this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Viking raiders charging across rough terrain (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/historyillustrations@lemmy.world
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[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit, were round shields really that large?

I always thought it was an exaggeration in VR, about how it covers almost your entire body

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the era and the shield. There's a good spread of sizes in the re-enactors here.

Generally though, yeah, Vikings wanted large shields to make sure everyone could cover one-another in a shield wall.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Excellent. I was personally torn between the wooden round shield and a metal kite shield (for durability and repair purposes), and ended up using a wooden round shield for 80% of my ultra realistic VR Rogue Dungeon-Crawling Experience.

I just figured they were oversized for ease of blocking in VR, but apparently not (red and white one in your photo as a reference), which means they were exceptionally good shields for the time period.