Darn, haven't checked on this in a few days, so sorry for not responding. I was not arguing for any specialized arming garment for this period since there is no evidence for that, although there is a mention of felted armor from this period oddly enough, but the context implies that it was improvised. I was merely suggesting perhaps just using another layer of clothing over the tunic like a klappenrock or another tunic, but ofcourse just a single article of clothing would do as well.

I didn't take ostentatiousness into account, so wearing your finest clothing as the outermost layer under the mail is quite possible if not likely. There is this passage that might give this hypothesis a bit more weight: Magnús konungr steypti af sér hringabrynju ok hafði yzta rauða silkiskyrtu, King Magnus threw off from him his coat of mail, and had a red silk shirt outside over his clothes. Saga of Magnus the Good (ch. 29)

The passage also indicates more than one layer of clothing. Silk apart from being a sign of high status is quite resilient, so it is actually sensible to wear it under mail if you are filthy rich.

Hopefully i have cleared any misunderstandings in this post and sorry for bringing up an old topic :lol:

Thanks for the clarification. Personally I don't think anyone should apologise for resurrecting an old thread but it should be done in the original thread rather than starting a new one each time there is an additional contribution. Zach's above posting shows how difficult it is to track down info when it is scattered among multiple older threads.

I'm curious about silk shirts being worn in the sagas to fight in. Could these be gambesons? In 1190 Chretien de Troyes has a silk gambeson (soie gambesie) being worn under mail in his Percivale poem. This is about the same time the Magnus saga is being written down. Maybe the Icelandic poets didn't have a word for gambeson yet, so they called it a shirt. It seems odd that a guy would prefer to fight in a silk shirt instead of mail. And there's more than one mention of someone doing this.

Here is the full passage taken from this site http://mcllibrary.org/Heimskringla/magnus.html

"Then King Magnus stood up, and ordered the war trumpets to sound, and at that moment the Vindland army advanced from the south across the river against him; on which the whole of the king's army stood up, and advanced against the heathens. King Magnus threw off from him his coat of ring-mail, and had a red silk shirt outside over his clothes, and had in his hands the battle- axe called Hel, which had belonged to King Olaf. King Magnus ran on before all his men to the enemy's army, and instantly hewed down with both hands every man who came against him."

Here's the line from Perceval (line 1156): https://www.kirkville.com/dl/perceval4.pdf
And there is a character named Odd in the sagas who duels in a silk shirt.

Here's my post about Odd's silk shirt : http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...p;t=168499
There might have been some magic involved, I don't remember. Also, his brother Hjalmar wears a quadrupled ring shirt. It doesn't sound like he's wearing two shirts.

I'm still confused. Is there a difference between an aketon and a gambeson? Is what they're showing here right? https://youtu.be/1gE0BH66QRw?t=1422

[quote="Dan Howard"]

Michael Long wrote:

The article says that FELT is good against bodkins because it has no woven structure. It says nothing about general padding against bodkins.

Makes sense.

Quote:

An experiment conducted by the Royal Armouries concluded that a padded jack worn over a mail haubergeon (a common combination during the 15th century) was proof against Mary Rose longbows.

Is there a source for this statement available? Most of the weapons tests people cite seem to be hidden away in the aether, no matter how much people want to read them.

The translation for the description of the gambeson in Chretien is correct. Mole et tanvre does mean soft and frail/delicate. So it looks like a thinner garment being worn under the mail. The King's Mirror c.1250 gives three different descriptions for gambesons/pannzara: a heavy gambeson for fighting on foot, a soft (blautan) gambeson worn under mail, and a sleeveless (godan) gambeson over top. I'm not sure of the word godan. I think it might mean good.