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WENDISH TRIBESMAN, 11th-12th CENTURIES
An extract from Armies of Feudal Europe 1066-1300by Ian Heath
109. WENDISH TRIBESMAN, 11th-12th CENTURIES
These were basically armed and equipped identically to the Prussians, though probably somewhat more of their nobility possessed mail armour and at an earlier date, obtained both by looting and by trade with Scandinavia and Germany. The majority, however, went into battle unarmoured except for a helmet and shield, and though most men possessed these ‘Heimskringla' records a Pomeranian in the forefront of the attack on Konghelle to have had neither, in addition being armed with no more than a sword. In the same attack a Wend armed with a bow is recorded to have ‘killed a man with every arrow, and 2 men stood before him and covered him with their shields.‘ However, such a marksman was the exception rather than the norm since we know that during his war against Denmark in the 1170's, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony (1142-81) felt it necessary to send 2 experts to his Pomeranian allies to improve their archery.
They wore their hair short (only priests being permitted long hair) and dressed in the same simple linen and woollen costume as the Prussians. We know that some wore the same sort of fur waistcoat as figures 106 and 107 from the fact that a branch of the Pomeranians were called Cassubians, meaning ‘shaggy-coat men’.
