Guantanamo

I am so disappointed at president Obama. For when he said he would close the disgraceful prison camp at Guantanamo, he only ment to move the prisoners to  a nother prison and still whitout indeitment. These people have been there for years whitout any legal processing. They are not charged with terrorism. They are not charged about anything at all. They are just sitting there whitout knowing when they are going to be released or wether they are going to be released. Many of their relatives do not even know where they are.  Holding them is against any civilised law. Taking them there was against the Geneva convention rules of war.

The US and some of its allies have been knowingly perversing the Geneva convention rules for years. The current NATO assault rifle calibre for example is a clear violation against the Geneva ban on dum dum bullets, because the bullet has same impact effect as the forbidden bullit. The term “illegal fighter” is a fabrication against the rules of war as to partisan fighters, that should be treated as prisoners of war. The fact that a nation can not provide it’s soldiers with a uniform does not make them less official soldiers. The torture of detainees “wether civillian or prisoner of war” is clearly forbidden and defined as a war crime. Willfully depriving one of the right to a fair trial is a war crime. The destruction of property whitout obvious military use is a war crime. But hey, the serbian bicycle factory was prowiding their army with bicycles, so it was a legit target for bombing… Right? No wonder the US does not want to give it’s soldiers for the haag international war crimes tribunal.

The prisoners of Guantanamo know full well that other prisoners have been tortured. It must be a wery traumatising experience to know that you may be tortured by the official prison keepers at any time. Not to mention how traumatising it is to the tortured people.

What of the rest of the world? Many countries have condemned the Guantanamo prison, but are still supporting the US lead “peace” keeping operation in Afghanistan. There is no peace to keep or to be reached by the means of war. Now the Nobel price winning president Obama is increasing troops in Afghanishtan, and it seems obvious that the plan is the same as in Iraq. To consolidate some sort of lul in the war to get an excuse to withdraw, leaving some garrisons at crucial points.

What of the US taxpayers and politcal debate? The taxpayers keep funding this shamefull new prison and the outrageously expensive war that clearly produces more terrorists than subdues. Terrorists do not need training camps. They need motivation and the US is handing out plenty of that. At the same time the monetary price or humanitarian cost of the war or this infamous prison at Guantanamo are not debated in the America, what is debated is how dangerous it is to bring those terrorists into Illinois.

And what of the prisoners? Why have they not been indeited? Is it not because there is no evidence against most of them or almost all of them, that they ever were terrorists? Some of them were fighting for their own country, some were volunteers trying to fight against US imperialism. Some of them were simply passers by who got sold to US forces as terrorists, because sombody needed the money (most probably to buy weapons to fight the invading US army).

USA has many military bases on foreingn ground. Some of them are there because they were invited by the governmets of those countries (say “Great” Britain for example). Some are there because USA won a war against the country and set a puppet governmetn to ask their precense there (Germany and Iraq). Then there is Guantanamo bay, which is on Cuban soil whitout an agreement by the Cuban government. It actually has been there for decades like that. And they have a concentration camp there. It is there, because somehow magically the US law does not abide there. Cuban law does not abide there either, or any other law for that matter. 

After all that has happened in the war on terrorism and in Guantanamo prison it is clear that it will take a pretty simple person to claim that the USA is standing for human rights or any sort of democracy.

 

Landscape

The most recent and uniting value of the western world! Oh, yes it is. Everybody seems interrested in landscape. At least the one next door to them. It is wondrous how this common cause unites those who would save our world from pollution and the climate change, religious bigots and those who think that a windmill is a particularly ugly piece of scenery.

Only difference is who gets their will. It seems that if a neighbourhood is protesting against a new motorway conjunction or a factory, it is much less likely for their protest to have an effect, than if they are protesting against a windpark. Why is this? Maybe one reason is that the motorways and factories are not often built in landscapes like seashores, where the rich people live. That however is where the windmills should be built, for that is where the wind blows.

