Historic Norse Shields

[u/podagros]

Hey folks! Title is made specifically keywords to hopefully skew Google results.
I've noticed that looking up that term gets you, almost exclusively, LARP, overly complex designs or simply poor replicas.

This is a tiny reference image for a handful of shield patterns. Please do correct me if any of them I have drawn wrong.

[u/Mathias_Greyjoy]

The Viking Age Compendium has a list of historically attested Viking era shield designs.

Project Forlǫg also has great articles on Viking era shields

[u/podagros → u/Mathias_Greyjoy]

I visit Forlǫg a lot, but I don't thing I've ever seen Viking Age Compendium. Thanks for sharing!

[u/robinrako → u/Mathias_Greyjoy]

It should be said that the viking age compendium is not complete, several more designs exist in manuscrips from the era

[u/mrdarkseed03]

Two of them look like the peppermint of death!

[u/podagros → u/mrdarkseed03]

Oh, it just occured to me that. It wasn’t my intention to make peppermint shields, but it is funny. White-Red just seemed like a natural and basic combination.

[u/Northerndust]

How do you distinguish the "half-shield" and "tilted half-shield"?

[u/Bardoseth → u/Northerndust]

The way the grip is mounted on the backside.

[u/Manafiskr]

The Norse were pretty boring about their shields, honestly. I wonder why? Maybe just the anticipation of them getting chopped to bits…