The Armour Archive

Marshal

This seems to be about military historymakers, but as Egfroth alludes that's not necessarily the most important standard. In terms of sheer impact on history it's probably been innovators in other areas---Jesus or Mohammed, the inventor of pottery firing or writing, etc. As military figures go, my c...

Marshal

No worries. It's just that the pedant in me insists on reading the word "unique" in its original sense of "the only one in existence". I myself got the idea of cutting up doorsprings from a written source---maybe the "Hammer" or the SCA's "Known World Handbook". So undoubtedly the idea of using spri...

Marshal

Sorry, man , but the first hauberk I ever made ( finished in the early 1980s ) was of cut-up doorsprings. It is just as cohesive as you indicate, too, despite only being butted. However, as real mail it wasn't very protective. I can thrust a Jaeger dagger straight through it without much trouble. It...

Marshal

Are they in one piece, or several? ( If the former, that's some awesome wood-bending involved! )

Marshal

So is the thinking that the "hawberke" is a breastplate? A plate harness entire? A COP? Brig? Heck, with the 'Jewes work' reference it could even be an Eastern mail-and-plate panoply, I suppose. What's the best guess?

Marshal

Might they simply have been carried slung from a wrist loop? There are accounts of holmgangs from the Icelandic sagas of men wielding spear or sword with another "backup" sword dangling from the wrist. I don't see why it could not be done with a lance as well. Shorten the loop around your thumb when...

Marshal

Egfroth wrote:Halvgrim - that's a very helpful list. The only one I can see missing is the e with the accent going the other way ("forward slash"). Do you know how to do that one?

This one?

ÃƒÂ©

ALT+0233

Marshal

There're also the Joinville accounts from the crusade of St. Louis: being pinned to his saddlebow and held there by a Saracen lance which could not pierce his hauberk, he and his men being unable to don their mail due to the little pricks gotten from lance tips or arrows through the mail links, etc....

Marshal

Egfroth---A lot of the shields in the pics you posted look more oval than round. Is this just an attempt at showing the deep concavity in a round, do you think, or is an oval an oval?

Marshal

And here I thought only Porthos could do that.

Marshal

How'd you make a sword out of wool, then?

Marshal

Only if the tire irons were limed.

Marshal

"But they can never take....OUR FREEDOM!"

Oh, wait, yes they can...

Marshal

lets see if this works... anyway, just for peoples reference. if you ever want to point out a reference for fighting with two swords, check out the bottom right hand corner in the border. though I doubt they called it florentine. Those look more like cudgels than swords to me. The Saxons were suppo...

Marshal

Baron Alejandro wrote:Well, I *am* pretty. So, so pretty. (points for naming the quote I just murdered)

You mean the line which ends with the singer claiming she feels "gay"?

Oops, I may said the magic woid to summon Owen...

Marshal

I seem to recall having read that it derived from a mistranslation of a phrase in a document---something like "a la Fiorentino"---which actually had nothing to do with swordplay but was seized upon and grew popular anyway. However, I cannot recall WHERE I read this, so the explanation may be as apoc...

Marshal

You couldn't afford the shipping.

Marshal

I had a Kirby spear at one point; didn't know what I had and traded it for a helm. It'd probably be worth 10 by now.

Marshal

And russeting, and covering with fabric. And gilding, and tinning.

Marshal

No. Seriously, it's always possible to imagine special circumstances in which something MIGHT have happened or been done...but unless we have evidence that it WAS, we have to say "Dunno, but probably not". Just getting the wire and making the links would have been costly on its own. Having paid that...

Marshal

I believe there's a table in Ffoulkes' "Armourer and His Craft" which gives the names of the major pieces in English, French, German and Italian...

Marshal

Some people who collect antiquities do not WANT to provide details of their aquisition. There are very good reasons NOT to provide details, location, purchase price, location of purchase, etc. You make a good point. Please desist at once. I certainly wouldn't post anything about location or owner's...

Marshal

We don't ask much.

Marshal

Cough. And the pictures.

Marshal

Mike F wrote:For the love of Pete, <i>nobody crash the server!</i>

Blankenshield, Blankenshield, Bl----

Marshal

The problem with the "no arm/leg armour" thesis, though, is that limbs are easier to strip than a bloated torso, hence the sample may be skewed. That and the fact that it can be difficult to tell from a rusted-together lump of mail where it hung on the wearer. Actually, I'd think that it would be po...

Marshal

Point is, the facial and leg injuries from Wisby point to the fact it's easier to get around armour than to go through it. That is a good guess, but I'm not so sure the evidence tells us this. Has there been a definitive demonstration that the blows to these areas were not through armour? Certainly...

Marshal

The Vigfusson ON Dictionary and grammar ( well, OK, Old Icelandic, pretty much the same thing ) is available on the Northvegr website, together with a large number of other resources.

http://www.northvegr.org/vigfusson/index002.php

The main site is at:

http://www.northvegr.org/lore/main.php

Marshal

Hew wrote:Uh... Aurochs?
[

No, it's TRUE I tell you!

And now for a serious question.

Beer was mentioned. I am not an aficionado, so my knowledge of it is limited, hence my question: Does beer date to Paleolithic times, or would it be OOP for Korg? When was it invented, roughly?

Marshal

Interesting article, Wyrm, thanks very much.

Marshal

grimstone bar wrote: korg fat

Korg court massive myocardial infarction!

Marshal

Trevor wrote:
Talk about OOP!

Yes. Alley OOP, apparently.

There's an incident in one of the Norse sagas in which the hero picks up a big, flat river rock and sticks it down his shirt as an impromptu breastplate. Can no one ever have tried that before? Stone armour for the Stone Age?

Marshal

"Skjald-maer", according to Vigfusson. ( Technically Old Icelandic, but it's largely a distinction without a difference as far as I can tell. )

Marshal

Bluing, blackening, russeting, paint. ( Yes, paint. Bake it properly and it will not abrade off as easily as one might think. )

Marshal

Pshhh! And you call yourselves fighters.

The answer, obviously, is duct tape.