In Switzerland they reached a new peak of democracy when a civil wote took place about mosques and minarets to be possibly built. The people clearly stated that they do not want mosques of especially minarets in Switzerland. Interresting enough is that muslims are tolerated when they clean up toilets, but if they practice their religion it is seen as abomination. This is bigotry and purest form of racism. It reminds me about people who would not have an alcoholist safehouse to their neighbouhood. The reason was soposedly that the alcoholists would be a hazard to the children of the community. I have lived in a neigbourhood with an alcoholist safe house, and because the safehouse would not have alcoholists drunken there they never caused any trouble. There was a school next door to and I doubt if most people in the neighbourhood even knew there was an alcoholist safehouse there.

The real reason for quite ordinary people to protest against windmills and alcoholist or any other kind of safe houses for that matter, is that they fear for the value of their real estate. This is of course a wery real fear. Or is it? Who tells people that their houses are worht less if there is a windpark nearby. Would a nuclear powerplant or motorwayconjunction increase the real estate value? Ironically, yes it would. Motorway means “easy access” and nuclear power plant engineers need housing. But do you really think that windmills make more noise than a motorway, or would you want to live next door to nuclear powerplant?

Europe is multicultural and has allways been. There have been muslims in some European countries for centuries. Even Switzerland in its unreachable mountain reaches has several different languages and cultures within its boundaries. They have co-existed even when some are protestants and some are catholic. But it is easier to get a permit to build giant viaduct through a mountain village than to build a mosque there. Are these problems in any proportion.

It may yet be that the climate change will not be so dramatic as cientists predict. It may happen that the nuclear power plant next door does not explode after all, but do we really dare to take the risk?  When a nuclear powerplant goes (even a single one of the hundreds in operation and thousands that have been planned) it does not only ruin the landscape or the neighbourhood. It may take down whole nations.

We of course hope for nothing bad to happen, but things do not happen or not, just because we hope so. It is time to wake up and take action. Everyone, not just the great powers that be, but all of us. People have the power to make the necessary change and if they do not, they have to sieze that power, because it belongs to us. Wurther more, it is our responsibility to the future generations and to all living things. It may mean that we will lose some of our precious property, but this is far worse an enemy we are now facíng than the nazis ever were. The whole ecosystem and all of human race is in jeopardy just to satisfy the lust for riches of a wery small minority of billionares. This is the generation that cannot hide behind claims like “we did not know”, because that reasoning is no longer valid. If you do not know enough about climate change and tolerance, you just have to find out!

But dont worry. Maybe nothing will happen, and if something does, maybe nobody will notice that you did nothing. Maybe your children get to live a good life and maybe you wont be there to see when your grandchildren fight for survival because of your selfishness. Maybe you wont hear them cursing you, because you are allready dead or because they were never born.

One thing is for sure. If the dutch had decided that the windmills are too ugly to built few hundred years ago, there would no longer exist a country called Netherlands any more.

 

Son of Full Contact

I wrote about this subject earlierly, but had to bring it up again. There is an important point about re-enactment fighting and authenticity, that needs to be addressed.

Authenticity. Some of those re-enactors that boast by “fighting real” or by “full contact” claim that they have achieved reality in their fights by not holding back. The joke about this claim lies in the fact that the audience is completely unable to see any difference between “full contact” fights and safe fighting, exept when a “full contact” show is interrupted by an ambulance. The ambulance hardly adding to authenticity in any a show.

Actually “full contact” tends to increase the amount of armour worn. Often leading to totally unauthentic solutions like for example armour sets that weight over 40 kilos. An amount of iron a real medieval warrior would never have worn on battlefield. Many of the “full contact” warriors look more like the Michelin tyre commercial, because of extra padding they need to feel safe. In reality and what should be shown, is that most warriors wore hardly any armour. Only way this is achieved in re-enactment is by having sensible and safe rules and regulations… And by mature attitude and responsibility of all the warriors on field. Not just yourself or your friends, but the opponents also.

