Man of the Greyflood - c. S.A. 850: KIT

[Udwin]

Many of my decisions that went into assembling this kit are based on backward (or rather, forward) extrapolations from the First Age folk of Haleth (the Haladin) in Beleriand, not only because they provide the most details to work with, but because they are closest chronologically (less than 1000 years distant) to the ‘Gwathuirim’ (who were themselves descended from the original pre-Haladin pioneers who passed through Eriador on their journey West towards Beleriand) of the period I am interested in. While I have also drawn details from Tal-Elmar, I did so with the awareness that it is separated from the earlier Greyflood colonization period by some 2400 years.

[Udwin]

SOFT KIT

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Clothing:
We have very few descriptions of the clothing worn by the indigenous Men of Middle-earth at any period, let alone the specific period I am most interested in.
In his later revisiting of the Quenta materials, (HoMe Vol 11, Part Two: Ch 14: Of the coming of men into the west, $3), Tolkien describes the folk of Bëor when first encountered by Finrod as “rude and scantily clad”.
And while I would prefer to avoid reinforcing the ‘Hollywood barbarian’ look, Tolkien’s text in Tal-Elmar does specify that “he wore only a loin-cloth, and little cloak of … fur”; as his village has no mention of keeping domesticated animals, this suggests the use of something like a hair-on tanned hide as a cloak.
Considering the limited husbandry of the Haladin (swine are definitively known in Brethil, with others possible (considering the horses, sheep, goats and donkeys kept by the folk of Hador) and later Dunlendings’ description as "hillmen and herd-folk", it seems likely the Men along the Greyflood could have kept goats or sheep in clearings, at least – ergo I have a wool loincloth and a tanned sheepskin for my cloak (this needs to be re-dressed, further softened and smoked a second time, so it is not 100% wearable at present, though plenty functional if needed).
This is mostly useful for allowing me to illustrate the changes in material culture pre- and post- Númenórean ‘Contact’. The skin is actually one of Elleth’s rams which she butchered and sent to me fresh in the first week of the pandemic! I fleshed it in my tiny studio apartment’s bathtub in March 2020, and then salted and bagged it for future use. Fast-forward 2.5 years to last October when I finally had time and space to properly deal with it. It is tanned with eggs and smoked, essentially the same method I use for my braintanning.

Blanket cloak: not sure if this would be a locally-made cloak, or another Numenorean ‘trade good’.
Made from an ancient four-point Hudson Bay which has been cut down to ~62x70”. Stripes from one end were de-wefted and plied to make a double row of knotted fringe; this hearkens to Bronze Age cord skirts as well as the ‘Orkney Hood’, and ostensibly helps with shedding water.
I have also considered adding raw wool twists to the blanket in order to emulate the look of a pile-woven vararfeldir which would also give a ‘Hollywood barbarian’ appearance – but more functional!

Wool loincloth: this started life as a plain gray scarf from the thrift shop ($2), and the woolen yarn used for embroidery is reclaimed from some old socks! I tried to get as close (using the modern RIT junk available to me) as I could to a blue achievable with woad.
Deciding on a motif took me a while. As Corey Olson says, ‘if you want an easy way to suggest early Mannish cultures, you really can’t go wrong with swirly shapes!’, and I knew I wanted to integrate elements from European megaliths. However, many of these didn’t quite lend themselves to loincloth decoration, so I doodled until I came up with something I liked. The central shape feels—to me, at least—like it resembles some La Tene Celtic motifs, while working it in blue leans on the swirls as ‘water’ symbols.
The repeated stitch used on the edges is a ‘herringbone’, which seemed appropriate for a river-based impression.

The loincloth is held up with my old Otzi-inspired belt/pouch containing a copper knife/spear and fish harpoon, flint, steel (which I intend to replace with a monster chunk of pyrite when I find the right one), bone fish hooks, small cordage, etc.

Attached to this belt are leggings, which are the same braintanned pair I’ve been wearing for years now. Nothing fancy here.

The tunic you’ll probably recognize as formerly my Beorning tunic from 2014-2020, roughly based on the Emmer-Erfscheidenveen (Dutch) bog body. I chopped a few inches off the lower edge for some increased mobility.

