A Brief History of Chainmaille

This is the transcript for episode 11 of the We're All Stories podcast. the full episode can be heard here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1685008/8829081

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Today we're diving into something that has become kind of a passion project for me, a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. Chainmail. Far from the casual relationship many of us may have with chainmail via games, video, table top and everything in between, which I definitely have, but I am also a maker and teacher of the art of chainmail. You can find my work on Instagram at Ravenswing_studios, for sale at justkiltme.com, on etsy under theravenswingstudios (all one word) and at various events around Columbus Ohio, especially the Columbus Arts Festival where I am a committee member and demonstrator.

A looong time ago, when I was young, like many young boys I was obsessed with swords and knights and armor. When I was 11 I sought out the tutelage of a friend of the Family Paul Mech who, knowing my passion in the past had humored my childhood interest by bringing over swords and various medieval weapons for me to try my hand on and let me wear his shirt of chainmail that he had made. One day I told my mom I wanted to learn to make chainmail and I asked her to ask Paul to teach me. He came over the next day. Two very important things happened that day. One, he taught me the ins and outs of chainmail. He showed me how to coil the wire to cut out the individual rings, gave me a handful of starter coils and taught me the basics of the European four in one weave, which is what what used in like 99% of chainmaille armour in Europe, that is, what the knights wore. The second momentous thing that happened that day was he introduced me to Monty Python. He brought his VHS copy of the Holy Grail with him for us to watch while we worked. This would lead to a love bordering on obsession with the British comedy group.

I would continue on in my dabbling with European four in one for a handful of years before being introduced to other weaves at a renaissance festival on the campus of the Ohio State University in the form of chainmail bracelets. This sparked a renewed interest and I began playing and experimenting with new ways to connect the steel links to try and replicate the bracelet I ended up buying myself. Though I didn’t figure out that particular weave, I began to come up with others. I would go back the following year to buy another bracelet of a different weave from a different vendor who offered to teach me how to make it if I bought a bracelet from them. Which I did and they did. They taught me the half Persian weave that is still my go to design all these many years later. oh, and that weave i mentioned earlier, the one i couldn't quite figure out? In my ever ongoing effort to improve, I did recently learn how to do that particular weave. That was a proud moment for me.

A while later I would become a member of the Columbus Idea Foundry, an amazing maker space that gave me a place to work and collaborate but most importantly, a platform to sell merchandise. Realizing I could get my work out there and make a little money on the side led to an explosion of work as I began making more and more products and teaching myself new weaves. So that is my 22 year relationship, yes my hobby is now old enough to drink, with chainmaille. But enough about me. This is not my history with chainmaille after all but THE history of chainmaille.

So figuring out the beginning of chainmaille is tricky. Being made from wire made of low quality metal, it doesn’t really stand up to the test of time. Another issue is that we see it pop up in different locations, Europe the middle east and Asia, seemingly independently. So we don’t have a hard and sure start and if different cultures are developing it independently, we can’t REALLY say any one people originated it. So let’s stick to what we know. First things first. There are several spellings for chainmail. whether it is one word or two, whether mail is spelled m-a-i-l or m-a-i-l-l-e makes no difference. it is also sometimes referred to as ringmail. chainmaille as a name for this type of armour is relatively modern, earliest references place it in the 1700s. Before this it is just maille (or mail) popularly thought to be from the French “Maille,”(my-uh) from the Latin “macula” meaning, among other things,the mesh of a net. What it was called before this by it’s ancient celt inventors: “mmbopbadoopadop” which means “Remember that one time I made that one thing?” In ancient Celtic. Just kidding. The answer is: Who knows. Since written language wasn’t really used by the celts, we don’t see it recorded until it reaches the hands of the romans. So likely either it just was what it was or it was given more of a descriptor than a name (similar to how maille was derived) regardless, one way or another, whatever it was called originally has been lost to time. As any of the above names or spellings work just fine in conveying my meaning they can all be considered synonymous in my book. The rest is just semantics.

