

[Nick Trueman]

For this period I think leather armour would fit


Hi

Could you give me some idea of how you think this leather armour was constructed? Can you use archaeological pieces or evidence to support your theory?

Lamellar is well known. But a isolated find at Birka does not prove conclusively that it was worn or even known to all Norse peoples.


Cheers

N






.

[Don Z]

interesting an amusing topic

i see one of the age old problems of who is willing to go to what extent in allowing certain ideas in reenactment

personally i can't add much to whats been said but to agree that there are problems basing leather armour ideas on enchanted reindeer garments..............out of sagas........

first- most of those sagas were written down long after the events they portray
and at the time they were written they were done so from oral traditions that had been passed form person to person and exaggerated who knows how much.

that said you could take it as existence of leather armour............buggered if i know where you're going to get a good enchantment to stop your arm being snapped the first stray shot you cop......cos the saga doesn't say it was padded does it? I figure if you want to do a literal reading of a translated 1000 year old story recorded from an ambiguous icelandic oral tradition about events in norway you probably have to read it word for word....and get a good enchantment for it.......good luck with that....how's your old icelandic?

the guy down the road from me says he does some good enchantments of protection,.......i'd give you his details but his name changes every week and he lives in a cardboard house covered in plastic bags........he says he wants to get the internet on soon tho........if you do get in touch with him he'll probably do it for some food........i don't think he gets much of that........

but send me the vid of it when you do get broken
i'm sure it will be cringe-worthy

i might even feel some sympathy for you

make sure it's a good arm break tho.............cos the spear hit that gives you a hernia won't be half as fun to watch.....you'll just grunt and go all floppy......and fall over......i'm personally looking forward to flailing....lots of flailing......


i'd try to talk you out of the idea but you seem to have your mind made up in the face of already overwhelming evidence........
so i'll wish you luck and thank you for several pages of amusement and distraction from a very pressing essay i need to finish to hand in tomorrow


ok to be more clear as evidence: if you think taking an obscure reference from
an obscure text, writing about a time many hundred years previous,
and attempting to use a reference about enchanted garments
as a precedence for leather armour is a reasonable thing to do;
who am i to say you're wrong.......you probably won't listen anyway........there is plenty of evidence for that

mate if you really want to do this, don't let a bunch of guys on the interweb who make fairly good sense in their reasoning abilities and with a possible knowledge base that dwarfs yours stop you......you go make it fella, i'm sure you'll look good and feel great when it's done....just don't tell anyone........unless you get injured.........then remember to post the vid......

good....looks like i got to the end of my post without saying anything useful at all

but i was serious about differing ideas about what is acceptable within reenactment circles
things like that won't be surmounted or even necessarily understood over the interweb....

thanks
Z
p.s. please post vids of injuries.........

[Nick Trueman]

[Chad Arnow]

Don Z,
Your sarcasm is not welcome on this forum. If you can't post something helpful in a positive, professional tone, then please do not post at all.

Thank you.

[Don Z]

that's ok

anytime

but apart from any misunderstood irony my point was that most of this many page thread is based around differing ideas about what is acceptable within reenactment

some people reenact what could have been possible
others reenact what has been found or depicted

who am i to say enchantments don't exist
i mean i don't think i've ever seen one, although funny things happen to my logic drives when i'm around my girlfriend and she's wearing a short skirt sometimes......

i am a little disappointed all you saw was that i had executed some scalpel sharp irony and mistook it for something inferior...........

what i will say about the sagas
is that although they lend us very little about the time they depict, particularly about what was used and how it was used
they do lend some idea as the the attitudes about certain things at the time they were written, and how they viewed the time they depicted.

i personally haven't seen or heard tell of a leather armour find that hasn't been made out of some form of hardened leather.

the problem is that a single layer of supple leather is unlikely to lend a greater defence, from either bludgeoning or sharp, than a gambeson made out of multiple layers of fabric or even just stuffed with straw due to the way the fibers will bind against the sharp and the way the padding distributes the impact.

because of the way fabric fibres bind and resist a piercing weapon even if stuffed with, for example, cross laminated straw (i have read that this was used in a primary source somewhere.....memory fails me as to where at this time) , the straw itself would resist the weapon in a similar manner. In order to counteract this the weapon would have to razor sharp. This is unlikely to be so after the first time the weapon is blocked. Any flaw in the sharpness will also mean the progress thru the fabric will cease.

now if someone was wearing even a quilted soft leather garment, it is likely the first layer of leather will split with the initial impact, and even if it is cut i think the leather because of the non-continuous make up of the flexible cell fibres would not resist the force as well. I honestly think it would keep tearing if my experience with thin soft leather is anything to go by.
especially if it is riddled with perforations from the stitching. That is, in essence why i think a soft leather garment would fail as armour. Any stitching would be a perforation, in a way that does not happen on fabric because the fabric is made with holes in it (albeit very tiny but far less harmful in this instance.). All you do by stitching single layer garment together as armour is say "please insert something sharp somewhere between my armpit and my waist along the line of this very conspicuous seem" which may i add was probably more obvious due to the fashion of using contrasting stitch colours on the outside of the garment as a fashion accessory. If we follow this line of thought to a quilted garment, all that happens is you magnify the target area to those diagonal lines all over your body.

Here is the crux of why i think the armour was enchanted.........i'd say it was added because it was unbelievable (even with willing suspension of disbelief needed for fiction to truly have a greater effect than a warm fuzzy glow till you get to sleep) that anyone would make armour out of soft leather and live long enough to be a significant protagonist or antagonist in any story likely to last out the millennium.

now before anyone gets trigger happy in the upper eschelons about sarcasm
what i've used is definitely irony....there is no bitterness and there never was. it was sharp and i understand there are varying views of sarcasm. The other point that i would like to make is that if it did seem to be sarcasm i may have been serious. Particularly about the vids.
and the guy down the road does exist, the council has been trying to get rid of him for years. he's a dead set trooper

anyway
point remains that unless the leather was hardened it would tear along any stitch lines with the first decent amount of force applied
and if it didn't it would be either kangaroo leather which pretty much doesn't tear....but with the disadvantage of not being historically accurate....and yes....sometimes kangaroos are killed on purpose....or it would be too think to allow movement in the garment once stitched together and you would need to build something like lamellar or hoop armour to make it useful. even in simulated combat if someone tripped mid strike or was knocked from behind, if they were attacking with a spear i reckon you'd near be looking at enough force to tear the leather and make all that work almost useless. And for the sheer love of it what about if you had padded it or lined it with fabric? well then you may have just made the leather a moot point. It could give you some added impact distribution and warmth if you lived somewhere where the temperature wasn't going to get about 15 deg C very often. But really you might as well just make it out of fabric because it probably doesn't need as much oil as your maille (and your leather almost would to counteract the constant corrosive abilities of your sweat...it seems to be worse on leather) it will be lighter and more flexible, and will dry out quicker after you soak the inside of it your sweat.

but like i said if those reasons don't compel you to take the easier road for construction......go for it
i hope it works out well and serves you for many years good combat........

thanks
Z