Urlik said:
if it was mentioned in contemporary sources then it would have some validity
offhand weapons were mentioned in the Sagas, which are contemporary. shoe knives are mentioned in James Bond.
if M&B was set post 1950, then you would have a case for the introduction of the shoe knife.
if one of the Sagas or any other medieval record mentioned a knife protruding from the toe of someone's footwear, then you would have a case.
Actually, I'm pretty sure even if I could find one case that it wouldn't be very good. Standing back a bit, finding one or two incidents of boot knifing in medieval Spain isn't exactly indicative of European warfare. You can certainly claim that it's certainly possible in the circumstances where it occurred, in this case, small scale skirmishes and raiding. But we have to take into account that this is an occurrence among many tens of thousands, and to make this universal in the category of those tens of thousands of small skirmishes and raids is a bit of stretch either way.
It's like 12 divided over 40,000.
I guess that you can say that if someone did it there, everyone else can do it, but this is an temporal statement, where the time frame isn't really a factor here. In the current sense, the statement that it's possible for many to dual wield does include a historical preference. But you can count the number of times it happens on a few hands. Pinning down what the medieval era is and what fighting styles are prevalent in it is a very difficult thing to do, but I think that something should probably be pretty widespread to be considered part of that category. There's quite a lot of events that have occurred during that period more times than a person has used two weapons simultaneously that aren't considered to be medieval or European.
So I guess this boils down to the statement "it happened in medieval Europe" is not quite as correct as "it happened during medieval Europe, but is not necessarily part of it." The point that it's not impossible and could have happened during a set of events is valid, but it's valid for a lot of other things as well. What narrows it down and butts out the other things is its historical relevance, but I think you got to have a few more sources of it happening for it to be considered, part of that time frame. Or at least, the more the better. having it happen in a few fights every ten thousand times is pretty close to zero, and thus quite close to the evidence of boot knives having being employed.
as it is, you are trying to draw a parallel where none exists.
maybe you should have found a better example.
Perhaps shield throwing would be a better example
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