Thursday, July 07, 2016

Stumped! Or, the value of older, overlooked books.

The tricky (troubling, challenging... pick a word) part of building such obscurities as the Brandenburg and Swedish armies is of course references.

I have managed to develop what seem to me pretty fair visual references for Brandenburger flags and uniforms; the Swedes are a more difficult proposition. The only decent volume I know of (Scanian War 1675-1679 Colours and Uniforms. Lars-Eric Höglund) seems not to be in print at the moment and is only available at ruinous prices on the secondary market. Oh well! What to do? Surely one can't go too far wrong with blue coats and yellow facings, right? Right?
Kannick - image pinched from Barry Hiltons' Blog.
Idle fancy took me to Kannick last night, and as I stook there in the shedio*,  gazing at the one plate of any use, my eye fell upon my copy of Knoetel, Knoetel and Seig. Well, duh. Of course. I opened it, flipped quickly to page 414 and there it was, a list of coat and turnback colours for the Swedish Army circa 1675.

Not a single blue coat with yellow facings to be seen, but at least a couple with blue-faced-red.

It's a start.

*Yes, the Shed-cum-studio is finished. It's slightly magnificent and I couldn't be happier with it. Pictures to follow in another post.

7 comments:

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

I do love my old Kannick.

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Excellent! And please do share some photos f the new premises when you have them. That's exciting news. Eager to see how things shaped up.

Best RE\egards,

Stokes

Bloggerator said...

Ross, I love my old Kannick as well. Surely it was the template for the many Blanford volumes that followed it.

Stokes - I shall as soon as possible. You'll have to forgive the grotty cardboard boxes here and there as it's still something of a work in progress.

The Border Prince said...

Which regiments did you plan to paint for the Swedes? I'm 90% sure about most of the Infantry uniforms. I'm a bit more unsure about infantry-banners. The cavalry is almost unknown for me...

The Border Prince said...

Which regiments did you plan to paint. I remember some uniforms and banners from when I read Höglund's book and there are a few pages in the Karoliner book (which i have) about Scanian war uniforms and banners...

Bloggerator said...

Still working on that.

I am working on a Swedish Order of Battle at the moment, so things are a little up in the air just now. The only certainty id the Dallweg Regiment of foot.

Greg

The Border Prince said...

If you need inspiration for 1670s Swedes is there a few blogs of use. A Swedish blogger named Michael and his friends have interesting blogs dealing (among loads of other things) with the Scanian War. (The most common Swedish name for this war.) Search for the blog Dalauppror and select the Scanian War category. It is at least a start you should find the other's from there...

For figures: Plastic Malburians from Wargames Factory. (Temporarirly? out of production as Warlord Games bought WF a while back, but it is said they will re-release most of their sets eventualy.) Metal Warfare Miniatures is a good choice as well.

Swedish infantry from the Scanian War wear to an large extent a kapurs (a Russian-fur-hat-looking hat) instead of the ordinary slouch-hat. You can find some artillery and cavalry wearing Kapurs as well...

For Dalregementet. I'm 90% certain:

Uniform: Blue with Red cuffs. NCO's Gray with Red cuffs. Drummers probably Red with Blue cuffs Don't remember if the regiment wear kapurs or hat. Officer will wear a hat tough.
Banner: Blue with a black granade with three flames in each corner and a laurel-wreath/laurel-circle in the centre. In the middle of the laurels a pair of crossed golden crossbow-bolts with silver arrow-heads.