Viking Silk Shirt vs. Mail

[Len Parker]

Odd says, “I want to fight with Angantyr. He will give hard knocks with Tyrfing, but I believe my shirt is better protection than your byrnie.”

Then Hjorvard went forward and he and Odd had a hard exchange of blows. And Odd's silk shirt was so firm that no weapon could grip on it, but he had a sword so good it bit mail like cloth. And he hadn't dealt many cuts before Hjorvard fell dead.

From Hervarar Saga (about half way down) http://www.northvegr.org/sagas%20annd%2 ... h/020.html

[Ernst]

Magic Sword Tyrfing vs. Magic Shirt. The tale of the unstoppable force vs. the immovable object.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angantyr
http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/Odd.html

Perhaps there is also some interest in the "quadrupled" byrnie?

[Wolf]

mythril silver silk

[Henrik Granlid]

Silk has some stopping potential, one of the best Swedish armoursmiths out there displays, on his website, a man wearing some of his work (costing a LOT of money and having a high amount of historical accuracy) together with a silk jupon. Purely based off the fact that it must have cost a small fortune to put that kit together, and the choice of armourer the man in the picture had, I'd say he did proper research on silk as a material in arming garments. I also seem to recall reading about silk wadding in padding for helmets and other quilted garments.

I also have some memory of hearing about mongolian horsemen wearing silken shirts to ward off arrows from chinese defenders.

Vikings could have seen silk in the middle east, and there are some trims and whatnots described or discovered. Silk being a very expensive, very rare material with rather unique sense of touch and strange properties, I would not be suprised if it also turned mythological in what it could do. A full quilted garment of silk? I doubt anybody could even imagine the astronomical cost or next to magical properties such a piece of armour would have, and thusly, it fit well into a saga with magical swords.

Or, as said above.

"Viking mithril silk shirt."

[James B.]

Saga are written down in the 12th or 13th century; I am sure they have silk padded covered armors at that time. However I am fairly sure we are still talking about one of the magic items in the sagas.

[Ernst]

Henrik makes a fine point of how reality could morph into myth. Silk body armor continued n use into the early 20th century, though expense remained a problem. The U.S. continued with experiments on artificially produced Golden Orb Spider silk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_vest

In 1881, Tombstone physician George E. Goodfellow noticed that the shot Faro dealer Luke Short was saved by his silk handkerchief in his breast pocket that prevented the bullet from penetrating.[6][7] In 1887, he wrote an article titled Impenetrability of Silk to Bullets[8] for the Southern California Practitioner documenting the first known instance of bulletproof fabric. He experimented with[9] silk vests resembling medieval gambesons, which used 18 to 30 layers of silk fabric to protect the wearers from penetration.

Fr. Kazimierz Żegleń used Goodfellow's findings to develop a bulletproof vest made of silk fabric at the end of the 19th century, which could stop the relatively slow rounds from black powder handguns. The vests cost $800 USD each in 1914, a small fortune at the time the modern day equivalent of $18,710 USD. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was wearing a silk bulletproof vest when he was attacked by a gun-wielding assassin. He was shot in the neck and the vest did not protect him.

[Henrik Granlid]

Saga are written down in the 12th or 13th century; I am sure they have silk padded covered armors at that time. However I am fairly sure we are still talking about one of the magic items in the sagas.

The origins of the sagas however, were earlier, in which the silk shirt would have seemed like magic to the people first hearing it and then retelling it.

Through constant oral retellings of the story, the mystical padded silk garment would then have been shrunk and further mystified, the original point of "Padded silk armour, wow, that's amazing and impossible and borderline magical" likely turned into "Silk shirt is magical." by the time it was translated, in accordance with a climb in available silk paddings for armours, where a padded silk garment lost it's magic, but the magic of the fairytale stayed, and, as such, the garment was made more magical and less "armour of noblemen." over the hundreds of years it was told and retold.

[Dan Howard]

This is an old article but relevant. Thai police have been experimenting with silk body armour for a while but I don't know whether the vests have ever been used in the field. Apparently silk is cheaper than kevlar in Thailand
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/379338.stm

Spidersilk cloth: Fourteen thousand spiders yield about an ounce of silk. They needed to extract silk from over a million spiders to get enough for one garment.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

[Baron Alcyoneus]

Vikings could have seen silk in the middle east, and there are some trims and whatnots described or discovered. Silk being a very expensive, very rare material with rather unique sense of touch and strange properties, I would not be suprised if it also turned mythological in what it could do. A full quilted garment of silk? I doubt anybody could even imagine the astronomical cost or next to magical properties such a piece of armour would have, and thusly, it fit well into a saga with magical swords.

Or, as said above.

"Viking mithril silk shirt."

They had silk, and at the very least, used it for hoods in York and Jorvik.

http://vikinghands.blogspot.de/2014/01/ ... r-cap.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... production

[Len Parker]

This site has a few mentions of silk http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/varangians.shtml Oleg's silk sails, Bolli Bollason's silk shirt from the Emperor, and Varangian guards in blue silk tunics.

From Egil's saga "Arinbjorn gave Egil as a Yule-gift a trailing robe made of silk, and richly broidered with gold, studded with gold".
From Njál's saga "Njáll laid a silk cloak as a gift to Flosi."

There is a coat (kabadion) padded with raw silk, here. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... fences.htm