[Luka Borscak]

Is there a great difference between a blunt force generated by two same swords, one blunt, one sharp?

[Elling Polden]

Naturally. We make no pretence on the realism of our day to day fighting. (though many groups do.)
However, there are certain experiences that give a idea of how something works. For instance, having been hit with blunt swords while wearing reproduction mail gives an impression of how this feels.
Combined with experience with fighitng, knowledge of historical arms and equipment, the psycological and biocemical effects of combat stress and so on, it contributes to understanding of a historical phenomenon.

Kind of like knowing a historical craft enhances the understanding of why a item was made a certain way.
This does not mean that a craftsman automaticaly knows what is historical, but he has a certain advantage in his research.

[William P]

[Dan Howard]

[Elling Polden]

We do not know how much, if any, armour the combatants at Visby wore. The wast majority of them where peasant leavies, an might have been lightly armoured or without any armour at all.

However, the issue of armour avoidance is a quite interesting one. Mainly because more or less all armour until the 11th century has hughe weak spots. Namely the at best partial arm coverage, and the relative rarity of greaves.
In contrast, hand, underarm and shin guards are the first pieces of safety equipment aquired by modern reenactors, and in a sword fight, the under arms and shin are among the easiest places to hit, after the head.

What does this tell us? That on the pre 11th century battlefield, swords where not seen as the main threat. People armour themselves to survive on a battlefield dominated by one handed spears.
The one handed spear is a very powerfull weapon. Hower, it is also less flexible than the sword. Attacks are straight thrusts at the head, legs or torso.
If the spear is held in the overhand grip, leg attacks become rare. So does lower arm hits. The most frequent hits are to the head, shoulders and torso.

In this context, the protective properties of the mail shirt is more a question of stopping spear thrusts than absorbing blunt trauma from swords.
Arguably, the pressence of additional padding would almost be more helpefull here than against a sword blow. But again, the mail shirt would go a long way in keeping the wearer alive.

[Dan Howard]

My point is that out of all the injuries on all of the various bodies found at Wisby, not a single injury was found on a torso.

[Sander Marechal]

[Dan Howard]

The extra armour would have been needed for heavy crossbows and polearms. A haubergeon by itself wouldn't have had any problem stopping a sword or spear.

[Randall Moffett]

We need to be careful with such assumptions as soft tissue damage to the stomach area would not show at all unless the weapon hit bone on its way in or out. We can say with more certainty the upper torso received little focus as there are bones that would have marked such an assault but there are several death blows one could make without hitting bone. When dealing with bones we always need to be mindful that they can only 'say' so much as one of my old Arch teachers repeated time and time. For example a shallow cut across several key locations, like the throat would leave 0 bone damage. As well as bleeding to death will often leave no apparent fatal damage.

That said do not discount shields. Looking through the Wisby excavation recently I was surprised by the amount of items they could not ID. We might have had a number of shields that would have protected the chest if some of these rivet/nails were part of something of this nature. These would as Thordmann states give a very different area of attack as it is hard to get through the shield.

RPM

[Mikael Ranelius]

[Mackenzie Cosens]

Lack of armour on the arm and leg in pre-may tell us something about both the range the of the fight and how weapon hand is held. When I use to fight SCA heavy we would fight at a range where the sword could hit its target even the low leg (if it was a "legal" target) without stepping. When I started to study historical manuals my range changed to one that forced the attacker to step before being able to hit its target. At this range the lower leg is much riskier and less available target and therefore needs less armour.
Once again when I practiced SCA heavy combat I often kept my sword and arm forward across my shield kind of like the image on Elling's avatar. This was a reasonable style because the hands were not a "legal" target and even arm shots were frowned upon and I could block with my giant basket hilt. With the more historic style I practice now the hand is target of high value and so is kept refused or covered with the shield. Because it is a less available target It would require less armour.

m

[Randall Moffett]

Mikael,

That is not completely true as almost all the COPs seem to have been un-associated even to bodies. It seems like many were simply cut off and tossed in a pit.


Mackenzie,

Maybe. My guess is more simple economics. We also are running the risk of misunderstanding the given information. We can assume they at the least had this equipment. Who knows what was looted.