[Udwin]

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HARD KIT
The larger belt pouch was also part of my Yule 2020 extravaganza from Elleth, though it was in an unfinished ‘kit’ state when received. While I briefly tried using it as part of my hobbit kit, recent further research led me to feel it didn’t fit the style. However, with a rolled goat leather toggle (matching my belt knife’s sheath loop) it works great as a simple backwoods native pouch. (The fine quality of the stitching is probably too fine for the culture, but if I’m going to replace it with larger stitches, that’s a very low priority).
Contents are still under construction, but currently: a goose wingbone fire-bellows, spare tunic pin, birchbark, knuckle-bone fishhooks, and a catfish awl.
Things I need to add: tinder fungus I’ve slowly been processing into proper amadou, bone needles, sinew thread, some kinda snacks.

A small pack basket with a fingerwoven hemp/braintan tumpline holds various goods needed for longer travels.

The two waterskins are reskinned botas (with plastic bladders – I don’t care, fight me with horn mouthpieces and wooden stopples. All I had to do was take the leather covers apart, replace the vinyl strip with some deer leather, and sew together inside out. The cover is lashed onto the plastic mouthpiece with sinew cordage (tightens as it dries).
Since I did not include the strap-retaining tabs when reassembling, one is carried in a faux-limebast net bag with diapered braintan strap (matches my quiver strap).

Weapons:
"In the forest of Brethil Halmir, lord of the People of Haleth, gathered his men, and they whetted their axes..." (Quenta Silmarillion, Chapter 20).

The expected variety of traditional ancient weapons are represented in the pre-Númenóreans and their mother-culture. The Haladin wield axes in war (Quenta Silmarillion Ch 20) and bows are used on their homesteads (The Drúedain: The Faithful Stone; UT Narn). The spirits of the White Mountain Oathbreakers are seen to carry swords and spears, the latter even carried by the ‘king of the Dead’ (LR V:2, V:9). As a very late example, during the War of the Ring, Saruman arms his elite anti-Rohirrim Dunlendings with axes (LR III:7; UT Fords of Isen)—possibly due to this people's long familiarity and skill with them, or possibly just because they're the best tools for fighting armored Eorlingas! Our final data point raises some questions: we read that Tal-Elmar “knew nothing of bows" and carried only a "casting-stone: presumably, this implies he carries a sling. We must wonder: the folk of Haleth clearly have bows in Beleriand (Faithful Stone), but did the pre-Haladin have bow-knowledge on their westward march? If not, was the bow only developed by remnant daughter groups (such as the men of the Gwathló) once they settle? Is Tal-Elmar’s unfamiliarity with bows a result of life on the coastlands? As his own people seem to be the worst kind of backwards, isolated, insular, and in decline…did they lose their knowledge of bowyery?

For attacking colonizers at distance, I have my longbow and a quiver of split reed and cattail cord, with a diapered braintan strap. Arrows are hazel and tipped with strap iron. For taking fowl along the river, I also have a braided deerskin sling.
For close fighting, I’ve chosen to carry a simple bronze palstave axe, based on the above description of the Haladin readying for battle. As axes are a fairly basic tool, we can assume they were known to the pre-Haladin traveling west. Mine is hafted on osage with deer rawhide and set with pine resin glue.
Whatever their material, the Gwathló region was heavily forested before the coming of the Númenóreans, and assuming their lifeways follow that of the Haladin, axes would be commonplace for felling trees for slash&burn agriculture as well as for homestead construction.

Belt knives:
To show the progression of the pre- and post-Númenórean periods, I also have a Type IV ‘Danish dagger’ knapped by Ed Moser, which hangs out in an Ötzi-type bast sheath I made, and a belt knife with damascus cable blade forged by MERF member Eric C: small blades like this would likely be the type of tradegood brought by the early Númenórean colonists, described in Tal-Elmar, to be hafted according to the local style by the natives:
“The High Men of the Sea… came in boats… greater than great houses … and they bear store of men and goods… they will send forth smaller boats laden with goods, and strange things both beautiful and useful such as our folk covet. These they will sell to us for small price, or give as gifts…”
The handle is split oak, secured with pine pitch, wrapped with nettle cordage and dipped in pine tar. The sheath is goat leather with a rawhide liner, with a rolled toggle to match the belt pouch.

