well with the bow". The Shire sent archers to the battles of the Fall of Arnor. Armour Body armour in Tolkien's fiction is mainly in the form of mail or scale shirts, in keeping with Ancient and Early Medieval periods of history. In contrast, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy features later medieval plate armour suits. These kinds of plate armour are not found in Tolkien's writings, but plate does appear in the form of individual pieces such as vambraces (forearm guards) or greaves (leg and shin guards). As with other items of war, Elves and Dwarves produced the best armour. The mail shirt forged by Dwarves from the fictional metal mithril appears in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, worn in turn by the protagonists Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. In Letter 211 of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author compared the war-gear of the Rohirrim to the Bayeux Tapestry, made during the Norman Conquest of Anglo-Saxon England. Helmets Battle helmets are commonly used by virtually all races in Tolkien's writings. The Rohirrim were partly modelled on the Anglo-Saxons, who wore elaborate helmets; Éomer's helmet had a long white horse-tail. The Crown of Gondor was a jewelled battle-helmet; Aragorn received it at his coronation. Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee use Orc-helmets as part of their disguise in Mordor. In the First Age, Dwarves made dragon-helms, which were said to protect against Dragons. The most famous of these was the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin. The Second Age was dominated by Númenor. The Númenórean helmet, the karma, reached particularly elaborate forms. Those of the Uinendili, a guild of mariners, were "made of overlapping plates of metal, the 'fish-crest' of leather embossed and coloured". Tolkien's coloured drawing of the karma of a Uinendili captain features on the cover of Unfinished Tales. Named items Tolkien emulated his Northern European mythological and literary sources in having his characters give names to their weapons, marking these out as important aspects of character and sometimes as ancient heirlooms. Named weapons in Medieval literature include Hrunting and Nægling in Beowulf, Tyrfing in the Elder Edda and Gram in the Völsunga saga. The items illustrate the passage of time and the transfer of power or fate to their future bearers. Named swords and knives Anglachel Anglachel (Sindarin: Iron of the Flaming Star) was a sword forged of meteoritic iron by Eöl the Dark Elf, given to