Lagertha's battle armor
January 2021 - February 2023
based on Lagertha's costume
from "Vikings - season 3"
Vikings - History
The second reason is that when I was talking about the fact that I wanted to make this costume to a friend, he didn't believe that I could do it. So obviously I decided to prove him wrong! We made a bet and if I succeeded he would buy me a bonus addition to this costume, which I will talk about later!
And last but not least, I wanted to look as cool as Lagertha ;)
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I started working on this project in january 2021 and right now (october 2021) it's still far from done. I've completed the body armor and the shield so far, and I've just started working on the bracers. Once they are done I still have to make the boots, the shirt, the pants, the belt and the scabbard. It's hard to estimate how long it will take me to completely finish it, but I'm sure it will take at least until the new year. Of course it will depend on how much free time I have.
I made Lagertha’s battle outfit! Let me start of by saying that this project was HUGE! This was by far the costume that took me the longest to complete out of all of them, it’s insane how many hours this project took me, but it was so worth it!
This costume has kind of a long introduction story. It had been on my list from the moment I first watched Vikings, I love Lagertha, she's so cool and I love this costume in particular! But I didn’t plan to actually start working on it this soon. The reason why I did is that, first of all, I’ve always wanted to work with leather, I think it's a really beautiful and intriguing material. One of the costumes that made me want to start making costumes had a leather corset (it’s Tauriel’s outfit from the Hobbit), but it seemed like such a difficult material to work with that I decided to wait with Tauriel's costume until I felt like I had the skill to do it. For some reason, I thought that this costume would be an easy leather project to start with. Let me tell you, it was not ^-^"
Vikings - History
Part 1.1: the armor, the leather part
The longest and the most difficult part of this costume was definitely the body armor, it took me 5 months to complete! Usually, I would start with the undergarments of a costume and work my way up, but I was just too excited about the leather and the chainmail that I actually made this part first. Like I said, I had never made anything out of leather before so I was quite nervous about this part, but also really eager to learn. I watched a lot of tutorials (especially "the shieldmaiden guide - Vikings armor" by Cosplay.Productions, it's amazing and I highly recommend it!) and eventually I felt like I knew more or less what I was doing.
First I needed a pattern, usually I trace my patterns and then make a mock-up, but I felt like using ducktape would be easier for this project. So I rolled myself in plastic wrap and then asked a friend to cover me in ducktape. Lagertha's armor is made out of 20 long, thin pieces (10 in the front, 10 in the back) so I traced them all out on the ducktape and cut them out.
Then I could start with the leather. I chose pretty thick leather, about 4mm, so my armor would be hard and sturdy just like real leather armor. This made it harder to work with but looked so much better and more realistic. I cut out all the pieces and started working on the motif. Lagertha has a snake motif on her leather, which I recreated using a swivel knife and a textured stamp. I made sure the pattern continued smoothly from one piece to another.
All the leather pieces
Before painting, I wanted to make the leather look a bit more used and battle-worn, so I soaked the leather in water, went to the stony ground in my backyard, put the leather on the stones and just walked all over it. The stones create a natural texture that makes the leather look much more authentic considering this armor is supposed to have seen quite a few battles.
Afterwards, I dyed the leather dark brown and went over the snake with an even darker brown. I also used some sanding paper to scratch over the snakes a bit to make them pop out more.
Once this was done I could start assembling the pieces. Each piece has holes on the side and they are connected with some round leather cord. I noticed that some of the holes on Lagertha's armor are S-shaped and not round. Probably nobody will notice this detail but I still made an extra effort to make it as close to the original as possible. I punched all the holes (and there are a lot of them) by hand, and because I didn't have an S-shaped punch I had to go over those holes twice with a crescent-shaped one. Then I could finally assemble the leather pieces together and this was the moment that the armor started to take shape.
Making the snake pattern
I continued by adding the collar. It's made out of another strip of leather that I put in water and bent so that it would look folded upwards once worn. To attach the collar a punched some round holes this time and attached it to the armor with a different flat leather cord
Adding the collar
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I used the same leather cord to decorate and finish the edges using a special braided/knot technique.
The sides of the armor are left open so I can put it on. To close it I punched some rivets in the sides and they can be closed together with some cord.
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At this point, I already spent a few months on the armor but I was far from done, a very important piece was this missing: the chainmail
Finishing the edges
Talking about chainmail...
