Experiments with Viking round shield

[Duncan Head]

Pdf document here:
Round shields and body techniques: experimental archaeology with a Viking age round shield reconstruction

Author is the same Rolf Warming who cropped up in http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=2921.0

[Patrick Waterson]

Interesting; thanks, Duncan.

While he is suitably cautious about his results, they do suggest that active defence with the emphasis on placing the shield on the inside of the opponent's sword hand is worth further examination and testing to see if the shield really is optimised for this technique.

[Erpingham]

As before when we discussed this, he hasn't really demonstrated anything new.  One-on-one, his suggestion that the shield goes inside the opponents blow and parries it away is pretty intuitive.  Done agressively, it opens your opponent up to a counter.  In a group fight, though, parry aggressively with the shield to the left and you open your right side to attack.  I suspect there was more skill in using a shield properly in battle - balancing attack and defence, personal protection with responsibility to group defence - than we sometimes credit. 

[Patrick Waterson]

And one wonders what happens in a shield wall ...

[PMBardunias]

Reading these papers, I have to say that the author seems to be missing something crucial. I see this often with people who play-fight with dull weapons.  Were you my opponent, there is no single thing that would make me happier than your sword biting into the rim of my shield.  We are now locked together for a brief period of time, but you have locked up my shield arm, and I have locked up your weapon. If I cannot strike in the few moments you are stuck and kill you, I am a poor warrior.  Those who have experimented with sharp weapons have seen how much you must avoid hitting a shield and risking getting stuck.  Some of you may know that even when swords that a realistically sharp meet edge to edge they get stuck together for a moment. For example, in the images below, this man is dead but does not know it yet.

[Patrick Waterson]

Very pertinent point, Paul.  If the Viking shield was designed to have a rim which could easily be penetrated by battle-sharp weapons, this would make a slice into the rim not so much a weakness as a temporary tactical advantage of potential opponent-killing nature.

[Erpingham]

And one wonders what happens in a shield wall ...

This is, I believe, the man who doesn't believe in shieldwalls

[Erpingham]

Yes, good point from paul.  We see something of the same in the article itself, where the author says reconstructions by re-enactors can be scuppered by lack of intent.  Our Viking is not aiming to damage his opponent's shield but his opponent.  There are, if I recall correctly, some examples of people dying because they get their weapons stuck in shields in the sagas.  But there are more where shields are destroyed in combat (one formal combat has a break while new shields are fetched, IIRC). 

There is probably a whole topic on the construction of early medieval shields and their reinforcement.  The shield used in the test is , it seems to me, a very common or garden shield, using limited supplies of expensive metal in it's construction.  That said, I'm not sure whether, when more metal was available, a metal rim was the priority.  Metal strapping to the back or spaced mountings round the rim seem preferred.

[PMBardunias]

Yes, good point from paul.  We see something of the same in the article itself, where the author says reconstructions by re-enactors can be scuppered by lack of intent.  Our Viking is not aiming to damage his opponent's shield but his opponent.  There are, if I recall correctly, some examples of people dying because they get their weapons stuck in shields in the sagas.  But there are more where shields are destroyed in combat (one formal combat has a break while new shields are fetched, IIRC). 

There is probably a whole topic on the construction of early medieval shields and their reinforcement.  The shield used in the test is , it seems to me, a very common or garden shield, using limited supplies of expensive metal in it's construction.  That said, I'm not sure whether, when more metal was available, a metal rim was the priority.  Metal strapping to the back or spaced mountings round the rim seem preferred.

I think of it this way.  Any shield that would be "proof" would be too heavy.  It does not need to be impenetrable because as you say, no one, outside of play-fighting, attacks a shield.  Really the biggest threat to penetrating a shield are thrown or projectile weapons.