Lol, they look goofy as hell without anyone depicted to oppose them. Like, just a group of guys dramatically giving war cries and striking battle poses to a completely uninhabited stretch of shore.
PLUNDER THE BEACHES
You mean goofing across rough terrain
Holy shit, were round shields really that large?
I always thought it was an exaggeration in VR, about how it covers almost your entire body
Depends on the era and the shield. There’s a good spread of sizes in the re-enactors here.
Generally though, yeah, Vikings wanted large shields to make sure everyone could cover one-another in a shield wall.
Excellent. I was personally torn between the wooden round shield and a metal kite shield (for durability and repair purposes), and ended up using a wooden round shield for 80% of my ultra realistic VR Rogue Dungeon-Crawling Experience.
I just figured they were oversized for ease of blocking in VR, but apparently not (red and white one in your photo as a reference), which means they were exceptionally good shields for the time period.
Reminds me of that UK tradition of chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill.
