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attomanen — Expensive Viking Age armour
Published: 2013-07-18 16:10:30 +0000 UTC; Views: 3020; Favourites: 4; Downloads: 0
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A member of a group who performed Viking Age-fighting at Björkö, Sweden. Björkö housed the trading-city and port of Birka and the King of Svealand had a garrison of well-equipped professional soldiers there. They had the best armour and weapons that money could buy during the Viking age, including Frankish Swords and byzantine-style lamellar armour. Lamellar armour is superior to chainmail in many ways. Even if made by leather, it resists sharp points (knives, arrows, spears) better than chainmail - and it is lighter (if not made by thick metal). But it was the armour of the elite during the Viking Age, obviously it was expensive.Photo by my wife, Anna-Carin Grönlund.
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Comments: 4
It looks really good but I think it would look better with the leg wrappings. Aside from that I really like his choice of colours they go well with the dark brown lamellar
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Agree. But it was a warm summers day so I guess he opted for lighter legwear.
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Haha! Very true! I'm in the process of developing my own Viking outfit and I'm wondering if you have any more pictures of Vikings that I may be able to use to gather ideas for colour schemes and other such things? If not do you know where I can find some?
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Try google on "viking age clothing" or something. The only thing I know about colours of iron age/medieval clothing is that "bright" colours like red/scarlet and clear blue (as contrasted by a light blue/greyish "mud blue") were very, very expensive since the dyes or the cloth itself had to be imported. Everyday clothes where either undyed (and therefor greyish or light brownish, like wool and raw linen) or dyed with inexpensive materials available from local flora. That means: brown and brown-reddish and darkes shades of green, "mudblue" and darker yellow hues etc. No "bright" colours like scarlet red and "marian blue" or such. I dont think really white cloth or black cloth was available at all. I'd say normal people propably had grey (undied wool), light brown/grey (raw linen) clothes and did not bother much about contrasts. A bit more wealthier people probably tried to contrast the color of outer garments with stronger colours against weaker (lighter) colours underneath, like a brown-reddish shirt against light-greyish linen legwear or something. Rich people probably wanted to show of stronger, brighter colors with clear contrasts (like really read against really green, or clear yellow against green, or red vs blue etc) together. There is a tendency, I think, amoung people who dress up in viking age/medieaval clothing for fun chose to bright and expensive colours because it is more fun; especially the girls do this - often with clear blue and clear red or strong green colours. The historical viking age was, to my knowledge, a more "dull" age. A good portion of the population of scandinavia consisted of thralls who had very little money if any and therefor could not afford but the cheapest dyes, most other people where simple farmers who could only afford locally produced colours. A small clique of very wealthy lords could afford imported dyes or cloths.
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