"Viking Uniforms?" Topic

Were the Vikings always dressed and carrying shields in a color riot? Or did they ever use the same shield colors/designs or cloak/tunic colors within an army?

I have never seen anything referencing uniform clothing. Perhaps a personal retinue might. As for shields, as I recall the shields recovered from the Gokstad burial ship were yellow and black, so I could see a ship's retinue perhaps having similar shields.

In the TV series Vikings a lot of the bodyguards/followers of particular leaders have same shield designs. I suspect this partly so we can tell one bunch hairy warriors from another, but generally a lot of the show seems well researched to the extent of reviving Old Frank ish, so I have no reason to think this is wrong.

I am not speaking of a uniform in the modern sense but more along the lines of every man getting a tunic or claok the same color but their small clothes are varied.

The matching shield colors/patterns from the same ship was a helpful comment.

Do you guys prefer an anything goes painting approach where every viking is differently painted?

I do 'anything goes', as I figure they would be getting cloth from many sources (and not enough of the same design/color to go around, as weaving back then was a cottage industry.) Shields I try to match for units (mainly command.)

I paint anything goes. These guys were farmers and fishermen when they weren't going a-Viking. For skirmish games involving family members, I might paint the son with the same shield pattern as the father, but that's more for story than anything else, or perhaps a personal guard for a Jarl. Otherwise I go out of my way to paint them differently.

Generally you get uniforms with a well-organized state and surplus wealth (e.g., Romans, especially after the Marian reforms).

If you can get past the usual journalistic stuff, this article link is apparently based on research by the Copenhagen National Museum.
It says that there were colour trends in different areas – red in England, blue in Scandinavia and purple in Dublin (I guess one of the lichen derived colours).

From St. Olaf's Saga in Heimskringla:

"King Olaf had in his ship 100 men armed in coats of ring-mail, and in foreign helmets. The most of his men had white shields, on which the holy cross was gilt; but some had painted it in blue or red. He had also had the cross painted in front on all the helmets, in a pale colour. He had a white banner on which was a serpent figured."

First, remember that the term "viking" covers several hundred years and several nations. There was a lot of change over the period. Not every longship crew formed the same way or for the same reason. I hate to quibble, but I bristle when people say "did you know the Romans used to…" and then describe some bizarre practice that only lasted for twenty or fifty years during the decay.

So you could paint them anything goes or you could paint them very similar. There was a lot of gift-giving in that culture, and you could easily suppose that a chieftain would give all his men trousers at some point.

Generally speaking everyone painted their shields however they liked, but for much of the period political power was pretty decentralized and it's likely that some chieftains required all their fighters to paint similar colors or designs on their shields.

But overall I think any uniformity would be the exception, not the rule. There would be a lot of homespun, a lot of cloth would come from looting, a lot of part time soldiers, etc.

To make matters worse, translations from old Norse (as with various other languages) can be tricky as the colour terms were not necessarily as nailed down as we might like. Blár is a cognate of blue but can be used for things we might describe as black, e.g. ravens. At other times it might be better translated as purple or violet.
To confuse things further, black could also be svartr and there is even in poetry 'hrafnblár' – raven black.
Brown only seems to appear in later poems – earlier on it seems 'green', 'red' or 'black' might be used for shade we would agree as brown.

In these situations my policy is: do the research, pick a plan you like, if someone challenges it quote the research, on you go. One way is as defensible as another. If you like your miniatures you did it right. If someone really wants to quibble, well, that's their hobby, you have yours.

Another possibility is that the village decided that their was a particular collar that everyone liked so that everyone tried to dye their wool that color that spring. the result being lots of clothing being that color with variations occurring in that color due to individual variations for all kinds of reason. Or perhaps they had recently ran across a textile mill and everything was in a particular color.

Didn't the Viking leaders provide the boat, oars and shields? So there may have been a degree of uniformity at least amount boat crews.

The gift-giving was a big part of a warriors code. The leader of a hird was to show strength, fairness but also generosity. But I don't think there is any talk of giving out "matching outfits"
Vikings were/are very individualistic and so probably took pride in having his own style on the clothing, armour, weapons and shield.

T just imagine the shields would have been simply painted as they tended to stay with the boats, especially for the bondi

Shields were semi disposable. Many probably would not have the elaborate painting we want to see on them.

Why would the Bondi leave their shields in the boat and leave themselves totally defenceless. The shield was the most important equipment any norsemen. The entire way of fighting was centred on the shield.

Gunfreak I think he means that when the mission/raid or whatever was over and they moved on to bigger and better things the shields stayed with the boat. I agree with you they were very individualistic and would have their own designs. Besides any warrior should have his own equipment.

+Aethelfaeda

My understand was the shields like the boat were supplied and I imagine that they would have been a similar colour to each other to save on expense and to suit the whims of the Lord, and even Bondi who had here own would probably have had plain colours because of expense of paint and like most of us probably had trouble with drawing stick figures let alone dragons and complicated designs.

All free men were required to have a spear a shield and axe/sword. So no the shield were not supplied or if they were they would be on top of the personal equipment.

Given that the heraldic shield developed to identify individual knights and given that the first Norman knights were Viking descendants then a theory could be advanced that the Viking shields were also individualistic.

Apart from the Spartans (who all carried a Lamda on their shield) most Greek shields were individualistic so that notable warriors could be identified and their actions noted. Again this suggests that (apart from personal retinues) Viking shields were individual. They needed to be noticed. The same thinking also applies to some WW1 aircraft, some WW2 B17 'nose art' and even pilot helmet art in the Korean War.

I have also noted the uniform colours in the TV series 'The Vikings' and have also assumed that this was done merely for the benefit of the viewers. But where do the Saxons, Mercians and Northumbrians get off with such good armour… including some very 16th century helmets?? Most would have been the same or worse than the Vikings.
:(

B

Dont know the answer, but what I did for my Viking age my minis was to use paints that match the colors in the Bayeux Tapestry with off-white (undyed) as the dominant color.

OK I'm surprised no one has called out the Vikings TV show references.

The clothing of the Vikings in the show is all wrong. Vikings probably did not wear all that leather. They wore loose tunics, with trousers and leg wrappings and short boots. And they wore all sorts of colors, blue, purple, red, yellow….not uniform black and brown. Indeed there is a good chance they did not have black dye, and used dark blue instead.

They did not shave their heads. I've never seen anything about all the tattoing either.

They probably wore helmets, and the rich would have had short mail shirts.

You mean Vikings were never made up to look like sons of anarchy characters?!

Take a look at some websites about historical dyestuffs and clothing. That will give you some ideas on the available colours. Some cultures had particular likes and dislikes, pale blue and yellows were seen as effeminate by Anglo-Saxons for example. There were also regional variations in the available dyestuffs so all the fighting men from that area would have variations based around the available local dyes.

Try some of the better reenactment research pages on dying and clothing. Be prepared to be underwhelmed though there is a lack of detailed evidence.