[Dominic Dellavalle]

I've never dedicated much time to the study of Viking armor or some of the intricacies of how it was worn or with what. I do know that from personal experience I could really never see myself wearing any of my maille shirts without some form of padding on underneath. Generally I will wear a gambeson to provide some cushioning and also, quite honestly, absorb some of the sweat. It also certainly helps on the shoulders where the majority of the weight from a maille shirt is felt.

Whether or not some form of padding was worn I think will be difficult if not impossible to determine given biodegradable items such as this are scant. As many have already said we can only make assumptions.

[Tim Plourd]

It seems, as Jean suggested, that some here look at armor as a device that would protect absolutely against attack. We know that this is not the view for many people in Europe. Fiori, Liechtenauer, Caesar, Strabo and many others all directly discuss the idea that not getting hit is paramount in fighting of all types. Jean is absolutely correct here.

Also, many here are asserting that it is just common sense that you would wear as much armor as possible in battle and therefore some sort of padding MUST have been worn under maille. Absolutes like that are always dangerous statements to make. We also know, dispositively, that many European people went into battle with no armor at all, indeed without clothing at all.

It is important to remember that some cultures view things like honor to be more important than their own lives.

Dominic just mentioned that he could not see fighting in his maille without some padding underneath it, I can't see ever fighting with said padding. I think you would have gotten this same response in 7th C. Norway ... albeit in a different language.

Joe, having been a police officer as well ... they used to make us watch a video called "Surviving Edged Weapons", I forget the producer now but if you are curious about slashing attacks of the type you described this program is a very good indicator of what it takes. An issue though is that this is one type of attack that might not have been so common to our 7th C. Nordic Viking.

Thank you very much Joe Yurgil and Elling Polden for contributing. We are talking about your culture here, (albeit ancient culture) if I read your posts correctly. Being of American Indian ancestry I am often assailed by educated "experts" on my own culture, my opinion there is somewhat mixed and I still strive to not be like that as I become an educated "expert".

--Tim

[Jean Thibodeau]

Tim;

"Surviving edged weapons" Oh, I remember watching this one a couple of times, a friend of mine bought it when we took a stress fire course with Massad Ayoub in 1989.

Very sobering, about the ease and scope of damage a sharp blade can produce: This is why the first priority is cut protection, blunt trauma is only a worry when hit by heavy blows but a feather like slice WILL kill you!

As to the cultural, tactical or evolution of the amount of "padding" worn under armour I don't think we should argue about it as an all or nothing proposition as this could have been very variable and priority to protection versus agility would be given different weight even today.

The heavier padding may be related to the kind of weapons faced: Against Turkish or Mongol horse archers the arrow absorbing qualities of heavily padded maille, under or over or both would have influenced warriors views about the subject firstly during the first few crusades.

Obviously, I don't think anyone would normally wear maille directly over the skin without at least some sort of minimal clothing even if only a heavy shirt.

[Alexi Goranov]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Alexi;

Oh, I may have strayed from the original period specific discussion about Viking use or non use of Gambison type protection to a more general discussion of the pro and cons of the amount of padding needed or desirable.

With the story of the Father scolding his child for coming back with unblemished armour: The Father is assuming the reason being a lack of courage or agressivity shown by his son! But lets say that instead the Father had seen the battle and his son had shown such incredible skill that no enemy had been able to come close to him and survive.

Now in a case like this would the Father still see the lack of damage to the armour as a blemish to the family honor?

Which is the more skillful warrior: The old veteran of many campaigns covered with scars or his equaly proven compagnion in arms without a scratch? ( At least if we discount dumb luck. )

By the way I appreciate your arguments about the 14th century preference of using more rather than less protection and I don't think that we are having ( All of us!) a disagreement as much as we are looking at different aspects of the issue.
And maybe we all enjoy splitting hairs a bit too much.

I hope you are also enjoying the back and forth of the discussion.

[Tim Plourd]

[Elling Polden]

In my experience, relying on mobility to aviod geting hit is viable in a duel, but only as long as your opponent is unarmoured as well.
Countrary to popular belief, a unarmored fighter will have hard time indeed avoiding an heavily armoured foe. Sure, he can turn and run like hell, but short of that, his mobility advantage just isn't big enough.
This is especialy true because the armoured fighter can rely on his armour to stop most counterattacks, and thus can be much more agressive than the guy dodging for his life.

In a field battle, in scandinavia as well as elsewhere, most armies organized in formations. Individual mobility is thus severly limited (as it should, it keeps people from running away...)
The standard loadout of the viking warrior where shield, spear and sword. The spear is the primary weapon for field battles, the sword for personal combat.
Ever been at the front row of a rock/metal/boyband concert? Imagine that, only you're holding a shield and spear, and your facing a bunch of guys throwing rocks and stabbing towards your face with pointy sticks, from all directions...
Then ask yourself wether or not you want armour.
The answer should be "yes..."

exactly what you wear, is of course up to you. If you can aford it, you wear maile. Now, to keep things simple, the norse called all kinds of metal armour Maile (brynje). But I cannot remeber seeing sources for anything but chain maile, or, for the eastern Rus (the swedish vikings that went east instead of West (where the REAL men go... ), Lamelar.
The Coat of Plates emerged later. An early form is mentioned in the Kings Mirror, in the mid 13th century...