RPM

[William P]

besides, i would find it very surprising that they wouldnt have had shields on the losing side.
im my viking reenactment, one can very comfortably fight without armour. one just need protection on the extremities. due to the large size of the shield. and its maneuverability chest cavity shots are rare hit to the top of the helmet are extremely common, since we generally dont allow horizontal strokes aimed above the shoulders. for obvious reasons (say if someone ISNT wearing a paded hood or aventail and gets hit in the side of the neck, you get the picture. followed by the thighs and your sword arm.

[Hadrian Coffin]

Unfortunately to confuse matters even further we actually have very little information on how "Vikings" fought individually. Unlike later periods no treatises survive. We have all seen the attempts at modifying MS I:33, but this is rather flawed as the weapons are distinctly different... both technically and ergonomically. There are furious arguments on even the way the swords are held. Various theories on the body mechanics of Viking age combat demonstrate vastly different locations as prime target areas. In looking at period skeletons we do have only a minor picture of the reality of cause of death, and prime target areas. Soft tissue damage is virtually impossible to determine, and bones are quite difficult to study. In examining wounds on skeletal remains we see severe wounds that have healed, mortal wounds, non mortal wounds, modern damage, and period damage to the corpse. Quite often in this confusing mess mistakes are made.

Best,

Hadrian

[Mikael Ranelius]

[Randall Moffett]

What book are you using then? Only 7or so out of all the COPs have a direct associated looking at the Thordmann book. The rest did not have bodies inside them properly. Of these only 4, 13, 24 and 25 seem to actually have the plates on the right location of the body, unless the cops were worn on the lower legs. Most of these COPs were either laid out or bunched so they were not being worn at the time of the burial. See Thordmann book II for photos of the site. Very little evidence they were interred their armour, looks like they were thrown in largely on top of them.

On armour 1 for example it has one side crumpled up and the other laid out over the arm. No way he was wearing it when he was buried as it was clearly opened and not able to be worn over his arm if in use.

RPM

[Mikael Ranelius]

[Randall Moffett]

Mikael,

Not sure that is a strong stance. so let us say 5-7 of 25 had no mail with the COP. That is still 75-80% that may have. It is also possible-
1- they had on aketons
2- the mail was looted from this 75-80%
3- that more people had COPs and/or mail and this was looted.

My feeling is there may have been many more than 25 COPs but they left those that were damaged or old fashioned as they would not fetch the prices of the mail hauberks and more current COPs. Though it is also possible they just did not have much funds for any more armour. Why are so few helmets found, could be that they are the easiest thing to loot so with one cut the helmet is yours.... mail coif not so easy. So looting is a possibility that is often missing from this equation.

More important to the argument though-

Now for the fact COPs were sufficient so nothing more was used on its own.... The defeated army of Wisby seems to have been commoners. There equipment was likely much more tied to economics, i.e. they could not afford it than a feeling it was all they would need. The issue is more is a COP better than my tunic or aketon alone, in this case hands down the answer is yes.

RPM

[Elling Polden]

Does the hit distribution table include the torso, or just the limbs?
I am asking because the Wisby find was stored in a very strange fashion. Rather than assembling complete skeletons, all the upper arm bones whent in one box, all the lower arm bones in one, and so on.
This means that counting hits to the large bones is easy, whereas you would need to reconstruct ca 1200 ribcages from a pile of 28800 loose ribs in order to determinbe the extent of damage to each torso.

In any case, the finds seem to conform with the old norm of body and head armour with little limb protection. Though I find it hard to belive there was NO unarmoured man on the field that got speared in the ribs.

Macenzie; The stance on my avatar is me banging my shield, not a guard :P
Though that kind of "gamey" stance is not uncommon. Locking your elbow to the corner of the shield in our rules system, or the shoulder for those that do not have upper arm hits.
I fought a couple of SCAdians last year, using the Huskarl full body target rules. Some of them had a hard time remembering not to block with the sword hand, and to defend their shins.
But all systems have their weaknesses. Just as long as you are aware of them.

[Mikael Ranelius]