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I have a question about the early Irish inor. I know it was a robe like garment similar to the Anglo-Saxon and Vendel war coats, but would the inor have been padded to help protect Gaelic warriors and was it closed with a broach or pin?

Thanks,

Seamus

Seamus Mac Caba wrote:I have a question about the early Irish inor. I know it was a robe like garment similar to the Anglo-Saxon and Vendel war coats, but would the inor have been padded to help protect Gaelic warriors and was it closed with a broach or pin?

Thanks,

Seamus

The Irish Ionar/Eonar was a short jacket made of wool or leather, nothing like a robe or war coat. There are some good images and discussions on this earlier thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1616&p=12609&hilit=eonar#p12609

Scott,thank you for the link. It was a great help even though the cross has been weathered over time. So the ionar/eonar looks like a jacket or tunic that open and is pinned closed by a brooch. I hope this is the best way to describe it. Also, would anyone know where there are patterns for the early gaelic inoar? Or am I best left to making a nice tunic and having it open at the front?

Thanks for the input.

It is however a possibility that the inor/ionar was developped after the "warrior coats" of late 6th-7th century we see depicted for exemple on the Vendel helmet plates. We see something very similar to the inor on pictish stone carvings in the 8th century, and later on 9th century Dal Riada art (both manuscripts and carvings). There seems to be both short (the most common in irish art) and longer version.
It's basically a sleeved coat.

Now there is hardly any depiction of irish or pictish garnment before the 7th century at earliest, so it could have been developped on it's own. But we see so much influence from that period onwards from Anglo-saxon Northumbria (and to a lesser extent, Frankish Gaul) in Pictish and Irish art (like knotwork), metalwork techniques (chip-carving for exemple), weapons (sax from Lagore, sword pommels), religious matters (with the progressive acceptance of the roman easter dating) that it is also much likely new dress fashions could have been adopted. On a similar topic, we see gussets depicted on pictish tunics and I think those gusseted tunics could also have made their appearence by then.

See this article on pictish dress:
http://eithni.com/referencedesk/TheWell-DressedPict.pdf

If the ionar was based off of the warrior coats of the Angles and Saxons, then it might show how well interactions were forming between the Irish and Germanic peoples. Which is very interesting when you think about the Hiberno-Saxon relationships.