Trust me it is not so hard to learn how to fight both safe and fierce looking. And in the end it will be more authentic, because medieval soldiers knew how to handle their weapons and the good ones were at all times in control of their weapons and emotions, just like modern soldiers.

If you can not control your feelings or weapons on field, I suggest you start fighting with soft weapons and not call it historical re-enactment. That way you wont hurt anyone and should not really ruin any historical battle shows authenticity. But you can really call it “full contact”.

 

Berlin wall

It has now been twenty years since the wall came down. There is no doubt that the building of the wall was a crime. However during the anniversary festivities some facts seem to have been forgotten.

I find it strange that the two political systems of socialism and capitalism and their effectivenes are most often compared by these two Germanies, the DDR and the DBR. Even though both nations were initially german and much in the same situation right after the second world war, their situation evolved rapidly to different directions, that were not so much a result of the political system as the result of their allies.

Western Germany was supported by USA, the only real victor in WWII. USA was the one country that had waged war only outside its borders. The economy of USA had actually increased during the war. Eastern Germany was in the control of Soviet Union that had suffered terribly in the war. The russians found it wery hard to forgive the german invasion to the Soviet territory and the millions of victims the war that germans had initiated had cost to the Soviet Union. Further more, the war had obliterated most Soviet industry. They had wery little to give in support of the new German country that they mostly saw as conquered land. A sort of payback to the germans.

The main goal of the German division to all the allied countries was however to stop Germany from becoming a threat in Europe again. The lesson of once beaten Germany rising again had been well learned, since Germany was the cause of both world wars.

In my opinion if the two political systems are to be compared, the comparison should take into account other pairs of countries, often in even more similar situation. For example compare China and India.  Both of these were liberated from foreingn control in the aftermath of the world war. China still a communist country, that is the only country in the world that has actually managed to reduce population growth by legistlation. This achievement is only possible in one party country and would seem to be one of the major causes for economic growth of wealth. Both countries have had rapid economic growth, and both have great social problems. Neither has true liberty of speach. In China the press is controlled by the state and in India by the wery rich media moguls (as is the case in most western countries, unless a series of socialist governments has created a newsnetwork with tax funding).

Now compare two Latin American countries. You may choose any other while the other one is Cuba. I choose El Salvador by the simple reason that it has been the sole most important reciever of US development support. Cuba has the lowest rate of infant mortality in all of Americas excluding Canada. In same group it also has greatest prosentige of read and write skills among its population. As the only American country poor little Cuba, that has been in commercial embargo since the sixties, has free university studies and medical care for the whole population. While El Salvador has pfff…

Of course we should compare also North Korea and South Korea. While the other has a military dictartoship and its people are suffering, in the other country  people are building their own future. Exactly the same goes for yet one more pair of countries: Vietnam and Burma (or Myanmar if you wish). Why is it that the political system does not explain why in one country has dictatorship and the other has not?

In what ways do you think Russia has changed during these twenty or so years since the Soviet Union broke down? There are more Mercede’s on Moscow streets and less Volgas? In world politics Russia seems to play rather similar role as the Soviet Union did (with less power though).

On eastern side the Berlin wall was an expression of depraved freedom with all that razorwire. It tempted young adventurous men to challenge it, by crossing into freedom. Into western Berlin. Did they risk their lives for the liberty of speech? Most will propably say so, if asked afterwards, but what was it that they said freely in the west? How many of them actually used their freedom of speech? Or where they only motivated by the consumer products of the west? Maybe some of them even travelled to foreing countries after crossing the wall.

On western side the Berlin wall was an expression of freedom. It was freely  painted with spraypaints full of graffities. If the wall had been a fence around a great West German industrial compound, the freedom to paint it would not have been as liberal. Why did so many try to cross the border between the two Germanies at the wall where it was the most difficult?

