How tall were medieval knights?

[fearn]

For the calves, I wonder if they are thin because they are being held on it part by the springiness of the metal, as opposed to slapping around as the wearer walked.

Not sure about the small chest thing, though. You'd think, given the mucking great weapons they were swinging, they would have rather large chests.

Fun stuff!

F

[Dmitry]

When I was just a lad of 10 or 11, growing up in the old USSR, I visited the Lenin Museum in Ulyanovsk. Exhibited was the coat that Lenin wore when he was shot [poorly] by Fanni Kaplan. Even then it struck me how tiny it was. Man was a midget.

[A Senefelder]

For the calves, I wonder if they are thin because they are being held on it part by the springiness of the metal, as opposed to slapping around as the wearer walked.

Having seen a number of these greaves up close, they're really thin. I've made a fair number of them over the years and one thing that has to be taken into account when building them is that the calf cannot be an absolute contour of the wearers calf when standing since in a full crouch the calf expands considerably out to either side due to downward presure/compression from the thigh above and the greave must allow room for this. That being said the period greaves from fine harness i've seen are still very slim, often seemingly slightly abnormally so.

You'd think, given the mucking great weapons they were swinging, they would have rather large chests.

Based on the original weapons i've owned over the years weight is not an overidding factor. They've been quite light and user friendly, most swords comming in at the 1.75 to 2.75 pound range. I visited with Lee Jones this past weekend and he was kind enough to let me handle an excellent munitions zweihander he owns which I suspect came in at the 4.5 pound range but was still easilly controlable in the single hand. I swing hammer for a living making armour and it has manifested inteself not in my chest but in my arms, specifically my right arm which is noticibly bigger than my left. I suspect that weapons practice would have yielded a fit individual rather than a big one but this is of course nothing more than my supposition.

[RDGAC]

As has been noted, diet and lifestyle overall had (and still have) a lot to do with stature; this was also true of disease; serious illness was liable to have much more pronounced effects on human bodies in an era with little medical knowledge and almost no provision of useful medical care for the afflicted. One recalls, to echo the sentiment of kahnjar1, the grim revelation that, during the 2nd Boer War, recruits from Manchester - then probably the most industrialised city in the world, and almost all of it dedicated to the support of the cotton manufacturing trade - were the shortest, sickliest men available to the British Army; the rejection rate was exceptionally high, and I seem to remember figures as high as 90% being mentioned. These men tended to suffer from any number of maladies, including malnutrition, rickets, bisinosis, black lung... the list goes on and on. All of them endured poor diets, damaging housing and atrocious working conditions.

Even the upper classes, despite their generally superior lifestyle, were not immune. To take another 19th-Century example, Capt. Lawrence Oates (of Scott fame), whose mess waistcoat is preserved in our collection, really must have been rather lacking in stature. That garment would hardly fit me, and I'm not exactly hefty.

As an aside, a friend of mine who has been working out incessantly since he was around 15 (and is an accomplished martial artist, and all round great bloke to boot) is, despite his good diet etc, around 5ft 9in. His brother is around 6ft 1in, having not been quite such a fitness fanatic. Perhaps constant hard exercise, especially in the important youthful growth period, stunts one somewhat.

[fearn]

Thanks for the information on the greaves. Oddly, I'm still a bit puzzled about the chest, but whatever. I guess core muscles and shoulders do the job.

As for hard work stunting a body, I can make the opposite case. I'm rather large, and I've always had trouble doing martial arts things that smaller people could do easily. What was getting me was the square-cube proportionality law. My wrists and ankles (and other major joints) aren't a lot larger than those of someone who is a foot shorter than I am (the square: joint surface area), but I weigh a lot more (the cube: weight). As a result, I stress my joints a lot harder when I move than does someone who is shorter and lighter.

That's why a gymnast throwing a couple of flips isn't nearly as impressive as a football player doing the same move. The gymnast isn't as close to blowing her joints as the big guy is. I've seen some (ex)football players do some pretty impressive moves given their size, and they have my respect.

Does working hard stunt growth? Probably. But at the same time, a smaller person may be more comfortable with the moves of a martial artist, causing them to stick with the practice where someone who is bigger has to endure more stress injuries.

My tuppence,

F

edit P.S.: I mean American football, not real football.

[pallas]

id heard that the norse and swedes of the viking age were decently purportioned fellows

[fernando]

Originally Posted by pallas

... I heard that the norse and swedes of the viking age were decently porportioned fellows ...

Going a bit backwards, the Lusitanians, probably the most typical pre-Roman warrior race group who inhabited part of what would be Portugal, were rather thick and small.
On the other hand Germans were consensualy rather tall ... eventually much taller than Romans.
Can't it be assumed that, the variable height of individuals, departs from the relative pattern of the different peoples/races stature?
That is, besides the fact that a good diet and heavy training strenghtens and stretches limbs and even body dimensions, a well fed and exhaustively trained nobleman from Lusitanian origins produces a knight not so tall as a German could be.
... Generaly speaking .