In Europe: it is believed that chainmail evolved from lamellar armor. This was a type of armor made from cloth or leather that was reinforced with bits of metal sewn into it. The belief is that metal rings came to be the preferred shape for this reinforcement which gets people thinking, well, what if we just eliminate the middleman and just stick the rings together without having to sew them to something else? Recognizable mail is most commonly believed to have originated with the ancient Celts sometime before 500 bc. We don’t really know when exactly it was created but we start seeing suggestions of remains of chainmaille dating to this time period. Suggestions of remains, doesn’t sound too certain, does it? But it’s actually pretty cool. If you recall, I mentioned that the early chainmail all rusted away. So how do we have evidence? Ok, so a lot of civilizations made a practice of burying people with what they would need for the afterlife. For warriors, this often included weapons and armour, including chainmaille. It was also common practice to give items, including weapons and armour, including once again, you guessed it, chainmail. as offerings to the gods of the land, often by chucking them into bodies of water and/or bogs. So what does that have to do with anything? A couple things actually. Why would water be a good thing for preserving metal artefacts? It seems kinda counter intuitive. So the most important factor for both of these situations is oxygen, or a lack thereof. Rust or iron oxide is an oxidation process. It’s a product of oxygen! So drastically reduce the oxygen and you can slow down the oxidation, making it last longer. Unfortunately this process was only slowed, not stopped. After 2,500 years, even slowed this potential chainmail has long since rusted away. So how do we know it was ever there to begin with? So even if the chainmaille itself is nothing but dust whether it was buried in the dirt or tossed into a lake it sank down into the mud over time, leaving the impression behind for us to find. Which I think is pretty neat. At this time we are looking at a European four in one (which means that every ring is connected to four other rings to build the maille.) made up of butted rings. That is rings that are just snugged closed which is most of the chainmaille you see being made nowadays. So all these people who say that butted rings aren’t accurate and that you can’t test the effectiveness of maille based on butted ring stuff, you’re wrong. Yes, for the majority of its history rings were either welded or riveted shut, making a stronger, more cohesive weave but butted mail is not wrong or inaccurate, it is just older. Apparently maille is a very controversial topic I guess for some reason…? Anyway, I seem to be getting ahead of myself.

So we don’t really know a whole ton about chainmail of this period for the same reasons given above. It’s hard to know much about metal stuff when any evidence of it crumbled away thousands of years ago and there was no writing. Enter the romans. In July 390 BC, (popularly at least. The actual attack seems to have taken place in 387, 390 or 393 according to scholars. Nobody really wants to agree. It is worth noting that though we do have written accounts from various Roman historians, each of the accounts is a little different so most people are biased by which historian they back.) So sometime between 387 and 393, the Celtic Gauls sack Rome. They had just defeated the Roman armies At the battle of Allia, between the Tiber and Allia rivers and decided, you know what, why not? So they marched on Rome which, at the time, was barely fortified and turned out to be virtually undefended. So the Gauls walk in through the open, undefended gate initially expecting a trap yet in they went. There are even accounts that say they left alone the houses of the rich that were just open and ripe for the taking and instead they went for the houses of the plebeians who had locked themselves in, still just waiting for that trap to fall. Some accounts say this was actually because the rich aristocrats in all their finery were sitting there in their chairs watching impassively and in their wealth and regal bearing, they appeared like gods. In this version the effect is ruined when one of these rich “gods” whacks a Gaul on the head when he got too close. The angry Gaul then killed the man, the spell was broken and then everyone was fair game. Most likely, as is often the case, it was a combination of these stories. Regardless, the Gauls went on, looting and slaughtering and burning until only the core was left. In one popular story, the Gauls led a night raid against this downtown core, creeping along past people and even their dogs but the geese in the temple of Juno started freaking out, alerting the defenders just in time to push the encroachers back. Another note on sources, as is pretty common with these old accounts of events, they are usually a mix of history, legend and folktale so whether or not this particular raid ever happened, who knows, but it sure does make a good story. Anyway, the Romans eventually make peace, and they pay the Gauls a thousand pounds in gold to leave. Another fun story. According to the historian Livy, after the terms were agreed to, the Gauls insist on using their own “special” scales to weigh the gold out. These scales appear to have been not quite fair, so the Romans complained at which point Brennus, the chieftain of the invading Gauls, drew his sword and tossed it onto the scale in addition to the 1000ish pound weights already there before yelling “Vae Victus!” Woe to the Vanquished. Another nother note on sources. Livy wasn’t born until around 64 or 59 bc. As I said, these accounts are by HISTORIANS so stories were likely embellished a bit in the meantime. Plus, being Roman, they wanted to put Rome in the best light they could, even in defeat so they may not be 100% accurate.

