Western medieval army kits 9th and 10th centuries

[Dan Howard]

There aren't many books worth reading. None of the Osprey material is much good. There are a few prmary texts worth looking at: the Capitulare Missorum, and the Capitulary of Aachen are the main two. Basically armour included mainly mail and a little scale. It was restricted to wealthy landholders and a few favoured officers. The rest wore no armour at all. FWIW this was the situation in Scandinavia at the time as well so both sides are wearing essentially the same gear. Most of the mail was made by the Franks and sold north. Charlemagne tried to keep mail for his own troops and prohibited it from being sold without permission