Part 1.2: the armor, the chainmail
5 rings
251 rings
17 rings
I feel like the chainmail deserves a separate part because it was almost as much work as the whole leather part. Again I had never done this before but I really wanted to make my own chainmail instead of buying it so I just went for it!
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There are 6 different pieces of chainmail on the armor and 2 more on the bracers. For the armor that's 2 shoulder pieces, 2 front pieces and 2 back pieces. I used a European 4 in 1 weave because that's what Lagertha's chainmail looks like. So basically this means that every ring is connected to 4 other rings. Some people like to make a bunch of small pieces of chainmail and then connect them together but I prefer working row by row
102 rings
And so on, and so on, and so on,...
This took an eternity to complete, in total there are more than 6200 individual rings on the armor piece! But I'm really glad I did it, I think it adds a lot to the costume.
Once all the pieces were done I could attach them to the leather part with some cord.
Making the shoulder pieces
Attaching the chainmail
The last step was adding some decorative gold/bronze rivets to the leather part. I punched some holes in the right spots and hammered the rivets in place. This was a pretty small step compared to the rest but it added a lot to the costume I think and makes it look more real.
Adding the rivets
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So the armor piece was finally complete and I am SO happy with the result, honestly it couldn't have turned out better I think.! I'm really proud especially since this was the first time I worked with leather and chainmail.
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also fun fact (less fun for my back): this piece alone weighs about 7 kilos!! I'm definitely going to regret some material choices the day I will wear this costume, but at least it looks realistic ^‿^
So apart from being the longest to complete, this cosplay is also definitely the heaviest I've made, especially with the shield!
Finally done!!
Part 2: the bracers
Next were the bracers. The process for these was pretty much the same as for the armor piece. I started by tracing a pattern on paper, marking where all the little details should go. Then I cut the two pieces out of leather and I used a pin to mark the position of the details on the leather. This was much easier than trying to mark them precisely with a pencil. Once everything was marked clearly I dyed the leather the same brown as before.
After this, I could start decorating. I started with the little bronze circles and cones that are placed all over the bracer. I punched holes where I wanted them to go, trying to copy the original design as closely as possible, and attached everything. Then I could move on to the eyelets on each side, these will be used to close the bracer. Since the leather is so thick I had to close the eyelets by hand, which was quite hard and tedious to do but I got there eventually.
Next, I punched the holes for the leather cord. In the middle, it is just a simple diagonal design, but for the top and bottom, I used the same braiding technique as before to finish the edges nicely.
More chainmail!!
Punching holes ... again
Last but certainly not least was the chainmail. Since the opening for the chainmail isn't a perfect rectangle, it was quite difficult to get the right shape in the chainmail and I had to make changes to it multiple times while putting it in the bracer. I noticed on the reference pictures that the holes on the top and bottom of the chainmail were S-shaped. This was pretty annoying because there wasn't a lot of space to make the holes, but I wanted to stick true to the original so I did my best to make it look nice. Finally, I could put in the chainmail by simply threading a leather cord through the holes.
And then I just had to do it all over again for the other arm :)
I love how they turned out!!
Part 3: the shirt
Once the bracers were done, I moved on to the shirt. I had quite a hard time finding the right fabric for this, especially because I couldn't find the right shade of blue. So instead I bought a light blue fabric and dyed it to be the right colour. I had to repeat the dying process multiple times and do a lot of tests but eventually, I got there!
Then, once I had my fabric, I started making the shirt. It's a pretty basic shirt, but since I spend so much time and effort on the fabric, I still made a mock-up just to be sure everything looked good. Later I used the mock-up as a pattern and cut out the shirt. Sewing it together went quite fast, and then I sewed all the edges over by hand, so you wouldn't be able to see any visible stitch lines.
Testing the colour
Making a mock up
Finishing the collar
Sewing the bottom edge and the edges of the sleeves by hand
Adding the sleeves with a french seam
Cutting out the leather and dying it blue
Now the hard part: the leather decorations. Lagertha's shirt has leather straps sewn around the collar, on the sleeves and on the front of the shirt. In order to make this as easy as possible, I bought the thinnest leather I could find, but it was still hard to sew by hand. But first I had to dye the leather again. This time I needed a grey-blue colour so I had to mix some dyes together to achieve this. Once everything was dry, I started sewing the leather straps to the shirt. This alone took me three weeks to complete since the leather was so tough to pierce and I hurt my fingers a lot. But I got there eventually and the finished shirt looks very good, especially with the blue embroidery thread I used to sew the leather straps.
