Hirdmenn

Prologue The first shield I made was planned around a hypothesis that in the area of Finland there is close to no shield finds, and thus it is believed the shields were made purely on organic material. The shield was highly inspired by a shield find from the swamp of Tira Latvia . After testing my thin, light, pretty, and agile thing that eats weapons, that are struct to it, deep into its board I decided to name it the Pale blade eater. (Go read about it here ) Now the context of a light shield is interesting. It is mentioned in the Egil Skallagrimssons sagas that Norwegians had stronger shields and thus were able to easily overpower Fins (Kareilians). I (Arttu) myself am not a strong man, and find the fast agile light shield superior in sparring, both with sharps in slowed down fighting and in fast phased fights using simulators and safety gear. Anyhow the sagas and most shield finds suggest a heavier shield was highly popular. So to find out how they compare we need one.  The ne ...

If this shield is new to you please read the blog post of us making it here. So, the shield we made a few years ago has had some experience. We have shot arrows at it, thrown spears at it, and it has been part of slowed down sharp weapon fencing. Some things it endured better than others. Originally I (Arttu) wanted to try out how it holds together with only glue. I also wanted to cover only the face of the shield with animal hide, to show off with our radially cut planks. Hide on the face bent the shield a bit, so we changed the handle into a sturdier one. This made the shield straight again, but a bit heavier. Since the plan was to make as light a shield as we could, this was far from optimal. Shield bent with the first handle still attached. We tested the shield's integrity by throwing a spear at it multiple times. It took spear throws really well and due to its light structure the spear did not stick in the shield. We used a throwing spear made by JT Pälikkö. We took video of ...