So what armor did vikings really wear? Only one visor helmet and chainmail was found and it's speculated if the lamellar armor found in Sweden didn't belong to foreigners. Hell that one hlmet guy might buy his shit in a foreign land and be a special snowflake for all we know. Do sagas describe their gear?
>>1056700
A coat of mail, an iron helmet, and a shield made of ash. That's the "native" gear, anyway, but as you say they often adopted better equipment while on a-viking (especially steel swords, very rare in Scandinavia).
the "Nords" faction in the game Mount&Blade: Warband gives you a pretty good idea of what gear the "vikings" wore in combat.
>>1056722
So did they found more than one coat of mail after all?
>>1056782
Mount and Blade Warband also gave me the impression that having knights exclusive army is a good idea.
Depends. Vikings were a mixed lot. Sweden tends to be fairly well armoured (at least in the migration era). I remember Lindqvist said he didn't think there was good evidence for mail in Norway in the Viking period, but the book I found that in was older (80s I think) so I don't know what the new info is. I'm not sure about Denmark, I think it was more like Norway than Sweden.
>>1056792
it's a great idea if logistics were completely missing in real life as in the game
>>1058809
You're telling me one dude scavenging for the night can provide enough food to sustain a 100+ unit army?
The Irish annals make a big deal about the Vikings (mostly Danes and some Norwegians) in Ireland being well-armored, though I'm not sure if it was some kind of "they wore armor and we didn't and we beat them, that's how great we are" type thing.
>>1056700
Usually just weapon and shield. Depending on how rich they were they might have had helmet or chainmail
bear- or wolf pelt. and pretty much nothing else. that's all that a warrior needs.
>>1058897
He can if he gets enough points in that skill.
And the reason that you don't find mail hauberks and steel helmets laying around is because they were very valuable back then and people would use them. And if they were dumped or discarded, they would corrode away because stainless steel was not a thing back then. Among Anglo-saxon dark age helmets there are like 3 surviving intact examples. In the viking age, smiths were making axes super thin and with beards because the access to iron was so limited. During the battle at Hastings people were ripping mail hauberks off of the fallen during the battle itself, because mail armor was so incredibly valuable. The general behaviour was to re-use iron and steel implements such as armor and weapons. The mass graves in Visby are famous because many corpses were dumped in the mass graves with their armor still on their bodies, this was highly unusual at the time.
>>1056700
Horned helmet.
>>1059064
Not him, but this conversation made me happy.
>>1059081
It was valuable to the Saxons, not as much to the Normans who had stacks of it.
>>1056700
armor wasnt that common back then, and it was heavy duty battle gear, meaning armies raised and funded by concrete institutions like monarchies and republics got to equip with lots of armor, while the rest just had shields and helmets, kind of like how in many modern conflicts few fighters wear buletproof wests and helmets even tho they exist, but infantry of rich nations obviously wears it as basic equipment
also you dont realy need much armor when raiding, it would realy just get in the way during rape
>>1059794
Well actually in Syria now everyone seems to have bullet proof vests and full military gear. It's not expensive anymore and plenty of dodgy companies will go out to sell it.
>>1059801
Because CIA is arming islamists. If Rome had been sending armaments to some minor province, we'd find plenty.
>>1059801
>Well actually in Syria now everyone seems to have bullet proof vests and full military gear
because everyone who couldn't afford one is either dead or has looted one from someone that could but got himself killed or taken prisoner anyway.
>>1056700
What they bought, could range from mail coats to lamellar or all leather, I can't imagine a culture of trader/raiders had a standardized uniform