Newer the less, we should learn from the Berlin wall, that people value freedom abowe all. That freedom does not only mean the freedom of the rich to extort the poor, but all freedom. Not only the freedom of the western people, but also the freedom of people in Asia, Africa and all the Americas. Their freedom to live their lives as they choose. Nor should we forget that with freedom comes responsibility. Responsibility of the rich and strong for the poor and weak. This responsibility could also be called socialism.

 

Medieval hair

Many re-enactors have magnificent costumes of the historical period they are depicting and some living history enthusiasts have made this into an art. The general purpose is to form a believable general look of a  nother time. Some even have their hair cut after the fashion of the historical period to match their costume or otherwise disguise their hair so that the over all look remains coherent.

Alltough historical re-enactment may be a way of life to some, to most of us it is just a nother hobby. Some people have jobs that define what kind of hair is suitable for their day to day life. Some people re-enact several historical periods, that have many different hairstyles. So the question arises, how to choose what kind of hair to have?

To some guys the hole idea of the hobby seems to be, that they get to fight with swords. There is nothing wrong about that I suppose. So what kind of hair they are wearing under their helmets makes little difference to them. Still some attention should be made about hair. If they are not wearing the helmets through all the events they participate people are going to see their hair at some point. One simple point is that medieval common men would wear a hat and/or a hood almost at all times. A hat is a good and easy way to conseal what ever kind of hair you have. Add the small linnen coif  allmost everybody seems to have worn(even under hat) during the high middle ages and you should be home safe. Unles you have a wery long hair. Now, men seem to have had hair of different lengths during middle ages. For example the 13th and early 14th century miniature paintings suggest that shoulder length or a bit shorter and curly seems to have been wery fashionable. At the turn of 14th and 15th centuries short round “helmet hair” seems replaces it, but soon during the 15th century the curly longer hair makes a comeback. Not everybody had natural curly hair in those days, but simple way to stop a long hair from getting tangled up during sleep is to braid it. This in turn makes most hair curl. Braiding also keeps the hair untangled under helmet. What I’m saying is that there are alternatives to ponytails. I for one would not want to see anyone wear a ponytail in a medieval event. Not unless someone first gives me reliable evidence, that anyone wore a ponytail during medieval times.

Women have it a bit easier, because during most medieval centuries most women wore almost all the time a wail of some sort, that covered the head completely. The only thing one has to remember is not to show that nicely cut modern fringe or some unnatural colouring. Under a wail you may have a green mohawk and nobody will know (exept you your self).

The trick is once again in choosing who are you portraying. A nobleman or a noblewoman should of course follow the fashion of the time they are presenting. Their hair is also more often visible to the eye, because they did not have the similar need to protect it, as the working classes and because appearance was more imortant to them. To all of us medievalists the hobby means, in a large part at least, letting go from our daily routines, but to some it also means playing rich people. This is so commonly accepted among the hobby, that almost all possible compromises to accomodate this makebelief are condoned. To some people in medieval times people were knights and princesses and they of course lived in castles. It may be more fun to play a mighty noble than a leppar beggar, but these are not the only options. They are more like opposite ends on the same social structure and closer to each other than one would think. For leprosy affected rich and poor alike.

If your enjoyment to the medieval times comes from making beautifull clotehes and wearing them, you should also mind what kind of hair goes with them, right? Not only the nobles wore fine clothes, while of course they were richer than most others. If playing rich and mighty is the only interrest you have for medieval times and you cannot afford the time and money to reach this in believable conditions, maybe you should consider fantasy LARP as your hobby. At the moment it seems, that wery much of what goes by as medieval re-enactment or even living history is actually just fantasy larp that is not tied to any historical time or place.

In my opinion people should have more self awareness weather it is actually possible for them to portray a noble or not. To get an authentic kit together is a lot easier if you are acting as a farmhand, maid, craftsmans apprentice, member of the clergy or even a merchant or a common soldier. And same goes for the hair.