Other hard kit
-Assuming that the Greyflood and its tributaries are nearly pristine before the coming of the Númenóreans, I probably really don’t need the waterskins, and could just drink from my trusty birch noggin (as fresh water would be plentiful!), but they allow me to use iodine tabs.

-This impression is a great excuse for me to finally dip my toe into bowdrill or spindle firestarting.

-While we are told the Haladin were slow to adopt new things, I’ve included two spoils of war taken by this 'anti-Numenorean insurgent' from a fallen Venturer.

Brooch:
The creation of the Numenorean brooch was a collaborative effort between MERS members. The decorative motif comes from one of Tolkien's 1960s doodles suggested to be pins or brooches, published in Maker of Middle-earth, p. 195. This was rendered digitally by Caedmon, and was cast in silver-plated bronze by Odigan; I applied enamels (of which I had plenty leftover from the karma project) to match Tolkien’s doodle.

‘Karma’ helmet:
For more on this, see EOTW Fall 2022.

[Greg]

That's just beautiful, Udwin. Every time you pull together a new kit I'm blown away.

[Udwin]

Thanks! It's funny, because I had been using this style tunic w/ loincloth-and-leggings combo for so many years as my Aistan 1.0 Beorning impression...but the simple change of different hardkit and placing it in an earlier Age and suddenly it feels so much more effective here to me, especially with Aistan 2.0 to compare it to.

(Constructive critique and discussion is welcome, as always, btw!)

[Taylor Steiner]

Right on!

[Barandir]

Udwin, the lengths you go to research and authentically portray your personas is nothing short of inspiring. I hope to one day get to this level of depth for Barandir and the other two half-formed personas I have stewing in my brain.

[Udwin]

Thank you for the kind words, Barandir! I guess that anthropology degree and grad school (which was mostly practice synthesizing from research, citing sources, and writing papers) must have paid off! Now, if only I had more opportunities to get out and authentically DO something with my kits!
I'd always be interested to hear about any persona ideas you have percolating - if there's something you're interested in, I'm happy to winnow my notes to help guide your research. : )

[Barandir]

I’ll happily take you up on that! I’ll send you a PM whenever I get around to those!

[Iodo]

Truly amazing stuff Udwin

[Eofor]

I'm over here failing to get out into my workshop meanwhile you're working on multiple portrayals in a tiny apartment.

All to a standard in both in research and execution that the rest of us can only strive for. Thank you for sharing.

[Udwin]

I'm over here failing to get out into my workshop meanwhile you're working on multiple portrayals in a tiny apartment.

All to a standard in both in research and execution that the rest of us can only strive for. Thank you for sharing.

Ha! Not quite, though. Like I said, much of this is rebranded from 'Aistan 1.0' I've had for years, and most of the new pieces were made since moving out of the tiny apartment and into a house with a garage-workshop space of my own! Thank you all the same!

[Elleth]

That is just exquisitely done.
I love love love that you're off exploring all the nooks and crannies we don't see much of.

... pardon if you've talked about it and I've missed it - but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the Drúedain. They seem very much akin with your spirit.

[Eothain]

That axe
Seriously though, I enjoy this break down so much! You are always so thoughtful and thorough!

[Udwin]

That is just exquisitely done.
I love love love that you're off exploring all the nooks and crannies we don't see much of.

... pardon if you've talked about it and I've missed it - but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the Drúedain. They seem very much akin with your spirit.

I don't know what all I can say about the Woses that I didn't put in our Druedain edition of the Summer '18 MERS newsletter, but I love them! The Faithful Stone is definitely on my short list of favorite Tolkien stories...but as I'm far from built like a Neanderthal, this is about as close as I can get to channel those vibes - and I'm far from 'woodcrafty beyond renown'!--in fact I've been feeling downright rusty these days! My galactic sewing business made off with most of my free time of the last couple years, but I'm walking that back here soon so I can make some time this fall to get your sheepskin redressed, resmoked, and properly softened!

That axe
Seriously though, I enjoy this break down so much! You are always so thoughtful and thorough!

Thank you Eothain! It was a lot of fun to research and assemble, and the feeling of seeing kit items made for a previous impression suddenly 'click' when placed in a different time period/culture is so satisfying! Now comes the hard part - try to extrapolate some cultural cues and details to help deepen the look. That, and get some authentic 'woods time' to really get in the headspace!