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A Challenge

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KharBevNor:
I do pretty much make my cloth kit myself, and wasn't really counting that in the estimation of nice gear costs, except that I'd want to buy tablet weave and possibly have someone with a bit more skill than me to some fancy embroidering work. Armourclass are pretty good, but if I was going for an ideal situation I find them just a touch too heavy, though not as bad as the sword I have at the moment, which is some fucking weighty czech beast I swapped with a dude for my old single-edged Norwegian basically because he offered me the scabbard included and it had a nice handgrip, a decision I'm still not sure on. As for making the chainmail, I'm not entirely sure. Because of the way the Vikings UK treat chainmail in our fighting rules (ignore all leg hits except dane axe and missile weapons) the authenticity thegns tend to be absolute bastards about it: it has to be flat link, riveted, steel. I'm not sure the effort is really worth the saving; I know people who have got great coats of mail foir about £500. I also was factoring in gneral silver bling and the cloak. I would ideally either want one made from coyote skin (with paws) or a proper icelandic style cloak, made by knotting strands of fleece into the weave of the wool duing the manufacturing stage. Again, possibly something you could do yourself, maybe even something you'd almost have to do yourself, but the skills and time are far beyond me. Similiarly with naalbinding, and I would certainly want proper naalbinded socks.

But, as you guessed, this isn't really the equipment I'd want: it's pure bling dickwagging gear. Having three swords would mean about the only character you could portray would be a king. The character I actually portray at the moment is fairly poor, a freeman charcoal burner from Visby (ideally, sometimes it has to get changed). I wear plain wool overclothes and a linen underkirtle, a pair of patched shoes and a simple wooden thors hammer. I don't use my sword on the battlefield at all, just a short spear, shield and axe, with a saex in my belt for back-up. I also sometimes carry my groups banner into battle, in which case I'll just defend it with my axe. I eventually want to get a second set of gear so I can portray another character for the Drengar kit check, either someone of slightly higher social status, of an earlier period (my current guy is 10th century) or perhaps a Rus. I already have the basic legbindings and cross they make you put on top of 10th century viking gear when you're being a Saxon, but yeah, I've always personally found it a bit ludicrous the amount of high status gear that gets worn. I enjoy the living history side, and it's more fun to be a hard-grafting working class viking dude who is caught up in circumstances than some insanely rich trader or princeling.`

The only things I really crave at the moment are a custom-fitted helmet (my current one is a second hand job that I picked up for a song, but it has never fitted me properly and I can't wear a lining underneath it, which is dangerous as well as uncomfortable) and maybe a lighter axe, though I may just rehaft my current one or reprofile the haft to try and shave some weight off it and give it a nice triangular shape that won't twist around in my grip (it's currently top-mounted on part of an old sledgehammer handle). Dane axe is something I'm considering for the future but that's an advanced display weapon in my society, so it's soimething I'll have to work towards. The only thing from the above I really crave is one of those Icelandic cloaks. They are so awesome.

snalin:
It's a standing joke amongst us medieval reenacters that viking reenacters doesn't reenact vikings, they reenact viking reenacters - there's been, according to wikipedia, only one actual mail found from the Viking ages, and the rest of the gear doesn't have that many findings to support them either, making the standards that's so rigorously upheld a tad silly.

If your swords is too heavy, you can probably get someone who knows a bit of metalwork to reduce it's weight, unless it's made from shitty steel that'll break if it gets to thin. Just shave off some on the sides, and make sure to get it balanced a bit forward heavy; not so much as to make pulling it back hard, but enough to make it easy to flip the sword around shields. And, btw, how is the sword "Norwegian"? Do you mean that it's built after Norwegian founds, or that it's actually made here? As far as I know, there's no smiths here that do anything like that.

Isn't those armour rules kind of hard to follow? If there's a tight melee, can you really notice the difference between sword and dane axe if you're not looking? We just give everyone with armour an extra hit, so they can get struck twice instead of once. The philosophy is really that anything more complicated than "hit/not hit" is to confusing when adrenaline is up. In addition, the biggest difference between Norwegian and Swedish reenactment fighters and, well, anyone else is in my experience if you count arms as hit zones or not - how are you guys in that respect?

KharBevNor:
It keeps going in and out. At the moment it's out. There's a faction of the older RTTs who keep voting against it, one suspects mainly so they don't have to retrain. We young bloods want it in. We're getting a new konungr soon so we'll find out what happens then.

