Pertaining to the Viking look...

[chef de chambre]

Mail was incessently recycled, cut down to fashionable lengths, and turned into other objects made of mail. A lot of it ended its days as pot scrubbers.

The thought that Erik Schmid and others have had is that mail, being a pain to make, and easy to repair, and fitting a range of potential wearers, got re-used, re-worked, and repaired, and that an increasing pool of mail was available through Europe. Odds are Viking and Anglo-Saxon shirts soldiered on in some form or other for hundreds of years after the demise of their original owners.

[Norman]

Mail was incessently recycled, cut down to fashionable lengths, and turned into other objects made of mail. A lot of it ended its days as pot scrubbers.

Just to lend a bit of support on this --

Many Khazarian period graves have yielded what some have characterised as a maile girdle -- a strip of mail too narrow for anyone to figure out a practical use.
The final determination was that this was a ritualised stand-in for a hauberk -- with actual hauberks getting passed down to folks who still needed them.

[Halbrust]

I ask those of you with knowledge.

Helm before or without maille?

It's my assumption that the first (and sometimes only) thing a man going viking would wear for protection would be a helmet. Is such documentable?

[Armand d'Alsace]

http://www.vikingrune.com/2009/01/viking-helmet/
Is the only one found in scandinavia.

[Jestyr]

Well, at the moment, I think I can really only afford the interpretive recreation rather than the historical kind. However, my end goal is to be almost completely historically accurate. For my shoes, I was thinking about getting some jorvik boots from bohemond with rubber soles (ahistorical as shit, but useful for fighting). Don't you worry Tomburr, I'll get pics posted of my kit as it comes along. Right now, my kit is not worthy of even being talked about in regards to being viking lol.

Maybe there is a semantic distinction between interpretive and historic. How about the term "accurate"? Or certainly accurate with minor concessions given some SCA requirements (such as helms).

You CAN be pretty darn close to accurate for very little money.

Hidden body harness:

You can read about making it here:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... ht=profile
All you need is some ABS plastic and an oven.

Hidden arm with low profile elbow cop:

You can get the elbow cops from Bokalo (http://bokalosarmoury.com/elbowsknees.htm) and make the vambraces from the plastic. You can certainly dish the cops yourself if you can find someone with the appropriate tools.

Hidden leg protection:

You can certainly make the cuisses from the plastic and buy the cops from Bokalo. You can certainly dish the cops yourself if you can find someone with the appropriate tools.

Gorget:
So many options. Get it from wherever you get your cops to save shipping. Even better you can make them.

Covering it with clothing:
You WILL need a tunic and pants to cover this with. Linen and wool are most accurate. You can buy linen from fabric-store.com for less than $7/yard http://www.fabric-store.com/first.php?g ... &article=1

Or, if you are feeling sewing challenged, buy them from Adric:
http://www.linengarb.com/

Winnengas (leg wrappings) are really helpful to pulling off the look. For just 1 pair, it is almost cheaper to buy from Historic Enterprises. A great thing about winnengas is that they can help cover non-period shoes.
http://historicenterprises.biz/winingas ... ath=99_117

Get a period belt buckle. I like Velund at Armourandcastings.com for the price. If you are feeling really frisky, get an accurate strap end.
http://www.armourandcastings.com/index. ... t&catId=13
http://www.armourandcastings.com/index. ... t&catId=14

Total Cost:
All prices include estimates for shipping

4' x 8' ABS plastic = $50
Gorget, elbow and knee cops = $85
5 yards of linen = $42
Winnengas = $30
Buckle, strap end & leather = $32
Misc. leather straps and cord = $10

Total cost: $249 for a really good looking kit.

The linen, winnengas and period belt are critical to pulling off the look, so don't skimp there.

You can chop around $80 if you can make the cops and gorget yourself. That drops the total price to $169. That is less than a dollar a day for 6 months.

After that, you can slowly improve your kit. Period shoes when you can afford them. A sweet helm. A nicer fighting tunic if you want. Chainmail. Once you look good, you can pick and choose what to get next.

[JvR]

buzubans and a spangen helm.
Chainmail or hidden armour for the rest.

Arent Bazubands middle eastern? I thought he wanted viking.

Edited to add. I am guessing he meant for SCA use then. Sorry.

Take Jestyrs advice for sure. I have seen his kit. Very nice.

[Swete]

Also, in accordance to Jestyr's advice, you can get 'car wash' HDPE barrels for free or a small sum of about $5 or $10 instead of ABS for your hidden armour needs. Works just as well or better than ABS and you'll have enough plastic to make such things as hidden splints, vambraces, and, as I have found, a gorget. Just make sure it stays hidden .

[Jestyr]

Also, in accordance to Jestyr's advice, you can get 'car wash' HDPE barrels for free or a small sum of about $5 or $10 instead of ABS for your hidden armour needs. Works just as well or better than ABS and you'll have enough plastic to make such things as hidden splints, vambraces, and, as I have found, a gorget. Just make sure it stays hidden .

I am not a big fan of the HDPE barrel for vambraces as it is hard to make them low profile for hidden armour. For the body it isn't as bad, but they are always very bulky for vambraces.

The trick (in my opinion) to good looking, hidden armour is to make it look like you are not wearing armour, NOT to look like a tank with a tunic on.

[Bernhart von Bruck]

Chello!

Interestingly enough, we were talking about early medieval grave site in grad school last night. It's important to remember that the vast majority of the grave goods are from the burials of the elites. And not your average lordling either but the "kings." They had the luxury items to spare for graves.

As to your average karl, we just don't know.

Tony

[nathan]

I ask those of you with knowledge.

Helm before or without maille?

It's my assumption that the first (and sometimes only) thing a man going viking would wear for protection would be a helmet. Is such documentable?

If you will take Anglo-Saxon law codes as a basis for contemporary Scandinavian practices then yes, helm first and entirely acceptable without mail.

You are expected to have a shield, 3 spears and a helm by Alfred's time as an absolute minimum when reporting as a member of the Fyrd. Men of greater status might be expected to bring 1 or more horses/mailshirts/swords.

There are contemporary Scandinavian law codes that I believe make similar relationships about ship crews, perhaps somebody more familiar with them can supply the details (iir the ships master would have had a mailshirt but not required by everybody else).

There have been various speculations as to why mail isn't more present in graves. The largest and most obvious being that the mail rusted. But then wouldn't other metal, espeically iron, object rust--say, like arrowheads? A simpler answer is the occupant didn't have any mail to be buried in when he died.

On the subject of why mailshirts are not found in burials, your guess is as good as mine. Given the miniscule frequency of discovery I don't think we can infer scarcity as the reason (as we know more than just kings owned them from pictorial depictions), this really does indicate that there must have been a reason why they are such rare finds.

http://www.regia.org/misc/costs.htm indicates that a mailshirt cost about twice as much as a helmet (although 2 values taken from different places and time without full details on the relative quality of the item are of course a very, very poor comparison) with a sword costing anywhere from 1/7th of, to more than a mailshirt (that would doubtless depend on decoration, it's amazing how much silver you can cram on to a sword).[/quote]