Sofi the Viking

If you’ve ever watched any kind of period drama set in Medieval times, whether it’s a semi-historical piece like Vikings, or a more fantastical show like Game of Thrones, you’ve probably seen at least one person wearing a hood like this. They were a separate garment, not attached to but worn over a cape, by members of both sexes and almost every social class. They were very warm and provided good protection from cold and precipitation.

One interesting thing I think, is something that came from what people started to do when they weren’t wearing them. Obviously, when they didn’t need them, people would have taken their hoods off. The obvious thing would have been to carry it or to put it away for safekeeping.

But some people actually started to roll them up and wear them essentially upside down and backwards, almost like how some people today wear their baseball caps backwards. Eventually, this became a whole new style of hat, called the chaperon. It looked something like this:

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

Some horsecock motherfucker: 

For anyone seeing this post and wondering what kind of unholy heresy is currently having a blacksmithing orgy in front of their eyes, this is called a Lantern Shield.

This came from, YOU GUESSED IT, fucking Italy, home of lunatic steel-weaving mother fuckers who often simply looked at each other, and by each other, I mean their frenzied reflections in their shattered mirrors, and said “WHAT IF WE JUST DO THINGS”, which is, as we all know, Aunt Jemima’s recipe for success.

Lantern Shields were very indicative: They were meant to be bucklers that could carry a lantern, oftentimes for night time duels. Now, you’re wondering, why carry a lantern on a night duel when it could just prove detrimental to your overall movement? Why, to blind the mother fucker, of course! But, see, and this is the funny thing about Italy, when Italian blacksmiths realized that they could just add a hook to a buckler, they noticed they could also just add whatever the thrice condemned shit they wanted to them, so they started forging stakes, spikes, and blades that protruded out of the buckler and gauntlet as additional defense against anyone who, due to the poor visibility of mist shrouded, dark blanketed nights, would just walk right into your handheld barracks.

I mean, nothing better than a bloke closing the distance to you losing an eye or six because they didn’t consider you might just carry a porcupine on your arm, right?

Bockstensmanen, a medieval person who happened to die in a bog which preserved his clothes (and more), clothes like hella comfy??

Like seriously. Comfy and warm wool clothes!

(yes this are pictures of his actual outfit, not reconstructed clothing. They were very well preserved in all except colour. The bog gave everything that yellow shade, i suspect)

He got a mantel that resemble a poncho

It goes around the entire body! So perhaps not quite a mantel but.

A got a little hood with a fashionedble long thingy at the end

Warm that too! There is no openings for wind or anything, so like. Just pull hood over head, get warm!

Warm socks! Gotta keep em feets warm (and just like in english, the swedish words for trousers, byxor, is in plural in its normal form, just because the medieval version of trousers consisted of two separate peices like here.

Somewhere, there should be something for hos upper legs but idk were that one is)

Anyway! I do think one can tell that keeping warm was an important part of the logic behind bockstensmannens clothing. Not odd that, when he lived in Scandinavia and all…

All pictures from

But that hairstyle! That he really had! Bockstensmannen wore like Peak Fluffy Medieval Hair Fashion in life

The entire doll wearing bockstensmannens reconstructed clothing

Source: https://www.museumhalland.se/bockstensmannen/bockstensmannen-far-ett-ansikte/

Wife, Whore, Nun

“Guild records show us that women were active in many trades. In Paris, women participated in over 100 trades, some of which were practiced only by women and some by men and women. IN the 1300’s women were practicing some trades that were later restricted to men. There were women barbers, apothecaries, armorers, shipwrights, tailors and spurriers. In Paris we find records of women in building trades, such as masons, carpenters, makers of doors and diggers of gravel. However nearly all trades had fewer women than men and in many trades the number declined as time went on. In 1420 n London, only 20 out of 300 brewers were female. This was a trade which many women had practiced in the early Middle Ages. (Adams, p. 28)“  [x]

Colophon: a statement at the end of a book containing the scribe or owner’s name, date of completion, or bitching about how hard it is to write a book in the dark ages

Oh, my hand

The parchment is very hairy

Thank God it will soon be dark

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing

Now I’ve written the whole thing; for Christ’s sake give me a drink

Oh d fuckin abbot

Massive hangover

Whoever translated these Gospels did a very poor job

Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night

If someone else would like such a handsome book, come and look me up in Paris, across from the Notre Dame cathedral

I shall remember, O Christ, that I am writing of Thee, because I am wrecked today

Do not reproach me concerning the letters, the ink is bad and the parchment scanty and the day is dark

11 golden letters, 8 shilling each; 700 letters with double shafts, 7 shilling for each hundred; and 35 quires of text, each 16 leaves, at 3 shilling each. For such an amount I won’t write again

Here ends the second part of the title work of Brother Thomas Aquinas of the Dominican Order; very long, very verbose; and very tedious for the scribe; thank God, thank God, and again thank God