Any dang way, the victorious Gauls leave Rome, burdened down with their newfound riches and head home. One important note, the Roman army of this time was not the great and mighty Roman army we are familiar with. They are more modeled on the Ancient Greek tradition, lightly armored and armed with small shields and javelins. This defeat seriously freaked out the Romans and kicked them into gear. They built the Servian wall around the city to ramp up their defenses and they gave their army a drastic overhaul. Moving away from the Greek style they had used before, who better to look to for inspiration than the army who had just massively humiliated and defeated them. They took their current kit and go bigger and better. They trade their small shields, javelins and small swords called xiphos for bigger, better versions of themselves. They start using big old shields called scutum. They adopt special, heavier javelins called pila. A pilum was a form of javelin with a wooden shaft that ended in a long metal which terminated in a broad blade. Roman infantry typically carried two pila, one for throwing,, and one slightly heavier for close quarters combat. It is believed by modern experimental archaeologists that this design had two purposes. one, when thrown, if an enemy tried to use a shield to block the incoming missile, the blade would penetrate the shield, then that long, iron shaft would bend from the weight of the weapon, making it difficult to draw out, especially in the heat of battle, and if you did manage to jerk it out, it would tear up your shield. so the only option is to leave it lodged in your shield, which makes it pretty difficult to use

The only thing for it was to discard your shield, taking away the soldier's first line of defense and effectively breaking up shield walls. The other perk to this design we have found is that once the blade has gone through the shield, the narrow metal shaft slides easily through the hole created allowing one to stab through the shield into the person using it. they trade their xiphe for Gladiī. Gladius is latin for sword. Any sword, not necessarily the one most people think of when they hear the word. Some think the shape of the gladius was inspired by the swords of the celtiberians. which would make sense because it is believed the word gladius itself is derived from the celtic kladio. The roman gladius most people think of when they hear the term is the gladius hispaniensis. This was a short sword, with a heavy, broad blade. They also adopt better armour including Lorica Hamata, that is chainmail armour.

hamata is from the latin hamatus, meaning hooked. This referred to its assembly process, literally hooking rings together. These used alternating rows of punched iron rings (think like a washer) and riveted rings to connect them.

With their bigger, better army they begin setting about conquering lands and growing from the small, scared republic of the past to becoming the most famous conquering machine in history. This expansion leads to a spread of Roman arms and armour as the conquered peoples and neighbors either become them or want to be them and adopt their styles. This leads to a massive spread of chainmail across the Roman territories. We begin to see fragments and pieces of chainmail still around today.

Another key spreading force of chainmail were the nordic peoples who encountered it in their raiding. They liked what they saw of chainmail and like the Romans, began to adopt it.

A shirt of mail is usually referred to as a byrnie or hauberk. byrnie shows up in middle english around 1325 from the scottish brynie from the old Norse brynja, meaning a shirt of mail which matches the old english byrne and old high german brunnia and may be related to the old irish bruinne meaning breast. (similar to breastplate) the byrnie is popularized by the French Carolingians, the family of Charlemagne.

The word hauberk also comes from the french specifically, from the old frankish halsberg from bergen to protect and hals meaning neck or throat. so a halsberg was originally a small piece of mail that protected your throat. not quite sure how we arrive from the small halsberg to hauberk meaning an entire shirt but who knows…

Some hold that only a shirt that extends to the knees with voluminous sleeves is a hauberk, while a sleeveless vest that extends to mid thigh is a habergeon and a short sleeved tunic coming to the waist (think t-shirt) is a byrnie. but I don't really see any hard and fast proof for this. likely they may have originally been linked to a specific style, like the carolingian byrnie for example but over time just became synonymous. I grew up with the term hauberk, so that is mostly what I use.

Despite technical advances, making a hauberk still remains a tedious, time consuming task. Back then you couldn’t just walk into your local hardware store to pick up some machine fabricated metal wire and start going to town. No, first the wire had to be made. Exactly how this was done is in large part a mystery though this has largely been illuminated by the discovery of a metal draw plate in the remains of an ancient smithy. So ostensibly they would have gotten together their scraps of cast off, low quality pot iron or whatever they had lying around, probably forged it down to a round piece then drew it through the progressively smaller holes until it was wire. If this sounds tedious and labor intensive, this is only step one! Next step is to make the rings. Now here things get foggy again, lost in time, nowadays at least we wind the wire around a spindle of the size we want to make a coil. It ends up looking like a tight spring. Then you cut the individual rings out, we use snips or a saw or for the specialists, they have a machine that coils and cuts them for them. Must be nice. It streamlines the process and makes everything easier. That's why I personally find it to be easier and cheaper in the long run to buy rings instead of making my own now that I'm getting more serious about it.

