>>63953273
Runes can be a bit tricky, given the multiple different futharks in use, local variations, utter absence of standardised spelling...

>>63953471
Not a very nice affair overall, no. Now of possible interest to that subject is that a lot of the skeletons in the Towton graves had, in addition to frequently massive and unhealed head trauma, signs of well healed cuts to various bones. Suggesting that medical treatment of the time was good enough that it was quite frequent for soldiers at the time to have suffered cuts to the bone and healed up well enough to return to service. (Things got a lot worse in that respect once guns became common.)

>>63953302
>As for why they don't seem to be represented in art despite being very obviously in use by a massive amount of militia, who knows?
The outer shell of fabric or leather would tend to make them somewhat discrete, and some manner or arming coat/tabard may have gone on top of the CoP as well. Though that said, note the bloke on the right in this painting from 1369.

>>63954676
Good.