help with boot info

[jakennedy]

Hello, I just found your forum and was wondering it someone could answer my question. I was looking at the picture of the costumed Viking Age warrior on this site and was wondering if someone could give me information on, or even better a pattern of the boots that he is wearing. Thanks!

Here is the link just in case you don't know the picture I'm talking about.

http://histvarld.historiska.se/eng/drak ... krigfr.htm

[Arild Krake]

Unfortunately his boots are'nt period. But there apperance is based on finds from Hedeby. [url="http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOES/SHOE4.HTM"]Here[/url] are som shoes made by the same teknik but there are also finds of boots in the same teknik.

Ludvig

[Angus Maciomhair]

The texts are being translated into english. Unfortunately my HDD crashed two weeks ago and I wasn't able to recover the old file, but here's a quick translation of the section on boots:

<b>Boots</b>
"It was important for a warrior to wear good quality shoes. These boots are inspired by finds from Ladoga and Haithabu. The fastening is simple and made from leather knots.

Viking age shoes were often made from goat leather but these are made from bovine leather. These boots have double layers of leather held together with seams at the edges. The soles are multi-layered.

Boots this thick have, as far as we know, never been found among the archaelogical material, and it is probably not a very plausible reconstruction. Cultural layers are mostly composed of thrown-away items and one has to question what kinds of shoes would have been thrown away. Thick leather can be recycled as soles and large pieces of leather like the ones in the bootleg can be used for other shoes.

Even among medieval finds boots are rare but contemporary pictures prove their existance. This is probably because the large leather patches have been recycled for other objects and this may well have been practiced during the Viking age as well."

/Angus

[jakennedy]

Thanks for the help, even thought they are may not be period, trying to make a pair will give me something to do during my spare time. Thanks again!

[Judy Mitchell]

Hi,
If you don't have them already, there are two very good books on viking shoes. One is by Margrethe Hald and called " Primitive Shoes" Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark 1972. It's in English with a lot of photos of shoes.
The other is by Willy Groenman-von Watteringe and is called "Die Lederfunde von Haithabu" Neumunster, Gemrany: Karl Wachholz Verlag 1984. It's in German, but has a ton of line drawings of shoes (and other leather finds) as well as the patterns for the shoes.

I believe both books are out of print, I'd suggest trying InterLibraryLoan if you are in the US.

-Judy Mitchell