The Armour Archive

Anyone know a good source to find drawings or pictures of the fittings used on Norse Shields? Or a merchant who sells castings of those fittings?

Are you thinking Sutton Hoo? I cannot think of any cast sheild fittings used by the Viking age Norse. I've seen rivets, shield bosses, edge reinforcements and... that's about it.

Garth

I agree....there doesnt seem to be much evidence for the same types of shield fittings you see on earlier Anglo-Saxon shields used on Viking Age shields. There are also no drawings really, because all extant viking age shields dont support their use, and I have yet to come accross any artistic or literary instances of those types of shield fittings.

Grips are about the only thing that may have been more ornate than a piece of wood, I'll look over my sources today after work and post anything I find.

Dave

There were a couple at least. I have one drawing of metal facings from one shield, found in Valsgarde. And I know of at least one literary source. Ragnarsdrapa was written by Braggi Boddason the Old about the fitting on a shield given to Ragnar. Each casting was reminded him of a different Norse legend.

I'd be curious to see your references, might be pretty cool. If you've not already looked, check out this site for one of the best writeups on the subject.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... hield.html

Garth

Well, I gave you one. Ragnarsdrapa. It is about as famous, or the most famous, Skaldic Verse Drapa there is. My copy of it is in "The Skalds, a selection of their Poems" By Proff. Lee M. Hollander. A webseach will probably bring it up. The other I have from the Dover book Viking Designs Page 31. I would really like to find a site of the Valsgard excavation and see the original myself.

Torvaldr,

Is this what you're looking for?

I have copies of the Valsgarde excavation reports and I scanned them to avoid ruining my copies. There's quite a bit of info on the shields and I'd be more than happy to email them to you separately if you'd like. Or I might could be talked into burning a CD with all the Valsgarde books on them

The Anglo-Saxon Shield by I.P. Stephenson also discusses shield fittings, but I dont recall if there are any photos.


Kían, very slick book...I'd love to get that on CD.

that shield article link is pretty much the Shield Bible, and if I had a nickel for every time I've used it or referenced others to it, I'd be sitting on a nice Carribean beach sipping Pina Coladas.

The only thing I'd like to add, is that for viking age shields, you dont see a lot of fittings...like I said, the grip being pretty much the only part decorated like that...the other fittings on the face pre-date the viking age, and I'm not sure I'd call them Norse.

I have often wondered why they fell out of use after the Vendel and Valsgarde periods along with splinted limb defenses and full aventailed helms.

Dave