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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 3:04 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jason. I've heard wappenrock / waffenrock used to refer to surcoats, but not to arming garments or textile armours. If what you say is true then this could lend more weight to the argument that "panzar" could sometimes refer to surcoats.

Looking through some threads over on Armour Archive, I came this post.

Rod Walker wrote:
I thought long and hard about the padding under mail problem when I was putting my kit together for the 12thC solid lance/steel coronel joust I did with Joram. I decided to go with 2 layers of linen under my mail,,,,, that was it. 

Solid timber lances with steel coronels,,,,, mail, 2 layers of linen. 

I took a hit to my chest in practice with a solid balsa tip and I felt it but was fine. I took strikes from Jorams sword edge and was fine,,,,,, and Joram doesn't muck about, he doesn't pull them much at all. We wanted to see what would happen fighting in the correct armour using the correct weapons in a tournament sense. 

Now, these guys were tough. It would be very easy to be badly injured doing this,,,, but I guess that was the whole point. The armour of the period actually protected us both very very well, again, that was the point. 

I'm of the "don't need much under the mail" school of thought. I also think that padding works better over the mail.


Here Rod is talking about the same joust that I mentioned in my OP. Rod states that he took a hit, to the chest, in practice from a "solid balsa tip". I don't know much about jousting, so perhaps Rod or someone else could tell me what a solid balsa tipped lance is. It sounds to me like a lance of plain wood, with no steel head. Is this right, or am I missing something?

Éirinn go Brách
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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 4:01 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Earlier in the thread I wrote this:

Quote:
Mart Shearer has shared references to men wearing aketons under mail in the 1180s. Even though we don't get written confirmation of cotton stuffing until the 1290s, the etymology of aketon suggests that they were stuffed with cotton.


Thinking more about this. The word "aketon" does imply that cotton was used in some way, but this need not have been raw cotton. Perhaps "aketon" merely referred to a garment made with some form of cotton, be that stuffed with raw cotton, or made from multiple layers of cotton cloth.

If this is true then maybe "aketon" could refer to both stuffed and quilted garments used as stand-alone armour, and to multilayered tunics made from cotton cloth used as arming garments.

The way I see it, all of the pre 1290s literary evidence we have, for aketons worn under mail, could just as easily be made from cotton cloth as raw cotton. At least this interpretation reconciles the seemingly contradicting visual and literary evidence.

Éirinn go Brách


Last edited by Stephen Curtin on Sun 02 Apr, 2017 5:37 am; edited 1 time in total
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 4:42 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:
Thinking more about this. The word "aketon" does imply that cotton was definitely used in some way.

Not really. It only implies that the Arabic garments were made from cotton.

"Hey that looks neat. We wear our mail over our clothes."
"We call this al-qutn."
"Alcotton? We could make alcottons from linen. They will stop our clothes from getting messed up."

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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 5:05 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sorry Dan your right. I don't know why I use the word "definitely". I'm going to blame it on not having my moring cup of coffee yet. I still think that both a raw cotton stuffed garment, and a garment of multiple layers of cotton cloth are possible interpretations for aketon, at least originally. Of course the idea was later copied using flax based materials like linen cloth and tow.
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Mart Shearer




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 7:42 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

There are names for cotton (loose fiber) and for cotton cloth, like buckram. They had the capability of distinguishing the two if they so chose.
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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Sun 02 Apr, 2017 8:53 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Yes they had names for different types of cotton cloth such as buckram, but I don't think that this effects what I said. Buckram is made from cotton, so a garment made from multiple layers of buckram would still be ultimately made from cotton, and so could be called an aketon by people of the 12th and 13th centuries.
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Håvard Kongsrud




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PostPosted: Tue 04 Apr, 2017 1:52 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jason O C wrote:
I think that it's possible that panzar could mean everything from aketon to gambeson to surcoat. We have an example of something similar in the way that German speaking people used the word waffenroc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but waffemroc could be used for surcoats as well as padded garments.
Stephen Curtin wrote:
Jason. I've heard wappenrock / waffenrock used to refer to surcoats, but not to arming garments or textile armours. If what you say is true then this could lend more weight to the argument that "panzar" could sometimes refer to surcoats.

Funny you should mention waffenroc. I went through all known instances (not many) of the word in Old Norse (prior to 1350) in this thread. They all pointed toward texts translated from Middle Low German (or possibly Middle High German) at the Court of King Haakon IV Haakonsson. And more interestingly, they all pointed toward a pretty unambiguous definition as an arming surcote. And finally - the word does not seem to have been introduced into the broader language, at this point in time.

