Is anyone interested in a video about making a historically accurate Viking shield?

"Shieldmaidens" = wives and daughters of warriors, present to replace broken shields and such. In other words: they KNEW their shields would break, and had (several) spare shields. Wives/daughters stood ready with them, on the sideline, ready to hand them to the warrior in the middle of the fight.

Better to have a thin shield than nothing.

Did a few calculations some time ago: A 2 to 3 cm thick, 80 cm diameter oak board will weigh in at roughly 12 to 13 kg. About the same weight as a crate of beer. Hold it in your off-hand at chest height, and go for a run. You will not last 5 minutes! And neither will you on the battlefield.
Even a thin shield can withstand a remarkable amount of damage and still be mostly functional. And if your sword gets stuck in my shield I'll have control over it, and you're dead.

J'adore le fait que tu es repris le dicton de ton père " Let's find out". Tu fais du très bon travail de recherche, très intéressant! À quand des vidéos en famille avec Marie et Varg? Ce serait hyper intéressant. Bonne continuité!

Love the Viking conquest art in the video

I am convinced that Shields used in legal duels would not be fronted or backed in rawhide. The reason is is a dual is meant to quickly decide guilt and innocence and a more durable Shield prolongs a fight. Rule sets of the time often say three Shields could be used well if three Shields could be destroyed within the space of a dual it doesn't sound like they'd be very good in a shield wall in a battle durability wise. So my thinking is that the shield in a duel were meant to be used familiarly as weapons but also destroyed easy so that eventually someone either loses or they're both stuck fighting with only a sword or ax in which case the Dual will be ended quickly.

I love how u put pictures from Viking Conquest into this video. Its one of my favorite games of all time ^^

We must accept the wisdom of the ancestors themselves. They used the objects we consider, and so these objects must have been effective and potent.

With Vikings travelling long distances, especially by boat, one wonders if weight considerations were involved also. Also with heroic combat, focus was on the ferocity of the warrior.

I like to look at it from a different point of view: if you have a centergrip shield, you want to hold it away from your torso, because if you don't, you may as well strap it to your forearm. It's not like strapped shields weren't around before the high medieval era.

Once you want to hold that shield out, you want it to be as light as you can possibly manage, and unless you have access to high quality tempered steel, you can't make it durable enough to not break at some point. Hell, high medieval heater shields that were much thicker (and heavier) did break regularly enough, to a point where a squire's main battlefield role was to resupply their knights with spares.

So, you want that shield to be as light as you can, and only durable enough to barely do its job - and viking battles were very rarely large, lengthy affairs. If that shield can take half a dozen arrows and three or four spear and/or sword blows, that is likely all you need it to take, and after the battle is over, you can grab a spare from your boat. Sure, the spares take up space, but if you have enough loot, you can toss them away - and if you are going to a proper war, you can pack more spares and less provisions since you're staying near Scandinavia and not going to loot Paris.

And finally, you can do some more stuff to make shields more durable without increasing weight, like layering, gluing or doing fancy finishes, but the thing is, you already know that that shield WILL break at some point, so do you really want to pay quadruple the price, or do you just want to pack four spares, with maybe one or two being unused? And can you even afford to pay the premium in the first place?

They were thick enough to stop  several attacks while not being cumbersome. Even the toughest shield is of little use if you get too tired while using it for prolonged time or you are too slow to cower yourself.

Lindenwood is so  soft it is the prefered carving wood, that tells me that it was on purpose. They really considered the gripping properties when cut into. Otherwise they would have used ash which was used for spear, axe and tool shafts.
Unfortunatetly now ash trees have gotten a disease but there is resistant strains of ash trees and in  four or five years resistant seedlings will be aviable

I think all of these reasons are good, but there are also reasons why we can't be sure what we're looking at when it comes to archeological finds.  We should also consider that some of the really thin shields might be decorative, something to hang up on the wall.  When a person is buried with their shield, how do we know that it's a real shield and not a decorative one?  It could also be that the wooden part of the shield was only strong enough to block projectiles (arrows and rocks), while the boss and rim were the main parts to use when fighting in melee.  It could also be that super-thin shields were either mistakes or scams.  For example, a bunch of people who live in a farm in Iceland might build themselves a shield that's too thin because they've never been in a fight and don't know how thin is too thin.  Or some dirty shield maker might try to scam people like that.  I've also heard that there are helmets from this time period that are way too thin to actually be protective, and they are probably meant to scam enemies.  Because the head seems to be protected by a helmet, the enemy isn't going to try and strike the head at all, since he doesn't know that the helmet is too thin or not real.  Like a cardboard security camera in the modern day.  Could be that thin shields were used similarly, although that'd be harder to pull off with a shield.

Nice Tivar.

It reminds me of ablative armor. Its easier to remove kinetic force when something breaks from the shock of the attack. Its also easier to make a new shield rather than maintain an iron shield thats expected to last for a few battles.

One of the few things they get right in some tv shows then. I remember Vikings particularly, their shields would fall apart pretty quickly in battle.
It also makes sense that it was expected. If they wanted to be more mobile in fights, a weaker shield is indeed lighter.
What would be interesting to see is how good are these against arrows, if at all. I remember the "Arrows vs Shields" from Todd's Workshop, and I was a bit surprised to see how the shields they tested were pretty much worthless against arrows.

If you haven't already, check out Roland Warzecha's vids on Viking shields. Goes through all kinds of aspects of it very thoroughly and thoughtfully

Let’s find out ! ; )

Your hair turned so beautiful exactly when you said: "Let's find out!" 😊❤ I wish I could touch a viking item. There isn't anything viking here where I live.. 😮😮 We're expecting a tornado here. Wish the viking could come and help! 😊😊😊 Don't worry, I'm used to the tornados.  It's the second within a month.

Imagine a Viking writing a review on early medieval age version of Amazon: "Counterfeit product, says made in China"