The main thinking behind our hit rules is how it looks on the crowd line. If a bloodcrazed screaming viking warrior dies from a light tap of the sword on the shoulder, it just looks crap. Similiarly if someone takes a massive hit to the leg with a daneaxe and just keeps on fighting. The way our two-hit rules work, is that when you take the first hit you have to drop your guard, act like you are in agony and take one step back. Basically, it's to allow the other person time to deliver a really dramatic finishing blow, though of course if you're fighting in the line your friends can move in to shield you. If you're reaching some state of frenzy where you don't have full situational awareness of who's attacking you with what you probably shouldn't be fighting. No one sneaks up on you with a dane axe.

I mean Norwegian as in an early Viking period single-edged sword based on finds from Norway. A hilted and pommelled langsax.

As for the mail, are you particularly surpised there are so few mail finds? it's tiny rings of steel or iron, which would rust away extremely quickly, and there's not very many archaeological sites with demonstrably 'viking' arms and armour anyway. Most of the finds from Norse settlements of that period are domestic. However, since the earliest archaeological finds for chainmail are in Europe in 300BC, and since mail is attested to in dark ages documentary evidence. For example, Beowulf (written somewhere between the 8th and 11th century) lines 405-406:

Béowulf mašelode      --on him byrne scįn    
searonet seowed      smižes oržancum--:

In translation:
 
Beowulf spoke      --on him a mail-coat gleamed,   
a net of armour woven      by smith's skilful art--:

It was plainly in use continuously from the late iron age to the 15th or 16th century, and given the breadth of their travel, their trade and skill at metalworking I think you would find it hard to argue that vikings didn't have chainmail, though obviously too many people have it and too many people have swords and nice jewellery. I'm not sure what other gear you're on about. The only out and out re-enactorisms I know of are the leather belt pouches some people wear and the safety gloves, which there isn't much getting around.

As for your suggestions on re-shaping my sword, I don't think that would work. It has a wide fuller, the blade would never retain its strength. Beside that sounds like a ridiculous thing to do to any sword, quite frankly. No matter how good the steel is if you work it cold you're going to weaken it and if you work it hot you might as well be making a new sword. If I ever wanted a mr whippy I'd just buy one, not that I particularly do. Anyway, as I said, I barely ever use it so I don't really care.

On a semi-related note, did you go to Karmųy this year, and if you did, did you see four english dudes who I can best describe (as they will never read this) as the short one, the fat one, the beardy one and the gay one? They would have been trading leather.

snalin:
No, I didn't go there. It's a huge hassle for us to kit up for Viking-only themed things (wrong shields, wrong swords, wrong tunicas, wrong friggin everything), so only the older members have enough stuff to do that.

What I meant about the Viking kit is that, well, yes, Vikings definitely used chain, but as you said, the "authenticity thegns" are bastards about how it's made, which is ironic since we don't really have any idea of exactly what's the authentic way to make it.

Since there's so few findings, and most findings are from the graves of really wealthy people, you get a tendency for people to pick the coolest part of every finding - ridiculous amounts of silver, finely worked leather with carvings, and all the other bling that makes a seasoned Viking reenacter look more like a fantasy game Nord than a Viking - all while claiming, somewhat truthfully, that it's fully authentic. There's of course individual differences, and I speak from my experience with Scandinavian Viking reenactors.

Then again, I guess it would be boring if everyone wanted to be authentic and got a wool hat and an axe with a bad shaft, but there's a golden middle ground somewhere. It's of course easier to hit that middle ground if you're dealing with a later period; we have the Maciejowski bible, and later times have even better sources.


I also understand your fighting a lot better now - you fight what we call "show" fighting, which basically does much the same; you get hit, and you open yourself for a show-kill. We only do that in front of audiences, and it's probably less than 5% of what we do - the main focus is on the more sporting kind of fighting, where a hit is a hit and we fight for our own sake more than for anyone else. It's the difference between playing a game because it's an easier way to make a battle look real than choreographing the whole thing, and playing a game for fun. Understandably, our approach to authenticity is more along the lines of "have kit which roughly fits within the time period (1260)". We also hate people who insist on using bows on the battlefield with a passion unmatched by most. We want to fight, not sit around waiting to fight because some fucker picked you as his target. And when they start complaining that we hit their bow when we are running them down... well, sorry mate, better not bring it to the battle than, m'kay?

KharBevNor:
Ah, I see you're mainly in it for the fighting. Anyway, the vikings certainly wouldn't have made their chainmail from spot-welded aluminium wire, would they? Chainmail from the vendal period was lapped and riveted flat rings, norman chainmail was lapped and riveted flat rings. The same joining pattern has been used in Europe pretty much forever. Despite the accuracy issues, careful checking of mail is obviously necessary to make sure it's not something someone bodged together from split rings or washers in their garden shed that will look like crap and fall apart the second it gets snagged on something.

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