"leg warmers in the dark ages" Topic

I'm not sure what they are actually but those wraps you see around the calves of lots of dark age figures. Where did those come from, or, who originated them? And when do you first start to see them historically?

You start to see similar leggings in Roman art from about the 4th century – see

It's possible that they are the same kind of thing as the fasciae crurales, leg-bandages, that were worn for protection against cold weather by earlier Romans, but which the sterner moralists thought were only appropriate to invalids. Cicero and others mention Pompey wearing white ones.

In the absence of economical ways to make boots or knit socks a lot of pre-inudstrial people put skins, hides, or leather around their feet and calves and then wrapped them. Even when there were leather shoes the calves are wound for warmth and protection, etc.

Goodness knows how you get these to stay on.

I have seen these portrayed in art for ancient Asian peoples, middle eastern peoples, and western people, but never stopped to think about the authenticity of the art until now. You often seen cavemen depicted this way, but there can't be any art or writings to verify that!

If you're talking about strips of cloth wound around the calves the Vikings were doing this by the 7th or 8th century. Early 20th century soldiers wore puttees, which the British learned about in India but there's no easily googled record of when people on the subcontinent starting doing that.

walking through fields of tall grass brambles or any undergrowth would I imagine be made much easier or indeed even possible with these kinds of wrappings. no levis for the ancients

I can't comment upon just how far back such things go but I've been responsible for the production of hundreds of pairs of replica Saxon/Vikings "leg wraps" supplied to museums and re-enactors around the globe, along with Oscar winning costumiers working on period movies (to date I've been responsible for weaving over 1km of this woollen tape). These replicas have been based upon careful analysis and reproduction of the 25 or so surviving examples recovered through archaeological excavation.

They are narrow woven to about 3 to 4 inches wide and almost always use a herringbone weave (as hinted at in the above illustration) to get better flex and grip when wrapped around the calves, do provide some warmth, will stop trousers legs from flapping about/ getting caught on brambles and can provide some degree of protection to bare legs in coarse undergrowth. On the down side coarse undergrowth does tend to snag and pull at them terribly so unless the trousers were valuable fabric and these were seen as coarse protection preventing your trousers from flapping and snagging seems an unlikely explanation for their purpose, especially if worn on bare legs.

As to the actual reasons or preferences our ancestors had for wearing these we can only speculate… many impractical and just plain odd things have been worn in the name of fashion.

Origins of stripper boots?