In Middle High or Low German, the use of the word waffenroc would off course be broader, but I would still be very interested someone could present examples of this name used on padded garments in Middle High German (prior to 1350). When it comes to the word panzar, I take it you're reffering to the Old Norse use, or are you referring to the way wider Middle High or Low German use of it? I find again and again that lexicographers tend to mix instances of words over the great transition of the 14th century, thereby loosing in accuracy.
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PostPosted: Wed 05 Apr, 2017 10:14 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Håvard. I was only referring to the word panzar as it applies to 13th century Norway, as I'm not familiar enough with other sources which use the word.

So your saying that prior to 1350 (in Norway at least), a vapnrokkr always referred to a surcoat. Going by the information that you have provided (both here and on the other thread), a vapntræiu is an arming garment worn under mail, and a vapnrokkr is a surcoat worn over mail, and If I'm not mistaken both vapntræiu and vapnrokkr could both be translated as arming tunic.

While looking for Endre Fodstad's article, I found this page:

http://archive-no-2013.com/no/1/2013-06-15_23...or-folket/

The first article on this page states that, apart from vapnrokkr, two other Old Norse terms for a surcoat were; silkitreyju ermalausa, and ermalusr treyja. These I assume would translate to sleeveless tunic (with one of them made from silk).

So it seems that the word treyja/treyju/teæiu could be used for a surcoat, vapntræiu was a word used for an arming garment, and styrka vapntræiu was a word used for a stand-alone textile armour.

As far as I can tell there aren't any sources which tell us how panzars and vapntræiu were made. I think that unless there is evidence to the contrary, a vapntræiu was probably just a stout tunic intended to be worn under armour. In other words a vapntræiu was a militarized version of a civilian tunic, just as a vapnrokkr was a militarized version of a civilian supertunic.

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Jason O C





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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 3:17 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Hmmm. Now that I think of it I haven't seen padded armour referred to as a waffenrock in period texts. I have often seen the 15th century jack from Lübeck referred as a waffenrock by people online though, so that's where I got the idea.

Jason
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 3:30 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:
I still think that both a raw cotton stuffed garment, and a garment of multiple layers of cotton cloth are possible interpretations for aketon, at least originally.

Aketon is derived from the French "alcotton" which is derived from the Arabic "al-qutn". The Arabic word implies that the Arabic ones were made from cotton but the European terms were used for all arming garments regardless of what they were made from. If you think the European ones were originally made from cotton, we need proper evidence. Etymology won't cut it.

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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 8:17 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan. I agree, more evidence is definitely needed. That's why I said that it is a "possible interpretation". I realize that my position is highly speculative and might very well be un-provable, but it does make sense of otherwise contradictory evidence.

We have literary evidence for arming garments worn under mail from the late 12th century onwards, but it isn't until the very late 13th that we get literary evidence of these arming garments being stuffed and quilted. This lines up well with the visual evidence, where we don't see quilted garments worn under mail until the very late 13th century. Before this, all we see when someone is donning or removing their hauberk, is what looks like a regular tunic. Explanations for this seeming lack of an arming garment, range from artistic license to the possibility that mail was sewn to a lightly padded liner. I speculate that what looks to be a regular tunic, was actually an arming garment made from at least two layers of stout cloth. If this cloth happened to be made from cotton, then perhaps this explains how an aketon could be mentioned in literary sources, but look like a regular tunic in visual sources.

I also speculate that even though we have literary references for; aketons, gambesons, and panzars worn; under mail, over mail, and instead of mail, these might not always be referring to what we think. The reason for this speculation comes from King's Mirror, where the horse's caparison is described as being made like a panzar. Now perhaps I am wrong, and this is evidence for a padded caparison, but I've never seen any other evidence to support that idea. I think it's more likely that this was just a regular caparison, and by saying that it was made like a panzar means that not all panzars were stuffed and quilted. If this is true and the horse's outer panzar-like garment was just a regular caparison, then perhaps the rider's outer sleeveless panzar was just a surcoat. This of course raises the possibility that the rider's inner panzar could have been an un-quilted multilayered tunic like we see in the Maciejowski Bible..

The author of King's Mirror implies that most, if not all, of the following garments; horse's trapper and caparison, the man's stand-alone panzar, hoes, cuisses, soft panzar, and good panzar, were made from "soft and thoroughly blackened linen cloth". Now the word translated as blackened (svörtuðum), could also mean darkened, or dirtied, so I think this might better translate to linen cloth that was soft and well worn.