Yours
Elling

[Alexi Goranov]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Elling;

Oh, having as much armour as possible and practical does give you a great advantage, and I can see a lightly armed and armored fighter being in emormous trouble facing a better armoured foe if just running out of range is made impossible for any reason including being in the front line of a compact melee.

Also the heavily armoured warrior can just press his attack in spite of anything the lightly armed one tries to do: Just force the engagement. ( Like tanks against infantry without any anti tank weapons! )

As to armour versus mobility it's just a question of degree and definition also: Not just being light on your feet but how unrestricted are your arms to use your weapons.

A small group of heavily armoured knights can fight against large numbers of lightly armed with ease and be almost unstopable, at least until exaustion sets in.

So, overall I do agree with using as much armour as possible is a good thing when getting out of the way is not an option, as in your example of the press of large formations, the job of the armour is to make you as hard to stop as possible.

Oh, if the press is TOO extreme the armour won't help you then: As in my example earlier of giving a "free" 30 seconds of total immobility on the part of the heavily armoured warrior as a gift to the lightly armed warrior to use his dagger through his visor. ( Well in an extreme case like this being lightly armoured won't help you much either and extra armour might give you a small advantage IF you can disengage from this extreme press and get the elbow room to use your weapons effectively again. )

Oh, I hope I am not coming across as being argumentative here, as I respect your imput here and "practical" experience.

Actually, I am slowly putting together my own armour of maille and full plate and will see how it feels when I put everything on at the same time. For a Gambison I want the support to make the armour stay put and not shift around like it does when I just use a loose fitting sweater underneat as a stopgap measure: But I don't want an extreme amount of padding as Plate over a full size Hauberk ( Sort of transitional armour look. ) should give very good protection even with moderate padding.

I am not putting this together for any "sport" style fighting but trying to duplicate what armour I would wear if I had a time machine and had to face real battles. In the same way all my high end weapons are sharps. ( So the whole thing is for the fun of having real armour and real weapons. If I did want to participate in some sort of real training or sparring I would need a second kit adapted to that activity. )

[Jean Thibodeau]

Alexi;

Point taken and accepted: The odds of taking NO hits on your armour in a battle are low to nil and would be due more to luck than skill. I was just giving an extreme example to make the point that getting hit is not a vertue in itself and major hits that you can avoid you would avoid most of the time.

Actually that is the point of armour: Protecting you from all those unavoidable random hits that could cripple you for life or kill you. The mobility thing come in when you do see a powerfull blow coming at you and do your best to avoid it.

O.K. the armour lets you sort of ignore and accept all those minor nics and scrapes and concentrate on the big stuff: Like the hammer of that Pollaxe rapidly approching your face.

So armour IS GOOD to have: No argument there .......... LOL.

[Tim Plourd]

[Alexi Goranov]

[Chris Post]

[Tim Plourd]

An important point here Alexi, is that I am NOT saying that organized warfare is not better for large groups engagements, in fact, I am saying that it is. What I am saying is not all (in fact maybe not even the average) European group(s) engaged in that kind of warfare as their primary means of making war. I have read some of the books you mentioned, I had to as part of my under-graduate work.

The fact remains,however, that the cultural context of a 7thC. Nordic Viking is NOT of the large scale organized variety, if anything it is the loosely organized Greek type and more probably akin to the Celtic paradighm. The battle of Stanford Bridge (as a close to the "viking" era) proves that. There are many other acounts of this kind.

What did Valhalla mean to the Nordic culture of this time?

--Tim

[Alexi Goranov]

[Patrick Kelly]

One small point: It's Stamford Bridge, not Sta*n*ford Bridge.

I really wish we had more information on that particular battle. (And Fulford as well) Since it occurs at the tail end of one of my favorite periods, and immediately precedes one of my other faves, it's always been of particular interest to me

Great discussion guys!

[Jean Thibodeau]

Very interesting but I think we are drifting away from the subject of armour and what if anything was worn underneat during different periods or culture, also the individual combat advantages and disadvantages of more or less armour etc....

Anyway, I just say this because the very interesting discussion(s) about battle tactic deserve a whole bunch of new subject threads and maybe a whole new forum on battles, tactics: individual, small groups skirmishes and major battles.

So it might be a good idea to to create a new topic from the last few responses?

Oh, and again it is impressive how we can have these productive discussions even when views and opinons diverge considerably and keep it civil and respectful. ( And I learn much from the views I disagree with as I try to find good rebutals and sometimes actually change my mind about things. )

[Tim Plourd]

Thanks Patrick, yada thunk that after seven years of my time and 130,000 dollars of my money they'd a lert me how to spell.

--Tim

[Patrick Kelly]

[Hisham Gaballa]

Just to answer the 'other than mail' part of the topic title. Norsemen served as Varangian guardsmen in the Byzantine Empire and set up colonies and treded with Russian. Both the Byzantines and Russians used lamellar armour. It is possible that the Norse used lamellar armour in addition to mail and possibly padded armour.