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Will S




Location: Bournemouth, UK
Joined: 25 Nov 2013

Posts: 164

PostPosted: Sun 20 Nov, 2016 2:25 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I should clarify here that I'm not saying back quivers were used during the period in question. I have no idea.

All I'm saying is that they're definitely practical, provided they're not too large, in response to the comments above making blanket statements that "back quivers are not practical".

It's a good chance that the ones depicted are simply for carriage of arrows. Especially those with lids. The Mary Rose style arrow bags for instance were almost certainly for carriage of arrows, but when used as described in John and Jonathan Waller's book with a leather belt tied around the bag they do work extremely well as a quiver also. I've even seen people use them as back quivers with no problems.
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Sean Manning




Location: Austria
Joined: 23 Mar 2008

Posts: 853

PostPosted: Sun 20 Nov, 2016 4:44 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Will S wrote:
I should clarify here that I'm not saying back quivers were used during the period in question. I have no idea.

All I'm saying is that they're definitely practical, provided they're not too large, in response to the comments above making blanket statements that "back quivers are not practical".

It's a good chance that the ones depicted are simply for carriage of arrows. Especially those with lids. The Mary Rose style arrow bags for instance were almost certainly for carriage of arrows, but when used as described in John and Jonathan Waller's book with a leather belt tied around the bag they do work extremely well as a quiver also. I've even seen people use them as back quivers with no problems.
Yes, and that is the key thing. If we want to know how people in the past carried their arrows, the thing to do is to look at sources. We all grew up on Eyewitness History and Peter Connolly right? Lots of evidence for back quivers shows up, especially from the ancient Near East. Whether we like their solution is irrelevant, although if we study it with an open mind and experiment, we can probably understand how it worked in its original context. Neither that Danish video or some of the videos in response to it seemed to grasp this Sad

If we want to know "how do I prefer to carry this style of arrow for this style of bow in this kind of situation" that is a different question.

As Gregory said, there is plenty of evidence for some styles of bow using short arrows and short draws. There is evidence for bows used in war with much lighter weights than Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and English bows in the 16th century. There is evidence for warriors who carried far more and lighter arrows than English archers in the HYW. Archery is diverse, like a lot of things people do!
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Gregory J. Liebau




Location: Dinuba, CA
Joined: 27 Nov 2004

Posts: 669

PostPosted: Sun 20 Nov, 2016 7:52 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Will S wrote:
If you make a HUGE quiver as shown above, then yes it's probably difficult. If you use something sensible, it's very practical and works very well.


The quiver I made is not huge. It's 32" long and necessarily covers the arrows so that the lid fits nicely over the top. Every mm shorter would have made it more practical, but my friend wanted to cover his 32" long arrows and put a lid on them... So, I made that quiver and it turned out exactly as a feared - very hard for me to pull the arrows from. It's nearly the same length that most quivers would have to be for longbow arrows pulling in the 30-32" range, assuming just the fletching was exposed, which was the premise of my argument in the previous post.

I've also used shorter modern back quivers without any problem, but these never struck me as being historical. I personally cannot lift my arm much further than 30" or so away from my upper shoulder, so pulling arrows out of a solid quiver that is nearly the length of an arrow is indeed something I don't think qualifies as "easy" based on my own experience. Obviously, Will, you have seen others at it and disagree. Fine! I'm glad there are people with either longer arms or more practical quivers than my own. I would still be interested in seeing someone with a solid 30" long quiver on their back pulling arrows from it...

-Gregory

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Timo Nieminen




Location: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 08 May 2009
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PostPosted: Fri 25 Nov, 2016 9:12 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Travis Canaday wrote:
Timo Nieminen wrote:
For using a quiver on your back in combat, it's the same problem as back scabbards - how do you get an 80cm long thing out of a tube on your back?


I agree to a degree. The differences between these cases is that the part of the arrow resting in the quiver is typically going to be a bit shorter than the length of a sword blade encased in the scabbard. One doesn't need to cover the entire shaft of the arrow the same way the entire blade needs to be covered. Also a scabbard is meant to hold the sword snuggly, while a quiver is typically wider at the mouth allowing for a more obtuse drawing. Not quite analogous.


Yes, the problem of drawing an arrow from a back quiver isn't quite as bad as the problem of drawing a non-short sword. But that doesn't make it easy, (Wider at the mouth doesn't necessarily help, since usually there will be other arrows in the quiver.)

Some quivers were short, so not too long a length needed to be cleared from the quiver. Traditional Archery From Six Continents has a couple of short back quivers (with straps suited for back carry) of about 50cm. But 65-75cm is more common for long open quivers, and cover almost all of the arrow. Not counting the Central Asian/East Asian short belt quivers, most of the exceptions I've seen to traditional open quivers covering almost the whole arrow are American and African. (Of course, there are many modern examples of quivers exposing a lot of the arrow.)

Note that the Central Asian/East Asian short belt quivers put the arrows in close to the same position as a back quiver, without being a back quiver.

"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
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Veronica-Mae Soar




Location: South Gloucestershire, UK
Joined: 08 Sep 2010

Posts: 5

PostPosted: Mon 08 May, 2017 9:17 am    Post subject: arrow quivers         Reply with quote

I would tend to agree with those who suggest that in practical term the back was the place to carry arrows when you were on the move.
Historically, the word quiver only came into being quite recently, based on the word quequer, which I think means a mouth. Victorian recreational archers called the belt hung container a pouch and the large container the arrows travelled in was the quiver.
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Michael Kelly





Joined: 22 Sep 2015

Posts: 81

PostPosted: Tue 09 May, 2017 8:16 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Harry Marinakis wrote:
Practically speaking, have you ever used a back quiver? They're terrible from a functional perspective.


This is a bit off topic, but I like side stalking quivers myself. They kind of combine the best aspects of both back and side quivers. Not historically accurate in a medieval sense, but very functional when hunting from the ground.
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