As both the panzar (the one intended to be worn as stand-alone armour) and the hoes are described as being made from the same type of cloth, I think that they might have also been made in a similar manner. As there is no evidence for hoes being stuffed and quilted, I think that this is another clue that not all panzars were either.

I think that the best interpretation of this information is that all of the linen garments in the King's Mirror, were made from the same soft and well worn cloth, only in different numbers of layers. For example the hoes might only be 1 layer, but the stand-alone panzar might be up to 30. If this is the case, then the soft panzar and the good panzar could both be made from as little as just 2 layers.

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Håvard Kongsrud




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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 2:48 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:
So your saying that prior to 1350 (in Norway at least), a vapnrokkr always referred to a surcoat.
Yes, by the term *arming surcoat*, I ment a garment worn above mail in most cases said to display the coat of arms. Notice there's no reference to it as armoured/padded, only of it beeing worn on top of armour (not that we can exclude the possiblity). Something like this


Stephen Curtin wrote:

While looking for Endre Fodstad's article, I found this page:http://archive-no-2013.com/no/1/2013-06-15_23...or-folket/The first article on this page states that, apart from vapnrokkr, two other Old Norse terms for a surcoat were; silkitreyju ermalausa, and ermalusr treyja. These I assume would translate to sleeveless tunic (with one of them made from silk).
Yep. That would be Anders Helseth's 2001 article on Hjalmar Falk's 1914 book Altnordische Waffenkunde with comments based mainly on Blair. (Here's he and a few others in this thread chiming in when this discussion was held 14 years ago.) Yes, ermalausa means sleeveless. But I would translate theese too with sleeveless arming tunic to use your vocabulary.

Despite what Falk is saying (based on Fritzner late 19th century dictionary) treya at this time does not yet mean some kind of shirt in it self, as is demonstrated by the mid 13th century kompilation of the Didrik's saga, where you find the term treyjuhosa for arming hose - "ok höggr á hans fótlegg svá hart, at í sundr tók treyjuhosuna ok svá brynhosuna ok svá fótinn". ("and he cut his lower leg so hard that he broke both the arming hose and mail hose and his leg too".) The armong hose seem to be above the chausses, but that might not be intended by the writer. My point is that this show that treyja at this time does not denote a garment in it self (only in context) but a quality in what could constitute both an arming hose and an arming tunic, a quality named after the city Troyes smack in the middle of the Champagne fairs, the great hub of trade between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe until their decline in the late 14th century.


Stephen Curtin wrote:
I think that the best interpretation of this information is that all of the linen garments in the King's Mirror, were made from the same soft and well worn cloth, only in different numbers of layers. For example the hoes might only be 1 layer, but the stand-alone panzar might be up to 30. If this is the case, then the soft panzar and the good panzar could both be made from as little as just 2 layers.
Curtin, are you really making the argument that the King's Mirror instruct the young nobleman to put on his underwear?
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 2:56 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:


We have literary evidence for arming garments worn under mail from the late 12th century onwards, but it isn't until the very late 13th that we get literary evidence of these arming garments being stuffed and quilted.


The word "stuffed" had a different meaning. It didn't imply loose fill like it does today. A garment made from a dozen layers of linen with outer layers of leather would be described as a leather aketon stuffed with linen. A jazerant would have been described as a linen garment stuffed with mail.

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Håvard Kongsrud




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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 3:17 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen Curtin wrote:
As far as I can tell there aren't any sources which tell us how panzars and vapntræiu were made.

That is correct. Apart from the soft and blackened (or roughed up) linen part, we are left with conjecture from other countries and times.

Stephen Curtin wrote:
As far as I can tell there aren't any sources which tell us how panzars and vapntræiu were made. I think that unless there is evidence to the contrary, a vapntræiu was probably just a stout tunic intended to be worn under armour. In other words a vapntræiu was a militarized version of a civilian tunic, just as a vapnrokkr was a militarized version of a civilian supertunic.
What you are saying here is that: "X could be A or B, and as we don't have evidence that it is A, it is probably B." I'm not trying to be a smart ass here, but logically this argument should be presented as "could be", not "is probably".
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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 3:56 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Håvard I think that the vapn part of vapnrokkr wasn't used to indicate that a surcoat bore its owner's arms. I think that the vapn in vapnrokkr indicated that this surcoat was to be worn with armour, just as the vapn in vapntreyju indicated a treyju to be worn with armour.

