Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

Going through some stuff I stumbled on this picture of some suits of armor in a medieval castle taken during a tour. The thing that struck me about these suits of armor was the size. You can tell by the couple in the picture that the suits are small. Being curious about this I did a little research on the subject and come to find out the average height of a man in Europe around 1735 was about 5 foot 5 (165 cm) This varied a bit by country and North Americans were even a bit taller.

A lot is made of this and the biggest factor was the difficulty in nourishment throughout much of the middle ages. (Maybe the dark ages were so dark because nobody was tall enough to reach the string for the light In todays world we have such an amazing abundance of food. (It’s really quite unprecedented in the total history of mankind).

Anyway, being a writer of epic fantasy stuff I imagined how a group of modern day warriors standing each over six feet tall would dominate the psychology of the battle field. They would strike fear into an opponent and maybe even be called giants! The opposing army would after all only stand as tall as their chins at best.  It would be the courageous opponent who would want to battle such a man in hand to hand combat. But then again, with their heads and shoulders sticking above the fray like that they would make for some great targets for opposing archers - quite vulnerable. - On second thought maybe I will put away the time machine and stick to basketball.

The picture above is inside a castle called Meersburg - It was built around 700 and it still remains in great shape. I have more pics and information about it on my medieval castle website here

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