[I think there’s a demand for an english version of this article, so I’ll translate it.]
This blog suffered from our preference of facebook lately. That has many reasons, one of them being bigger intensity and quantity of interaction (albeit not quality!). We have had a lot of discussions about reenactment topics, many of them tiring, most very interesting. One of the more tiresome topics regards a „reenactorism“, a self-perpetuating myth that has been created by reenactors and is now often taken for a fact.
In an irregular manner, I will pick up some of these reenactorism and give them a fact check.
Today: The Varangian Guard. Legguard, not Guardsman. Actually, leg and arm guard, not Guardsman. Just a couple days ago, I saw someone selling „varangian armguards“ online, and I shivered. These devices are the impersonification of reenactorisms for me. But let me begin at the beginning…. or actually at the end.