Neknoh

Are you worried about physical retaliation if you come across something you're really not meant to find during your reports?

You've already answered the questions I was curious about, but for the heck of it:

Do you use Tinder or other dating apps on your trips? A profile like yours would garner quite a bit of attention I'd imagine.

Vikings.

Just.... oh god that thing is bad.

It's just awful.

There's not a spear or mail shirt in sight, the clothes are 80% biker gear and 20% renn-fair and the armour is just... jesus christ.

They do have one decent piece of armour in the show, it's the burgonets, the combed helmets worn by the English cavalry in one of the early seasons. It's based on an existing type of helmet.

The thing is, however, that those helmets were fashionable in the middle of the 16th century.

Vikings takes place in the middle of the 10th.

So that's 600 years from Vikings... and 450 years from today's warfare. It's closer to a fighter jet than a viking-era helmet.

For reference, here's a bunch of reenactors and drawings that all would be better suited in Vikings than anything actually in Vikings.

https://www.pinterest.se/granlid/viking-era-esque/

And here's an even better one, which also includes clothes.

https://imgur.com/a/hk9OX

Also worth noting is that Saxons (the English) would have worn basically the same types of armour as the Vikings. Frankish mail and swords were the best armour money could buy in Western Europe, and if you could not afford that, you'd throw on an extra tunic, grab a shield and a spear and go to war.

Helmets would be Spangen helms or 4-panel construction Spangen helms, or ocular helmets.

Mail was more common than helmets, meaning that, when following the king and his hird (personal guard/extended warrior family/blood brother unit/every one living together in the same longhouse and fighting together), basically every one would wear a hip/groin-length mail shirt with short sleeves (about elbow length, not big and floppy either) and probably the entire group would wear occular helmets. I cannot source this, I've tried yesterday actually, but allegedly, the occular design was a Vendel-era (pre-viking, also known as Migration, ca 400-700 AD) invention in order to stop the men you slew from coming back to haunt you since they could not see your face.

In the rest of Western Europe, the nasal had started taking over around 7/800 AD, with mostly the Scandinavian cultures keeping the occular helmets.

If you want "action fantasy but pretty decent viking stuff", you want to read a comic/manga called Vinland Saga, available here and there on the internet with a quick search. There are no crazy super-moves and details the journey of a kidnapped child as he grows accustomed to war and ever closer to the man who murdered his father.

How do you stay anonymous?

Are you ever worried of your pen-name being cracked open?

What measures have you taken to make sure that does not happen? As a writer of mainly youth and children's novels, I can't say that the siren song of smut and sex has not called to me time and time again, those green-backed nereids sing so sweetly with dollar signs in their eyes. But I am too worried about beeing "found out" in some way.

Short answer? No, not really. It is possible that the late 14th century multi-layered armour might if we allow for a heat-treated breastplate (most armour from the 14th and early 15th century are plain steel or just iron).

This would include:

An arming jack/doublet: this is a hip-length jacket made to be sturdy, but not truly padding, it allows you to wear your armour in a more comfortable way and makes sure it is secured.

https://clothingthepast.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/recreating-a-14th-century-pourpoint/charles-de-blois-pourpoint-c-1360-musee-des-tissus-et-des-arts-decoratifs-de-lyon-inv-no-30307/

Note that it isn't padded, it's merely 4-6 layers of cloth sewn together, the quilting is there to stiffen it so that it better shapes the body and holds its form. This particular piece is a civilian garment, but battlefield letters notes clothing made from "cloth of gold" and "silk velvet" taken off of captured prisoners.

On top of this, if we keep an open back on our upcoming torso defense, our armoured fighter (a man-at-arms, a fully armoured soldier, or what most people think of when they think of "knights", despite knight being a title and a squire being the son of a knight) would wear a mail shirt (also known as mail, haubergeon and iron shirt, it is chainmail in modern words). The reason we want a mail shirt on him is that this adds more steel on top of his chest.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/f0/31/71f03149a85004410ef12647955e2d67.jpg

This one is 15th century, but would basically be identical to a late 14th century.

On top of his full mail shirt, he would wear a globose breastplate, with or without a fauld (skirt), since we have elected to wear a full mail shirt, it is likely it is without a completely enclosing back-defense, so either strapped from the sides, or including salloon doors (wings that cover parts of the shoulderblades and are either laced or strapped together, leaving a gap over the spine).

One such breastplate is the Churburg S14. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0941/1252/products/Churburg_14th_century_breastplate_medieval_armour_2048x2048.jpg?v=1516946728

(sidenote, it has quite a deep dish, but I cannot find any side-views right now due to something having changed in Google's search algorithm for the S14, so here is another contemporary breastplate, the S13 from the same castle)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/b8/be/eeb8be5b7d08638b755f7c731b0bec71.jpg

Note how short they are, they stop at or before they reach the navel and natural waist, also note the depth. These are defenses designed to allow you to move whilst fighting and also to have a crumple zone when taking a lance to the chest.

On top of this, in the late 14th century, there would be the Jupon, a thick, quilted garment, sewn around tight rolls of cotton, or stuffed with cotton and linen tow (fuzzy plant fibres).

Here is an original http://www.sagacioushours.org.uk/images/fighting_research/Charles_pourpoint_combined_web.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/3b/14/413b14d11fb3c518fdd2c82884de7d83.png

And here is a reconstruction based off of thorough investigation of said original, this particular page deals with the construction and quilt.

http://cottesimple.com/pourpoint-of-charles-vi/charles-vi-coat-armour-reproduction-padding-quilting/

This means that we would have a layer of 2+ cm's of tightly rolled cotton, along with the 6 fabric shells.

Then, center mass, ca. 3-4mm of domed, hardened steel (if allowed maximum technology), followed by a ca. 2-3mm thick weave of steel rings, and lastly another 4-6 fabric shells.

This might, head on, stop a handgun.

However, considering there are plenty of carbines and even handguns able to punch through engine blocks, I'd rather take my chances with a balistics vest.

One final option for defense is to strip away the mail and the outer quilted layer, keep the sturdy jacket and don a 16th century heavy jousting harness, or a 17th century cuirassier or siege engineer breastplate.

These were thick, made to withstand musket balls or heavy, couched lances and built with much sharper deflection angles. However, even so, modern machines of war are just too devastating.