Meet the Middle Ages
BackNoble boy
The boy is wearing hose and a short jacket. He has a velvet cap on his head. At the end of the 14th century, the jackets were short, showing the full length of the legs. This fashion originally came from France and the Netherlands, and was seen in the Nordic countries from around 1380. The new fashion caused irritation. A scribe in Mainz wrote in 1367:
"The folly went so far, that younger men who wore such short shirts covered neither their genitals nor their behind. When they bowed, one could see the bare skin on their back! O, what a shame!"
The men wore their caps or hats indoors too. At feasts, when they drank to each other, they placed their caps on their left shoulders. The noble boy is wearing crackowes on his feet, a kind of piked or pointed shoes which were very unusual in the Nordic countries.