Sewing the leather with embroidery thread
The only detail left was the hooks to close the shirt. There are three sets of hooks and bars to close the shirt, one decorative set on top and two sets on the inside that you can't really see. For the one on top, I was a bit worried because it has a very specific design and I couldn't really find anything that looked similar. But then I got really lucky while ordering my shoes from Armstreet (I'll talk about them later) because they sell hook closures that look almost identical to Lagertha's. The two other hooks aren't visible so I chose some simple black hooks that match the style of the costume. I sewed them all on to complete the shirt!
Part 4: the pants
I was so happy when I got to this part because the pants are quite simple and were done very quickly. So this was by far the easiest part of the whole costume and took me only two days to complete.
First off, I went looking for fabric. I suspect that lagertha's pants are made of leather but I thought that might be a bit risky since they could tear very easily, and it would be very expensive for something that could break after only one day of wearing. So instead, I chose a fabric that looks very similar and has the right texture. In the end, I'm very happy with my choice, my only complaint is that the fabric is very thick and doesn't breathe well, so I'm going to be very hot when I wear the pants.
Sewing the openings on the side of the pants
Just like the shirt, the pattern for the pants is very basic, and I used a pair of pants that I already own to make it. The only special thing about these pants is that they have an opening on each side, not in the front, that is closed by lacing a cord through some eyelets. So when tracing the pattern I took this into account. The first thing I did once everything was cut out, was to create these openings. I lined them with a piece of fabric so the edges were clean and the sides were sturdy enough for the eyelets later on. I sewed the lining pieces down by machine because you can see the stitch line on the reference pictures. Otherwise, I would have done this by hand, since it would have been more historically accurate. Then I just sewed everything together like some normal pants. When I tried the pants on at this stage, they looked very weird with the opening on the sides, but I thought to myself to trust the process.
Now onto the eyelets. I used the same eyelets as for the armour piece, luckily I had just enough. This part is pretty straightforward, I just created holes on each side of the opening and put the eyelets in place. Then I took a piece of cord and laced the pants up. Once this was done the pants looked amazing, I was so happy with them, the lacing really made everything come together! Then I just finished off the edges by hand and the pants were ready!
Adding the eyelets and finishing the pants
Part 5: the belt and scabbard
Once the pants were finished I started working on the belt and the scabbard. I wasn't sure how to handle this part, since I had never made a scabbard before, but after watching a couple of tutorials online I just went for it. I used the same leather as for the strips on the shirt and once it was cut out I sewed the piece together in the back, creating a long tube. The top edge was folded over twice before sewing to make it more sturdy and for the bottom end, I made sure to create a nice point. As usual, I then dyed the leather a dark brown.
Preparing and sewing the leather
After this, I added the belt. It consists of three parts, a small strap that is attached to the scabbard with two loops on each side and two long straps. These long straps are attached to the loops of the small strap and are meant to be wrapped around the waist twice.
Making the belt and attaching the scabbard
For the finishing touches of the belt, I added a buckle on one side that looked similar to Lagertha's one and wet-formed the leather to create a decorative shape with the end of the other side. I noticed in the reference pictures that Lagertha's belt is also decorated with six silver rivets so I added these as well. To make them more accurate I punched a dot in the centre of each rivet. Last but not least I wrapped a piece of cowhide and some cord around the scabbard.
The rivets: before and after
Details of the belt and scabbard
Part 6: the shoe covers
When looking at reference pictures, I realized that Lagertha's boots are actually made of two parts: a shoe and a shoe cover. This made it so much easier for me to make because I didn't have to make the whole shoe. So I bought some Viking shoes from Armstreet, and they look perfect for this project, I am so pleased with them! The construction of the shoe covers is quite similar to the construction of the body armour. First I made a paper pattern, making sure it fit over the shoes and I made a sketch of the snake design. Once I was happy with how everything looked I cut out four pieces in thick leather and transferred the snake design.
Creating the pattern and snake design
Then it was once again time to make some snakes! The process was the same as before: first I cut the shapes in the leather with a swivel knife and then I used a stamp to add depth and texture. This took so much time to do on all four pieces, but they looked great in the end and I feel like I improved a lot compared to the snakes on the body armour. I also dyed the pieces brown and went over the lines of the snakes with a darker brown to make them stand out more.