Now pretty quick after we start seeing recognizable chainmaille people start looking for ways to improve the end product. One of the biggest problems with mail is impact or just normal wear and tear popping rings. So what can you do to prevent rings from opening up and popping out? You seal them shut. So they started soldering or riveting them closed. This takes a laborious process even longer and turns it excruciating. This is made a little quicker and sturdier by alternating rows of your rings to be sealed with rows of solid rings that look kinda like washers. For those who are wondering, "just how exactly do you rivet a tiny metal ring?" The answer is: very carefully. The rings have a slight overlap that is hammered flat with a hole in it. A tiny metal rivet, either triangular or with a rounded head, kinda like a nail (depending on the time period) is inserted and the tip folded over to seal the ring closed. This remains the process and pattern used for centuries. Now as you've probably noticed, making this mail is a loooong, tedious, labor intensive process. This and it's versatility make it valuable. A shirt of maille, hauberk, could cost more than a suit of plate armor, so if people are paying an arm and a leg to protect their arms and legs, they want it to at least look pretty. So we start seeing suits of maille with fancy, decorative riffs and embellishments. These could be made of different, softer materials like precious metals, and use different, more decorative weaves. This is the ancestor of our modern chainmaille jewelry that is in a resurgence right now, popping up more and more. Many of the weaves used are modern but the idea behind it is historic. Another fun tidbit. Maille is flexible so it doesn't need an exact fit and it was relatively easy to repair. If a ring breaks or comes loose, you just pop in a new one and you're good to go. More difficult than it sounds but much easier than trying to replace a hole in plate armor. This led to maille being very commonly scavenged on the battlefield. After a while, chainmail kinda starts fizzing out in Europe. If it's such a miracle armor, why would this be? One, the time and cost factor. Also, while it provided excellent protection from sword slashes, it didn't offer much protection from puncturing, think stabbing with sword or spear or being shot with an arrow. Or any protection from the impact of a blow. Most people wore a gambeson, a kind of thick, quilted cloth garment underneath to add some padding but this only does so much.

Weapons and armour have always had kind of a special, reactionary relationship. People are coming at you with swords and axes, you make chainmaille to protect you from slashing attacks. Now your enemy also has chainmail and your sword no longer seems to be performing like it used to? Either take a pill for that or switch tactics. Now they come at you with their expensive, designer chainmail, you focus more on puncturing with thrusting weapons or shooting them full of arrows. Then comes plate armor. Less maneuverable and had to more or less custom fit to be effective so lower resale value in ye olde Kelly blue book but it gives good protection for what it's being used for. So what do you do when an army is charging at you in full plate armour, seeming impenetrable? You get bigger weapons. Swords start getting bigger and heavier like the german zweihänder (s-vie-hun-der) Scottish claymore. another fun fact: the largest claymore on record is housed in the national war museum in Edinburgh, Scotland and is named Fuilteach Mhuirt, (fool-chagh(guttural)voosht) (fuilteach meaning blooded or bloody and mhuirt from muirt (moo-sht) meaning murder or death. so it's name is literally bloody murder. so next time someone accuses you of crying bloody murder, you can say 'well actually…')

We see bigger, heavier axes and crushing weapons like maces and Warhammer that can crush your plate armour like an aluminum can for recycling becoming more popular. We even see a combination of both showing up. An amalgam of steel plates with maille offering cut resistance and flexibility on the joints and neck. Best of both worlds.

Yet another controversy people are up in arms about. We've all likely heard the term plate mail at one point or time. This brings all the trolls out from under their bridges. They're all like, 'chain mail, that's redundant, mail is chain so why call it chain mail???' And 'plate mail?? That's stupid. Your face is stupid. It's plate ARMOUR. Duh.' What I say? Chill. Seriously, it's not the end of the world and is in fact historic. You see, somewhere around the dark ages mail became synonymous for armour to most people so when all these fancy, newfangled armours start coming out and with no internet trolls to tell them in excruciating detail exactly why they're wrong, these new types of armour also begin getting called mail. Now that would be kinda confusing. It would be like if all tools were called hammer. So they needed to differentiate between types. So mail becomes chainmaille, plate becomes plate maille, scale mail, etc.

in the 14th century we see the introduction of firearms in the European theatre. By the 15th century, use is pretty widespread and chainmail. which despite what they say in the movie Wild Wild West, is not bulletproof, begins to fall out of use. This marked the end of serious use of chainmail in europe.

In the late 19th, early 20th cen it was briefly resurrected by companies looking to create bullet proof body armor, most notably the Wilkinson sword company founded in Britain in 1772 and is still in business today. The problem is, the rings were too brittle and shattered on impact with a bullet actually causing worse wounds than without. This leads the design, in a mirror image of history, to be replaced with more of a lamellar style garment which gives birth to their flak jacket in WWII.

Though it doesn't seem to have caught on, a look at chainmail in Europe would not be complete without a look at the etruscans. The Etruscans as a people begin to take recognizable shape around 900 BC with the rise of the villanova culture at the dawn of the iron age. The Etruscans at their height of prominence control a good chunk of mid and upper Italy until they are slowly absorbed into the Roman Empire, starting with the etruscan-roman wars of the 4th cen. After that they gradually become more roman until 90 BC when Etruscans are granted roman citizenship, then in 27 BC the deal is sealed and Rome officially annexes etruscan territory.

but sometime in all this the Etruscans develop their own form of chainmail, perhaps older than the celtic variety. Despite their proximity to Gaul, it is believed the Etruscans invented their mail independently and vice versa because they use a completely different pattern. The mail of the Etruscans, judging from art, more closely resembles japanese style mail than european. These two styles are completely different, which is what leads us to believe that they had little to no influence on each other.

in the middle east we see the mysterious persian mail. Little is known about this particular variety but we know it existed because of Herodotus and we see it referenced in the Avesta, which is the scripture of the persian religion zoroastrianism from around the 5th cen.

From there, let's delve into Asia. We don't know when chainmail actually began in Japan, but it was in use at least since the first mongol invasion of Japan, which has its own episode. if you haven't already checked it out, i highly recommend it.

Japanese mail is completely different from european mail, except perhaps etruscan mail, but you know what I mean. japanese chainmail, or kusari, is made up of larger, thinner rings of higher quality and strength than the metal rings used in Europe that laid flat and were connected by smaller, oval rings that were sometimes doubled or tripled for increased strength. If you think about what type of weapons this was designed to defend against, this makes a lot of sense. The primary weapon of the samurai was the katana which was specifically designed as a slashing weapon. Having this weave like this would protect against slashes while being less dense and therefore lighter weight and more breathable than the heavier, denser european mail which was more one size fits all for a variety of weapons. That being said, the pattern of Japanese mail could shift and change and be adapted for a variety of circumstances.

Now, because of the Japanese philosophy of striving for perfection in everything, they developed a million different forms of mail. there are more patterns of Japanese mail than everywhere else combined. Kusari could be adapted to different situations with different weaves being designed and used to fit. These were often meshed in with each other so a single suit could have several different weaves. For example denser weaves could be used over vital areas while lighter could be used on non vitals to cut weight and a lighter, more supple weave could be used on the joints for ease of movement. (as opposed to monotone european mail that would sometimes just be left open at the joints.)

We do see some evidence of people attempting to market european mail in isolated circumstances but the Japanese were like, we have our mail down to a science for our style of fighting so why would we want your cumbersome crap. so european mail was more of an oddity, a curio or collector's item.

So we've seen the japanese use different patterns and better materials than the Europeans, another difference is actually the type of ring. I said in the european discussion that the earliest rings were likely butted, then were quickly replaced by riveted links for the better part of its use. japanese smiths however preferred the butted rings or would use split rings (think like a key ring) for their mail. We do see some patterns that utilized riveted rings, influenced by the western designs, but by and large japanese rings were butted. The split rings were sometimes used between the butted rings to hold them together, while the actual armor rings were the butted ones. Sometimes instead of rings small metal disks or plates would be used for increased protection. and again, a suit of kusari could and often did combine all of these designs.

The japanese would continue using kusari in combat until world war two where it proved ineffective against modern guns.

Despite its vulnerability under fire, gunfire that is, chainmail is still used to this day in some professions. there are two main, modern uses for chainmail, any guesses what they are?

The first profession I am highlighting is actually two professions. chefs and butchers. they use cut resistant gloves to protect their hands from knives. These can be dense cotton, kevlar or CHAINMAIL, to name a few.

This I think is the coolest application of chainmail. It combines the old and the new. It uses the ancient chainmail and combines it with modern materials, specifically titanium, to make extremely tough and durable, yet amazingly lightweight suits of armor for divers to protect them against sharks while the lightweight (seriously, if you haven't felt titanium, it weighs practically nothing. betweens its light weight and it being hypoallergenic, i like to use titanium rings for my earrings i make.) keeps the divers from being weighed down too much.

There is currently a renaissance of sorts with chainmail jewelry becoming popular lately. This stems directly from those fancy embellishments I mentioned before. In fact, while most common weaves now are modern contrivances, some of these more historical weaves would have been used on actual armor back in the day. So wearing chainmail jewelry is literally having a piece of history that spans back at least three thousand years on you and that, I think, is pretty cool.