As for treyjuhosuna. Yes I understand that treyjuhosuna meant hoes made from the same material as a treyju, just as byrnhosuna meant hoes made from the same material as a byrnja i.e. mail. However on its own, the word byrnja meant a mail shirt. I think that the word treyju, when not combined with words like hosur, meant a shirt of some form of fine cloth.

If the translation of that account is accurate, and the sword struck the lower leg, then the treyjuhosuna are more likely to have been under the byrnhosuna IMO.

I'm not sure why you think I'm referring to underwear? The King's Mirror does not make mention of any braes or undershirt, not that these under-garments needed mentioning. Under the mail shirt and chausses went linen hoes and a soft panzar. I think that both of these garments, as well as the cuisses and sleeveless panzar, were made from multiple layers of linen. As all of these garments are described in a similar way, I think that they were all made in a similar way. I don't know of any evidence for arming hoes that were padded and quilted, so if the hoes weren't padded and quilted then I don't think that the other garments were either. This is why multiple layers of linen makes sense. Each of the above garments could be made from multiple layers of linen. Even with a different number of layers, each garment could be said to be made like the others.

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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 4:04 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Håvard Kongsrud wrote:
Stephen Curtin wrote:
As far as I can tell there aren't any sources which tell us how panzars and vapntræiu were made. I think that unless there is evidence to the contrary, a vapntræiu was probably just a stout tunic intended to be worn under armour. In other words a vapntræiu was a militarized version of a civilian tunic, just as a vapnrokkr was a militarized version of a civilian supertunic.
What you are saying here is that: "X could be A or B, and as we don't have evidence that it is A, it is probably B." I'm not trying to be a smart ass here, but logically this argument should be presented as "could be", not "is probably".


I don't think that you are being a "smart ass" Håvard and I hope that you don't think that I'm being argumentative. What I meant to say is; in my opinion, vapntreyju (and other similar arming garments) of the mid 13th century were most likely just stouter versions of civilian tunics. I'm certainly not 100% positive of this opinion, but I believe I have given good reasons to doubt the current interpretation of 13th century arming garments, based on the text of the King's Mirror and manuscripts such as the Maciejowski Bible.

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Last edited by Stephen Curtin on Sun 09 Apr, 2017 1:39 am; edited 3 times in total
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PostPosted: Fri 07 Apr, 2017 4:26 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Stephen Curtin wrote:
We have literary evidence for arming garments worn under mail from the late 12th century onwards, but it isn't until the very late 13th that we get literary evidence of these arming garments being stuffed and quilted.


The word "stuffed" had a different meaning. It didn't imply loose fill like it does today. A garment made from a dozen layers of linen with outer layers of leather would be described as a leather aketon stuffed with linen. A jazerant would have been described as a linen garment stuffed with mail.


The very late 13th source that I was talking about is the Chronicon Colmariense from 1298:

"et qui wambasia, id est, tunicam spissam ex lino et stuppa, vel veteribus pannis consutam, et desuper camisiam ferream, id est vestem ex circulis ferreis contextam," 
(and his gambeson, that is, a thick tunic made out of linen and tow, or sewn with old rags, and above, an iron shirt, that is a garment woven together of iron rings,).

To my knowledge this is the earliest solid evidence for an arming garment stuffed with loose fibres and quilted (this is what I meant by stuffed and quilted). Now if only we all used some kind of typology to make communicating these ideas quicker and easier Wink

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PostPosted: Sat 08 Apr, 2017 12:33 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I don't see any cotton in that passage; ."lino et stuppa" refers to woven flax and coarse flax.
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Stephen Curtin




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PostPosted: Sat 08 Apr, 2017 12:58 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I didn't say that this particular source referred to the use of cotton. All I was saying is, that its good evidence for an arming garment made from loose fibres stuffed between layers of cloth and quilted.
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Jason O C





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PostPosted: Sun 09 Apr, 2017 3:10 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Stephen. On the subject of the necessity of padding under mail to help with blunt force. The human body can be conditioned to receive very hard blows without taking serious injury. Think of professional Muay Thai fighters. These guys can kick ridiculously hard, possibly as hard as a sword blow, and yet they can take dozens of hits on a regular basis. If I remember correctly, King's Mirror advises young knights to spar with sword and shield at least once a day. I'm sure that after years of daily sparring, a knight's body would be well used blunt force. Just some food for thought.

Jason
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