Adding the snakes
Dyeing the leather brown
Afterwards, I moved on to braiding. First I punched holes for the leather cord to go through and then I used the same technique as before to attach the pieces together and create some beautiful braided details. To finish the shoe covers I added some small bronze rivets as decoration, as shown in the reference pictures. Then I could simply slide the shoe covers over my shoes and I had a pair of really cool Viking boots!
Braiding and attaching the pieces together
Adding rivets as detail and the final result!
Part 7: the shield
No Lagertha cosplay would be complete without Lagertha's iconic blue shield. I was actually super excited about this part and I knew right away that I wanted to include it in the cosplay. I've made props before but never this size, so that was a first as well (I learned so much making this costume, it was awesome!)
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Lagertha's shield is quite difficult to see up close and even more so from the back, so I had to guess a lot of things. I did some research on Viking shields so when something wasn't clear I could use this info as a guide. I wouldn't claim my shield is 100% historically accurate but I tried my best to, aside from making it as close to the original as possible, also make it somewhat a real Viking shield
So let's get started!
With the first step also came my first worry: the shield cracking. In order to prevent this, I used two layers of 5 planks glued together. The two layers were glued perpendicularly on top of each other so that if one layer cracked, the other layer would hold it together and the shield wouldn't break. And boy was I happy I did this because, as I feared, the shield cracked on one side when I left it to dry in the sun. The only downside to this is that it makes the shield 2 times heavier.
Making and glueing the two layers together
I continued by cutting out the shape of the shield and also a circle in the centre where the shield boss (also called umbo) will be placed later on. Then I painted the basic blue/grey color and the black motif directly on the wood.
Now the real fun part: destroying the shield! Or at least making it more battle-worn, because Lagertha is a warrior shieldmaiden! I just picked up an axe and slammed it on my shield until I was happy with the result.
Damaging the shield
Time for the shield boss (umbo)! I hesitated to try and make one myself but quickly realised that I don't have the necessary tools to make one so I decided to buy one instead. And also I'm not a smith so it probably would have turned out horrible (but maybe one day my forge dreams will come true!). Anyway, I ordered one from "Rêves d'acier", a french shop, and it looks amazing! I was worried it would look too clean, but it even has that used look, so it's just perfect. I ordered some nails as well to attach it to the wood. The shield boss is placed over the hole in the middle of the shield so that when you hold up your shield it protects your hand.
A shield is useless if you can't hold it up so next was the handle. This part is not visible on any of the reference photos I could find so I went with a historical handle. I cut out a piece of wood, sanded it to the right shape and glued it on with some really strong glue. This is the only handle on the shield, there are no extra straps to hold my arm into place. These straps may help you keep up the shield but they greatly limit your mobility and arm movement with the shield. I'm not planning on actually using the shield, but if I was this would be the way to go for a Viking shield.
Some tracing, cutting, sanding... And I got a functional shield!
Lagertha's shield has some extra metal parts on the front of the shield. I think they are supposed to strengthen the shield or reinforce some weak points but on my shield, which is brand new, they are purely decorative. I assume they are made of steel on the original shield but it is hard to tell. But like I've said before I'm not a smith so making these out of metal wasn't really possible anyway. So instead I chose to make them out of wood and then try to paint them to look like steel. Honestly, I wasn't convinced at all that this would work and that the wood would even remotely resemble real metal, but to my great surprise it worked super well.
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I carved out the pieces then painted them with a coat of black, followed by some silver spray paint. Finally, I mixed some dark brown paint with a lot of water and did a few washes with this mixture, and some dry brushing with the same brown. These last steps really transformed the wood into metal. From far away it looks so real to me and even up close it looks pretty convincing.
All the "metal" pieces, spray-painted silver
Before (left) and after (right) the dark brown wash
So I was super happy with how this turned out because I'm not going to lie, I was quite worried about this part. Once they were done I just glued them on and hammered some nails on to fix them in place permanently.
Last but certainly not least, the edge of the shield. This was difficult because I looked at the reference pictures for so long but I couldn't figure out exactly what was used on the original shield. I hesitated between leather, rawhide, metal or a combination. One thing that I was sure of were all the tiny nails that were hammered around the border. I did some research and finally decided to go with leather straps all around the shield. I cut 6 strips, dyed them and glued them on temporarily. I started by glueing them all around on the front of the shield, then I turned it around, pulled the straps to the backside and glued them down again
Glueing the leather straps to the shield edge
Then I ordered about 150 small nails from SjardsManufaktur on Etsy (I really recommend these, they were of great quality, the owner is super helpful and he is the only one that I found that makes nails in such a small size, which was exactly what I needed). Finally, I could start fixing the leather permanently with the nails.
Because I was afraid that the edge would break if I hammered the nails directly into the shield, I drilled holes that were slightly smaller and shorter than the nails before hammering them on. This way the nails will still be fixed in the wood and won't move, but the edge has a much smaller chance of cracking.
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I decided to use two different lengths of nails, starting with the larger size (I say "larger" but they are still pretty small, just not as small as the others). Since I used 6 leather straps, there are 6 parts where two leather straps cross over. To make sure the leather would stay in place nicely, I used longer nails on these spots, so the nails would go all the way through the shield. I hammered down the part of the nail that stuck out in the back, this way the back is secured as well
Hammering the larger nails ...
I could have done the same for the other nails, but I was afraid that, since the nails are so close to each other, the edge of the shield would break if I used too big nails. So for this part, I used the smallest and thinnest nails I could find so that they wouldn't go all the way through the shield and damage the wood as little as possible.
... and hammering the small nails
Before (right side) and after (left)
And the shield was done! well almost ;) it still looked way too clean in comparison to Lagertha's. So I made another brown paint/water mixture and did a wash on the whole shield. Doing this made such a difference! The shield looked immediately older and more used and it made all the "battle damage" I created earlier stand out so much more. I still have to do this on the back as well.
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The battle damage and "dirt" makes the shield look so cool!
Small note: The shield is completely usable and finished from the front but in the back, I just want to add a few more pieces of leather where the nails aren't completely flat against the shield. This is to protect my hand and arm from the nails just in case. I also want to make a leather strap that I can fix on the back so that I can wear the shield on my back because it would be super annoying to carry it around all day in my hand. But aside from these small extra details, the shield is done!
And done!
Again I'm super happy and quite surprised that it turned out so well! If I had to make it again, I would do it exactly the same way I think. Honestly, it turned out so much better than I expected and had hoped for, but I really tried to take my time with it to make it right and I guess my patience paid off!
Part 7: the sword and ax
Finally, I still needed a sword to complete my battle outfit. I couldn't get the exact same sword Lagertha has but the one I got is just as beautiful I think. I ordered my sword from the amazing creators of dangerousknives.com (they are part of Armstreet but have a separate website for actual weapons). I got the Etched Viking "Raven" sword, it looks absolutely stunning, and I couldn't be happier with it. The etched pattern represents Odin's companions, the two Ravens Huginn and Muninn, which is super cool and perfect for a Viking sword. Also, this is a real sword that can actually be used to fight, not a decorative sword, but I decided not to sharpen it yet so that I can bring it to events.
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Finally, it's time for the bonus! Like I said at the beginning of this page, I made a bet with a friend that I could make this costume and he promised me that if I finished it he would buy me a Viking axe to go with the costume! And now that the costume is complete he bought it for me! It's also from Armstreet and represents Odin's two wolves Geri en Freki from Norse mythology. This makes it a perfect fit for the sword and it looks awesome! So definitely go check out Armstreet and dangerousknives, they are absolutely amazing and all their products are so beautiful!
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But the axe head came without the handle so I still had to make one. I wanted it to match with the sword and therefore used the same symbols that are etched in the sword to decorate the handle. I also added some leather straps to hold the head of the axe better in place and as decoration. I didn't really have a plan for this, I just tried some knots and shapes until I was happy with the design
Designing the symbols and making the axe handle
And it was done! Even though this axe isn't technically part of the cosplay, I still had a lot of fun making it and I think it fits really well with the outfit nonetheless. So a big thank you to my friend for buying the axe head for me, I love it and it makes me feel like a real Viking!
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This concludes my Lagertha project, and I can't believe it turned out this great! When I started, I knew almost nothing of most of the techniques I used to make this and it took me more than two years to complete but in the end, it was totally worth it! It was by far the longest and most difficult project I have ever done, but I learned so much along the way and I couldn't be more proud of the result!
Now I'm finally ready to go raid some villages, plunder a few cities and drink a lot of ale!
Last small note before I get to the end result: The costume is finished but I haven't had the time to do a real photoshoot yet, but I was super impatient to see everything together so I took a couple of photos in my garden. The hair is also not right but I was a bit lazy and I will do the right hairstyle for the real photoshoot. So these are not the final pictures but for the time being, I hope you like them!
