From the bottom

The problem with recreating viking footwear is like all other recreations. The items we do have from historic finds are all from rich burials. The few 'middle-class' finds (the bog finds) are inconclusive or later in time. We can speculate on what the comman man wore, and that's just what we are going to do.

The typical viking shoe was made from two pieces, the upper and the sole. The distictive feature is a triangle shaped heal, which was a feature of dark age footwear up intil about 1150, when rounded heals came into vogue.

Notice the sole is not formed to the foot as is the medieval example at the bottom.

There are two main types of viking shoe. The first and most common is by thonging around the top of the shoe. This can be seen in the Jorvik II on the far right.

The Jorvik I type is closed by a flap crossing over and closing with a button.

The Heddeby shoe is an early type of turn shoe.  This is the least common type found, but could be less costly, but less protective. Any of these types could be worn by our modern Hersir.

A pair of shoes from Medievaldesign.com.

It is always easy to do the wrong thing. If you take the time and effort you will recreate a true vision of the Hersir.

This looks cool, but it's not history: