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You'll Drown in that Puddle |
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An oft commented upon characteristic of medieval and Dark Ages armour is that it is very heavy. People often go on about how mail is very heavy, the weight rests on your shoulders people would drown in puddles etc. Part of this comes about from Victorian ideas about the past, regurgitated by later generations and soon an idea becomes a 'fact'. Another part comes from reenactment mail, which traditional is made from 2mm thick fencing wire wound around an 8mm rod and then butted together. This provides a substantial, blow-absorbing armour that doesn't suffer too much from 'mail moths'. Mail moths are an imaginary beast that eats holes in your armour as a regular moth does to ordinary clothes. In actuality, the blows dealt to mail links bends them open a little and if the gap widens enough, the link works it's way out, leaving a hole. It does, however, make a heavy suit of mail. I measured one before posting to a chap, and it weighed 19.6kgs. If we look at the 'only Viking Age mail shirt to be found in Scandinavia', the Gjermundbu shirt it become obvious that this is far too thick a wire for making an entire shirt.. Information on the Gjermunbu shirt for this piece, taken from this site (Hello, Sven). Indeed the links appeared to be much closer in average diameter (bearing in mind the actual variation in the individual links and the fact the wire was more D section than circular) , and an average diameter closer to 1.25 to1.3 mm and an internal diameter closer to 5 to 6mm. So based on that, I made a shirt made from 1.29mm wire wound around a 6mm rod (with quite a bit of help from my brother, Tim). And then, in the spirit of experimentation and idiocy, I took it swimming.
Before swimming Drowned rat look And the result? Well, I'm not the best swimmer in the world, I can't float without moving my hands a bit, but I found it quite easy to not only swim, but also to float.
Here I am using my hands to scull relatively gently. The arm you can see on the right hand side is Duncan who volunteered to rescue me should I start to drown, but it was a precaution that proved completely unnecessary (but I appreciate the support). I forgot to scan the photo of me swimming but shall attempt to do so soon. For those of you interested, I went swimming in Newcastle's Bogey Hole. Conclusion: It's a doddle. Next time, I will be wearing my woolen tunic trousers and problem helmet as well, so check back here later to see if I have gotten around to it.
Reenactor doing the washing.
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