Birger Jarl lands in Finland

Birger Jarl's arrival in Finland, when in 1249, he led a small army against Finnish pirates in order to stop their attacks on Swedish shores and force Christianism in these eastern lands.

Birger's face has been reconstructed from his skull, so there's an actual idea of how he looked like. He should have been 33 years old when he launched his expedition against Finnish pagans, thus I represented much more younger than how he looks like in the reconstructed face. 

The gear and weaponry of the characters represented are pretty accurate too. It reflects mostly the Swedish specificities of the mid 13th century. While Denmark had pretty good access to Western European arms manufactors and ideas of warfare, countries like Norway, and mostly Finland, pretty much still relied on tactics and equipment from the Viking age, with some new introductions. Swedish armies or parties of that time were very small compared to continental hosts. Heavy knights were a handfull only, and most of the times prefered to fight on foot given the conditions (snow, bogs, rocky ground...). Mail were still expensive and the shirts produced locally were still much shorter than Western european ones of the time (basically byrnies, often short sleeved, cut mid-thigh or even shorter). Mailed leggings were not really appreciated, Swedish knights would prefer splinted greaves or only knee protections. Gambesons or aketons were much more distributed amongst low status levied freemen, as it provided extermely good protection and also protected from the cold. Shield around that time should have been of the kite type, or rounded-kite, or even almond shaped. The traditionnal round viking-type shield would probably still have been produced, but less and less. Finally, all the Spangen helm types were still in use back then, but Scandinavian soldiers tended to prefer the kettle helmet, as it was cheap and easy to make and offered very good protection.