The Armour Archive

I have been researching what types of hand protection were used by 10th Century Vikings and I the only thing I could find was mitten gauntlets made out of strips of whalebone. Obviously whalebone is not a possibilty for use in my gauntlets, but I was thinking of using either horn or bone from a cow. I was looking at doing scale mitten gauntlets since scale armour was also period. I am looking for feedback on my idea. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Valgardr Olfuss

Would you be able to pass on where you got this information from?

I would imagine that horn would be easier as it is already in apropriate thinknesses.

Bone would be more likely to break than horn.

My Laurel tried to use horn when he was getting back into fighting. He ended up having to replace horn scales after every practice. Sometimes he had to stop midway through the practice because of his armour.

I don't know about bone, but I don't recomend horn for anything other than display.

The earliest references to separate whalebone gautlets appear in the late 13th century IIRC. Scale gauntlets appear in one French manuscript in the early 14th century. Far, far too late for a tenth century Viking.

My personal experience with scale armor failures indicate a problem with understanding historic construction methods is often to blame rather than the scale material. Were these scales riveted or sewn to the backing? Did the horn itself tear or break, or did the attachment method fail? Did he pierce six or eight holes in the scale, or only two? How close were the holes to the edge of the material? How thick was the horn? etc. etc.
Horn is a better choice than bone in my view.

One thing to keep in mind is that whale bone may not always be what we expect. A friend was once doing some research into corset design and kept finding references to whale bone corset stays. When the details were found, at least a couple of the corsets were made with baleen, not bone. Fairly hornlike material and very flexible.

For gauntlets, I'd personally stick with steel. If you want an authentic material, I'd strongly suggest rawhide. Thick rawhide. With padding.

-Patrick