Medieval Shield Straps - The Guige

Hey folks, Matt Eaton here, Scholar Gladiatoria. Now it's by a strange coincidence that in the last couple of weeks I've been getting a lot of comments coming up on one of my own videos, one of my old videos, talking about the Daynax, and equally I've been getting some videos coming up on a couple of my other old videos. Bizarrely there's been some convergence in the comments and questions that have been coming up in those old videos. Now I can't always control or predict why certain of my old videos suddenly come up and are starting to get comments again. I guess it's presumably because they've been posted somewhere out there on the internet on some Facebook thread or, you know, I don't know, Twitter or some kind of forum or something. But basically those videos get exposure again and sometimes old topics come back up. So this isn't actually an old topic as such because the comments that have come underneath have actually inspired me to make a couple of videos on these topics. So the first topic is, you'll notice I'm holding my good old favourite Daynax here from Thor's Forge, from Tord, and it is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But I'm actually not going to talk about this in this video because you will notice that I am wearing on my back a shield. Now the reason for that is because on the Bayeux Tapestry we see these Hauskarls sometimes which are using big two-handed weapons, we see them wearing shields on their back. Now obviously that has certain inherent advantages. Potentially, you know, in the age of male, so pre-plate, that could give you extra protection potentially against cavalry, anybody really attacking you from behind, maybe from missiles. And this is one of the things we have to accept about shields is that they don't only have an active defence, they have a passive defence as well. And literally wearing one on your back, so long as it doesn't impede you and get in your way, well why not do it? Because it means you've got a shield on your back which is obviously going to protect you far better against things like thrown spears or shot arrows than just your male shirt, if you have a male shirt will do. But so what I really want to talk about is actually the fact that I've got a shield on my back and now some people have noted this in manuscript pictures that I've shown. Sometimes it might be with a sword rather than an axe or some other kind of weapon that's being used. It might just be that the person is not actually fighting at all but they want to stick their shield out of the way. Now this strapped method of sticking shields out of the way is something that evidently comes in quite early because as I say we see it in the Bayeux Tapestry, so we're talking about 1066 AD there and there is some evidence archaeologically that some earlier shields, kind of Anglo-Saxon era shields and Merovingian shields, had straps on them as well. And when you think about it, it makes good sense because you don't want to have to physically carry your shield in your hand all the time. If you're on foot sometimes you want to do something, maybe it's eat or go to the toilet or do whatever you want to do, and you want your hands free, you don't want to be carrying a shield. Equally if you're on horseback, if you want to put your shield down where do you put it? If you're on horseback you can't necessarily put your shield even on the ground because you can't reach down to it and if you do put it down on the ground you can't then get your shield back again without getting off your horse, picking up the shield and getting back onto the horse. So on horseback it's got an even, you could even argue, an even more important purpose because if you want to, if you're just riding you don't need to have your shield in your hands, well why not have it strapped somewhere? So let's take this off for a second. Now I'm going to try and do this, there we go, without disturbing the microphone too much. So what we often see in looking at manuscripts and such like is that the shield is held conventionally like this and we often see that the strap is put around the neck at the same time. Now that serves a whole nother purpose. Now what we further see is sometimes this strap, rather than being used to wear the shield essentially and either to use two hands or just because you're traveling or whatever, sometimes this strap is actually put around the neck when the person is using the shield on their arm. Now one thing I have to mention is, so this is a replica by Shields Plus, it's not the most historically accurate replica in the world but from a functional point of view it's pretty damn good, and one thing you note is that the strap has to be able to be adjusted because as you'll see here that was the length of the strap as I was wearing the shield and if I just put it around my neck it means that I can't move the shield very far from my body, certainly not as far as I would want to use it in combat. Ideally when fighting with the shield I want to be able to hold the shield as far out as that at times, which means I need a correspondingly longer amount of strap. So what we do here is we have, it's just like a belt as you can see, you need to be able to lengthen it. So let's move it up to, I'm just guessing at this point about there, and let's see how much strap that gives me. There we go, so that's a little bit more reasonable, hope it's not clashing on the microphone for you, but that's a little bit more reasonable reach and length now for combat. Now that has some additional benefits because whilst it's now too loose for me to wear it for traveling or riding kind of purposes, it does mean I can take the weight off my arm. It means I'm not physically having to hold the shield up the whole time. By adjusting the shield to different angles, for example to there, I can quite easily stand if I was on guard duty or you know kind of standing on a fortification or if I was literally just standing in line or you know just walking or whatever, it means I can take the weight off my shoulder and off my arm and I can let the shield rest there quite comfortably. I can rest it on my leg or I can not rest it on my leg, doesn't really make an awful lot of difference, but it means that my shield's in front of me and I'm using no strength of my arm at the moment to sustain that. It is literally just hanging off my neck and it's not onerous, it's not a problem at all, but it does mean the shield's in the right position. So therefore it has, as we've seen already, you can wear the shield which enables you to use two hands or just to carry the shield if you don't want to carry it in your hand, but equally you can strap it this way which does mean that you can take the weight off your shoulder if your shield's just essentially in a passive position and you're not doing much else. The next and final application for this is actually in combat. So if I'm actually fighting and I'm employing this shield I would actually probably want a little bit more reach on it than that. So let's yet again adjust the length on this, so if I was going into combat or expecting combat to be imminent I'd probably want quite a lot of, not extension, quite a lot of range as it were on this strap. One thing I forgot to mention incidentally while I'm doing this, this strap is commonly called a guige, I believe it's pronounced a g-u-i-g-e which is obviously a French word, obviously it is a French word. I actually don't know what this means in French and I don't really know how to pronounce it properly but I think it's guige and it's the strap that isn't the one that goes around your arms, it's the one that goes around your neck or around your body. Now you'll notice I've done this even looser and I still can if I want suspend the shield such that I can take the weight off my arms, I can rest it like that. I could in fact even have the shield momentarily hanging from me but still in front of my body and use my hands like this and then slip my arms back into where they need to be to use it in combat and you'll notice that by adjusting the point at which it's at contact with my neck I can adjust the angle of the shield slightly if I let the bottom come in more like that there we go the top end goes out okay so I'd want it comfortably for fighting about there. Now in terms of why you would want it strapped in close combat I think mostly it's for the things that you're doing which don't involve close combat, in other words when you need to use your hands for something other than holding the shield. Potentially you could argue that if you want to slip the arm out because you're getting into a grappling situation that's possible but I think the shield's going to get in the way in that situation. From here you could sling the thing if you slip your arm out you could sling it around onto your back but the problem is then is it hangs very very low and whilst that does enable you to use both hands it's now interfering with my hips and my legs so I'm not so sure I'm not very convinced by that I think you would need to adjust the length of the strap in order to fight whilst wearing the shield okay which in fairness will only take you maybe 30 seconds to do but you couldn't do it like in the midst of combat but it does potentially increase the control over the shield so for example if you've got your shield out in front of you here and you're fighting away one of the things that people can do is try and lever or manipulate your shield so to wrench it out open this way well because you've got this extra point of leverage here now this strap and that's anchoring the lower part of the shield as well here it does to some degree give you a little bit more stability because if you think about it we've now got one two three four points of contact and control with that shield so it's possible I'm not fully convinced by this but it is possible that those that geish strap does assist making the shield a little bit more stable in close combat but conversely what you pay for with that is of course less mobility if you're relying on those straps if I take that strap off and bunch it in my hands so it's not hanging out the way which is what I'd recommend incidentally if you leave them hanging down they're going to get in the way maybe get tangled in your weapons or whatever if you bunch them up and gripping your strap a bit like horses reins now your shield is fully capable to move around and do whatever it needs to do so that so at that point you can use your shield as you'd normally use it so you can still have your geish strap ready and what I would say is if you were someone who's likely to use a two-handed weapon so let's just see how quickly I can adjust this back so I've gone from full length to shortened length pretty much that quickly there we go okay so that's now the wearable length as we saw before so I can easily now wear it I can now switch quite quickly from a wearable shield to a usable shield and because that strap's now shorter and I can further bunch it up if I want to that strap's not in the way at all for close combat say for example if I'm using using a sword and doing whatever I need to do in close combat here whereas I can quite quickly now if I want to slip that shield on and use a dane axe pretty damn readily and quickly as I need to do it okay so there we go a summary an overview I as I always say I'm not an expert particularly on shields but you can quite easily wear a shield get your shield on and off use a sword use a two-handed weapon and this strap is the key to that but it needs to in my view it needs to be an adjustable length and you need to bunch it up in the hand if you're not using it and we do know from the artwork that sometimes when they were using the shield in close combat they did wear the geege extended but the reasons for that well your views and experience are welcome as always but the reasons for that are kind of the jury's out on that we don't know exactly anyway I hope that's been interesting see you soon give us a like and a subscribe and I'll see you soon for another video cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks