Talk:lærbrynje

leather or chainmail?

@Donnanz, Njardarlogar: I suppose that this compound term is really only used for certain types of leather armour, probably cuir bouilli? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:22, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo: I have no idea. Einar Haugen's dictionary calls a brynje a coat of mail, it could be a leather garment with chainmail on top. DonnanZ (talk) 21:54, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

It might be, although I am not convinced. That definition fits well with some historical use of Brünne, which has a wider semantic range (except in Duden!); however I have seen it used specifically for a coat of chainmail (Kettenhemd) in reference to the early Middle Ages. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:10, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this back up; it definitely (still) needs attention. For anyone coming in via ping, note the definition used to be even more confusing, "a coat of armour made of leather, particularly chain mail" (as if chain mail was a type of leather), so as Lingo Bingo Dingo says, it'd be helpful if anyone who has resources could check what's actually meant. Let me ping a couple additional active Norwegian-speaking users, @Eiliv, Menisksmerter, Jon Harald Søby. Leather with mail over (or under) it sounds plausible. - -sche (discuss) 23:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

OK, this Tromso article has a (uselessly vague description, but also) photo of a historical reenactor's reconstructed example, where it's armour [of just leather, without metal?]; however, Bjarne Berulfsen, Engelsk-norsk (1951), page 31, translates "lærbrynje" as "buff coat", not even a type of armour. Kongsberg's lærbrynje doesn't seem lamellar, but seems like armour(?). Most of the uses/cites I can find are unhelpfully pauce on details, and if they mean anything more specific than "leather armour and/or covering", they're unfortunately not detailing it: vague cites. However, these cites either explicitly contrast it with armour, or include it among items of clothing rather than armour, supporting the idea that it at least sometimes means "buff coat" and not heavy armour; meanwhile, this cite and the Tromso article do seem to take it to be a kind of armour (and perhaps someone can track down images of the artefact the 1969 work is describing). Perhaps the meaning is something like "Leather armour or covering, particularly leather lamellar armour", or perhaps there are even two senses, "1. Leather armour, particularly leather lamellar armour" (perhaps the entry creator meant to compare it to ""scale mail"" and/or ""plate mail"", rather than to say it was "chain mail"?), and "2. Leather covering for the torso; buff coat"...? - -sche (discuss) 14:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I think that the buff coat is sometimes classed as armour (it would definitely not be made of cuir bouilli, however, unlike my suggestion above), so perhaps it could (marginally) fall under a definition "leather armour", but as a lumpy definition "leather armour or another piece of military protective clothing made of leather" could work as well.

Is it this reliquary? It has an image of Martin of Tours in armour on one end. I have a hard time parsing it, it might as well be chainmail to me. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:10, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@-sche, I probably should have sent a ping. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:19, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Good point, re a buff coat sometimes counting as armor. "Leather armour" seems like a good definition. That's probably as specific as we can manage to be unless the Norwegians we've pinged can bring other resources to bear, given how vague some of the cites are and how varied the meaning of the more specific cites seems to be. - -sche (discuss) 18:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I can't find "lærbrynje" in either the official Bokmål dictionary or in NAOB.no. However, kryssord.org lists "panserskjorte" as a synonym, and that has an entry in NAOB. The gloss there can be translated as "brynje (chainmail, but here probably more generally "upper body armor") made from leather or several layers of canvas with metal rings (chainmail) or metal scales sewn on". Hope that helps. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:25, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, this might be quite a spanner in the works. I think that the sewn-on rings is the traditional understanding of "ringmail" (still common in fantasy), which I believe is held to be a spurious historiographic invention in the literature. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:16, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Jon.

I'm trying to think of a phrase like "paired with metal" that would encompass both "worn with chainmail over it" and "with metal scales (etc) sewn onto it", because then perhaps we could just write ~"Leather armour for the upper body, sometimes reinforced with metal."? - -sche (discuss) 19:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@-sche, will "Leather armour for the upper body, sometimes combined with flexible metal armour" do? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

That sounds good to me if it sounds good to you. :) - -sche (discuss) 15:38, 15 April 2024 (UTC)