 

Two weapon fighting

Many fantasy heroes bear two swords and same goes for historical recreations in movies and medievalist re-enactment. Why? Are there any sources about such? I know none at least. Please do tell me, if you know any.

There are several reasons why a medieval warrior would not fight with two swords. First of all, a sword is a very expensive weapon. Not many men could afford one, let alone two. There were of course very rich men who owned several swords. There are even pictures where a knight has a long sword at his hip and a short sword hanging from his saddle. There seems to be however, no pictures of any knights wielding them both together. The two swords were more like the main weapon and a spare one or two different weapons for different “jobs”.

Second reason could be that weilding two swords is clumsy and awkward. It is much like  shooting with two assault rifles. If you expect to hit your enemy by filling the air with bullets or flurry of blades two rifles/swords is fine, but if you actually can handle your weapon you would rather try to make one aimed hit.

A dagger could be paired with a sword. There are actually no medieval surviving fencing manuals that would imply it as common technique, so it should be treated as an exeption. During the rennessaince the rapier swords had often a dagger as a pair to them and techniques were printed in manuals also. This pair of weapons however differs greatly from medieval weapons in so many ways I will not go into them here. Exept to say, that the dagger is a natural companion for such eminently thrusting weapon as the rapier.

Sword & dagger

Every medieval armed man had a dagger. But fighting with a sword and dagger together is again a bit like firing a rifle and a pistol together. The pistol adds wery little to the rifle, but losing one hand for pistol makes rifle quite unwieldy. A one hand sword was usually used with a shield. The shield would wary in shape and size, but definetively be more protection than a dagger. For example arrows and such. Also properly used shield protects the swordhand even during an attack. When the shields went a bit out of fashion, it was not replaced with a dagger or a nother sword, but by a longer (single) sword that could be weilded by two hands. The two handed sword gave its user longer reach, more leveradge and more accurate control. Fine trade of, especially since the plate armour was invented along. So no shield was necessary any more. Of course most common soldiers with a one hand sword and not much armour would also utilise a small buckler, wich is a lot easier to carry around everywhere they took the sword (like a pub), than a full sized shield.

Of course, a person who has the one handed sword and has lost his shield, or did not carry one in the first place, could take a dagger to the other hand to “improve his chanses”. A dagger would also be used on an enemy that was too close to be hit effectively with the sword. In battle and judical combat the dagger would be for the coup de grace, when the fully armoured enemy was allreadydown, it was simply easier to hit the narrow slits of visor or other weakpoints of the suit of armour. Third reason not to use a second weapon even when you have a one handed sword and no shield, is that you might need your other hand in the fight. It might be more usefull to you for grapling the enemy or his weapons. In fact there are several techniques in the medieval fighting manuals that employ the other hand. This is forbidden in many re-enactment rules and could be the reason why someone might rather choose a second weapon for a re-enactment fight.

Fourth, but not the least reason could be, not spending much time to learn how to wield two swords, is that it would be a damn nuisance to carry around two swords. It would be especially difficult to mount a horse with a sword hanging on warriors right hip. And as we know: all medieval warriors knew how to ride a horse. Oh by the way, there are no sources for carrying swords strapped to a warroirs back, or do you know any? Why not? Well, it is not really as handy as it would seem, until you tried it out.

There are also other weapons that are used along the sword by the re-enactors. The axe is often employed by viking re-enactors, and who is to say it was not used by vikings together with sword. We have wery limited sources on viking skill of arms anyhow. In my opinion however as a pair the sword would be for defence and the axe for attack. The swordhand is woulnerable whitout the shield, but the axehand is even more so. The axe is more cumbersome than the sword, having its balancepoint so far from the hand. And in my opinion here also we are speaking of a rare case of accident, rather than weapons of choise. Vikings had shields, you see. Whitout a shield a man is wery woulnerable to arrows and casted spears alike. While a shield could of course break, one had to do whith what was left.

