slingbadger wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2007 at 2:20pm:


The fist-sized rock with a thong at the end sounds very much like the Bola Perdida (read http://www.slinging.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bolas). I did not know that this kind of weapon was used in Europe. Can you get us an exact quote and source?

The rock on the pole sounds like a flail variant, a common enough weapon.

The Finns did win I will have the exact souce coming next time I log on.
  The Finns also used red hot pieces of iron that they would sling onto the oncomming army

slingbadger wrote on Jan 7^th, 2007 at 2:44pm:


No doubt about that. This book was the great work of bishop Olaus Magnus. Could you get us an exact quote and perhaps a few text snippets that we can put in the Wiki? I am especially interested in the bit about the red hot pieces of iron. Not your everyday sling ammunition!

OK here it is, from the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionaibus, by Olaus Magnus.

Chapter VII Of slings and stone and red hot iron
 
  " But where ther are no stones, which is seldom seen, they cast into forts as forcible as they may, a piece of iron that is glowing red hot, which they put in with a pair of tongs into the purse of a sling. For they have always  ready vessels like to Romane Barels, full of pieces of iron; and putting them int the fire, and fitting it to their sling, and casting against the besieged, they will make such a violent wound and torture, that it can hardly ever or never be cured by the help of the Physitians.  For in the Fall, by reason of its great weight, and burning where it lights; it hurts without remedy; and so to destroy the enemie, either with the terrour of these pieces of iron  which they keep closely or else by the wounds they make."  1555

I think all it is is a big pot over a fire to heat the metal with