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"shield-splitter" /Early Vikiing shield Archeological specifications added
Wolfsongforge:
the reason i said this is as you said, metal was scarce. well steel was anyways. but even plain iron was expensive. and from pictures i have seen in books and in museums showed that the hide was attached with the boss and a row of tacks.
so i would think that the average young lad they got from a village to go raiding, he would have the cheapest of materials.so no tacks or boss. i may be wrong, been wrong before, will be again.
so i may make a targe of raw hide covered beech and shoot the hell out of it and see.and before i get jumped on,yes a targe is scottish but i aint makeing a full sized shield to shoot at!
markinengland:
Wolf,
To go raiding was a chance to get rich. If I was leading a raid I would pick a crew from those who had earnt a reputation and had the gear. At the least this would include a sword or spear ans sheild, basic armour of some sort and this would already mark the warrior as a warrior and as relatively rich. I wouldn't waste valuable ship space on taking a lad who didn't have the basic gear and would be dead in a second in real close quarter combat with sharp weapons!
If there is no money for nails the rawhide could still be lashed on with rawhide couldn't it? If all the sheilds found had iron nails doewsn't this suggest that it is likley that all the sheilds had iron nails to hold the rawhide on?
Just thinking, not fighting.
mullet:
kviljo;
Well they have a skull in the same museum that this style point was stuck in. Everybodies house that Claude visited had their yards and driveways paved damn near with stone artifacts made from Danish Flint.
bow-toxo:
--- Quote from: kviljo on August 19, 2010, 01:03:39 pm ---Eyh, Mullet, the vikings didn't use flint points ;D
The best Viking shields were made from linden, and were far form 1" thick. :) A properly made shield with two layers of linden glued at 90 degrees with an outside layer of rawhide would probably stop any historical arrow. Perhaps except the largest Mary Rose arrows.
--- End quote ---
Maybe not. Njal's Saga tells of Gunnar of Hlidarendi shooting an arrow at a man who, seeing the arrow coming, raised a thin round shield in defense, The arrow pierced the shield and the man's skull, pritruding behind his head. Shields were not expected to give unlimited protection. They were large enough to be too heavy for a man on foot to lug around if they were thicker or if they had more metal than the boss.
half eye:
Hey fellas,
didn't want to get nothin started, just wanted to post a pretty cool head and what I did to test it. I dont know how to post a link but found an Danish Archeologists' report on early viking shields that is pretty definate on how they were made because they found some that were nearly 90% complete. They also said that the majority of the ones found to date were either spruce or fir, and all were single layer of wood and that was covered with compacted grass and leather
I'll get the charts etc downloaded and maybe can post them as documents.......sorry didn't mean to start a big discussion. I'll post the shield specifications, and am going to build one, and shoot it with several of the period heads, and different weight bows and maybe we can find out what's what, eh? I really was just trying to find out how tough the forged heads were and figured that 1-1/8" of hard white oak was a pretty tough target.
Anyway....let me get the info together so I can post it for everybody to read.
rich
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