In my opinion spear and sword would be much likelier pair. In medieval manuscripts depicting judical combat the warroirs often start with a spear, a shield and a sword. The spear is most often casted towards the enemy in the beginnign, but they were also used in conjunction. Not in separate hands, but rather both with wide two-hand grip.

What ever the true reasons for not using two swords in conjunction, the fact remains, that there are no historical sources for such. No swordsmanship manuals or even pictorial evidence, not from miniature paintings nor from church paintings. Or do you know any?

 

Full contact

In my opinion there are no full contact sports. Full contact and sports are terms that exclude each other. Sportsmanship means polite conduct that abides to rules. Full contact supposes… Well, full contact. With full contact there can hardly be any rules. Otherwise it would not be “full”. Whitout rules combat is not sport.

Maybe men with minor sexual identity have a spesific need to boster their unsure selfesteem by creating a violent image. Or maybe they are some sort of wery scared people who fear everyone and have a need to make other people scared so they would not feel so frightened themselves. No really. I have no idea, why it is so important to some guys to use the term full contact, but it seems wery wery important indeed to make fuss about it.

For example, it is an often enough used term by some re-enactors. They call it full contact, that they have no weapon control or no emotional control when representing a mockfight. In real battle these attributes make you a bad or even more likely a dead warrior. If a swordfight would be “full contact” it would mean that the protagonists would intentionally and in full control  use sharp weapons to hit each other where it does not only hurt like hell, but actuallydisables or kills outright, (no matter how much armour is worn) like the face, armpits or the groin. They would definately not hit on each others helmets.

 

Obama & Nobel

President Obama got the Nobel peace prize quite unexpectedly. That is, I was surpriced. Why, he has not yet been in office for even a year, and seems to have actually done wery little for peace. The Nobel prize comittee also stated that the american president has spoken openly about the climate change.

What has president Obama actually achieved? For the climate change he has done absolutely nothing, but of course in comparrison to his predecessor it is a lot to even admit, that there is a climate change going on and that something could be done about it. Also in comparisson to mr. Bush, he has decided to draw the american forces from Iraq. It still remains to be seen if this will actually lead to any peace. It is not like it would, in any way, repay the Iraqi people the terrible amount of loss of life and property that the american invasion caused. At the same time president Obama is actually ready to increase the troops in Afghanistan.

Wether president Obama increases troops in Afghanistan or not, that war has allready been lost. Only people who can win a civil war in Afghanishtan are afghans. Only iraqi people can win the civil war in Iraq. This is the nature of civil war. Foreign troops may cause a certain side to win this kind of war, but in the end they will not win it. If foreigners are seen as a separate party in a civil war they are in fact invaders, and will end up to be hated by the populace.  They may however loose in such a war. Like the US troops have now lost in Iraq. Like they lost in Vietnam and like they will loose in Afghanistan. No doubt powerfull multinational corporates that rule the United States of America will win in these conflicts. They will sell armaments, oil and other energy sources, but the american tax payer will loose. He will pay for the armament because the invaded country is too poor. The american tax payer seems always be loosing. What will he get for his taxmoney? More weapons and military operations in foreign countries he cannot even place on the world map? Is Obama about to change this? At least he is trying to offer some of the taxmoney back to the people by trying to get the government to pay the health insurance of the wery poorest of people. For they are taxpayers also. Their liberty to live in the streets and slums is not being threatened by muslim extrimists somwhere on the other side of world, so they may expect to get their taxmoney back as free healthcare.

Of course the biggest loosers are allways the poor people living in the conflict areas. Do not mistake your rulers to be looking out for your benefit you, average citizen. The time of the national states is over, and the true rulers of the world are the wery richest of people whose busines knows no nationalities, exept when national feelings are easy way to rouse public opinion to give “casus belli”.

One of the reasons for president Obama to be given this prize is that he has given a promise of hope. That politics actually stand for the will of the majority of people in the so called democrasies, and not the benefit of the wery few richest. It remains to be seen wether or not he will be able to free himself from the leash of the unseen hand of the multinational corporate world. Or if it ever was his goal at all.

Maybe this prize will put pressure on an american president to finally act for peace and not for war, but maybe, just maybe there are other people working for peace (and against the climate change) who could have had more use for the money included in the actual prize.

 

Baggy pants and leather armour

In medieval times everyone wore a dress and thight socks. No one wore a skirt or trousers. However many medievalist men wear these very large baggy pants. Why?

If it is just because wearing thights makes a man feel feminine, then how does wearing culottes make one feel any more masculin? Is it the same reason that people rather refer to dresses as “tunics”? In my experience a tunic is either a modern womens wear or a roman soldiery and working class dress with no sleeves and made of one or two pieces of wool.

I admit, that during the many centuries that we now call medieval the clothes and fashion saw evolution and the long socks were started to be sewn into thights near the end of the period. Sometimes these thights had enormous codpieces. And yes. There were those enormous baggy pants too, but unless you are actually depicting a swedish peasant, a portugese sailor or a russian druzhina, why would you dress as one?

A nother weird thing is leather armour. I constantly run into medievalists or even literature that claims leather armour was used during the medieval times, but the only sources I have run into are cuir boulli tournament armour for the grand melee and deerskin layer in a linnen gambeson (a padded jacket).

One could argue that leather was a lot cheaper than any metal armour. Yes, but you really can not compare their durability and weight ratio. To get the leather as durable as the thinnest possible untempered metal you need so thick and heavy piece of leather that it is not worth carrying. The grand melee leather armour was a light sportsequipment because it only had to wihtstand blunt trauma. You see, sharp weapons were forbidden in those fights. Besides, to make leather even nearly as hard as metal you need tons of be’s wax and that was not cheap by any measure. The grand melee armour was bought by the wery richest of people not the poorest. A lot cheaper and much more endurable choise for armour would have been linnen. No it was not so cheap either, that anybody could afford it, for several layers of linnen cost also, but it was the actual choise of the common fighting men. Linnen “gambesons” were worn under  or on top of the most expensive armour also and it was used as such by men who could not afford armour. The several layers of cloth work a bit like kevlar. The cut, the thrust and even the shot of an arrow are considerably slowed down by the fabric layers of fibre.

As leather armour shares and exeeds metal armours weakest sides in weight and prize, it also looses to the linnen protection in one critical part. Just as plate metal leather armour does not breathe. Linnen fabric breathes (at least as long as it is not completely soaked by sweat, because moisture makes the linnen fibres to sweal). On the battlefield plate metal armour is an acceptable trade giving up “airconditioning” and temperature inside the armour for protection. Leather armour causes the same problem with heat, but is nowhere near as protective. Also one must bear in mind, that metal conducts heat (out from within the armour) while leather does not. Even in the most coldest of winters, if you are moving (like in a fight) inside plate mail it gets hot after a while.

Historical sources tell even about scale armour made from horn and animal forks, but I can only find one comment on leather armour. It is from Snorri and the “leather armour” is a reindeer jacket worn by a man called Finn. The jack is enchanted by saami witches to be imprevious to any attack. This is just about as believable story as the tale of prince Murrogh using two swords at the Clontarf battle (did I mention he killed over hundred men).

So, why leather armour? Why baggy pants? Why two swords?

 

Manhunt

AD. 1409     September 21.

On third day patrolling around the ancient hillfort of Kajamo the warriors of the Turku castle finally found the robbers hiding in the forest. One got away and one was killed. The rest were taken prisoners and will be hanged by the neck at Kerttuli hill in Turku town. From there their carcasses will be seen as a warning to all travelling the great coastal road from east and all comers from north via the “Härkätie” or oxen road. Their blue faces will tell that there is law at Turku and it resides in the mighty castle.

Here is a rather tired “huovi” or castle guard if you please, after manhunt :