The result was delete. The article remains entirely unsourced, so WP:V applies. The concept as outlined by Carcaroth is probably encyclopedic, and (as has been noted) is touched upon in various articles, but nobody has found reliable sources suggesting it has been referred to by this term, or indeed any sources supporting the current article's contents. Sandstein 17:30, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unreferenced hoax... was prodded, prod was seconded, prod expired, creator removed prod without explaination or work... I could find nothing to verify this article... Adolphus79 (talk) 16:12, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The term "shield mate" does seem a bit wrong-headed, but the non-sexual concept is certainly genuine (and the sexual concept as well, in certain historical contexts, though we have articles for those already, as has been pointed out). The article itself is also confused (as Uncle G has pointed out). What I wanted to comment on here, is the platonic concept of pairs or groups of warriors forming bonds without any sexual connotation, but in a military or fighting context.
The term used here (shield mate) made me initially think it meant "mate" (close friend) in a platonic sense, not a sexual sense. Before reading the article, I thought it might have been hinting at terms that do exist, such as sword brother, blood brother, and shield bearer. Those are paired units. Going beyond pairs, you have groups such as housecarl and the shield wall, where the person on your right-hand side in a shield wall was vital for your protection, hence "right-hand man" (it's in the article). There are also situations in battle where familial ties led to sister-sons defending to the death their mother's brother (unfortunately, the article doesn't explain that yet).
This is all heading towards Anglo-Saxon sources and other ancient warrior society concepts of fighting side-by-side with your sword brother (though the concept is more popular in sword-fantasy novels today), or more prosaically someone who watched your back in a battle just as you watched theirs - literally fighting back-to-back against your enemies. This is the closest I can come to the concept of "shield mate" stripped of its sexual connotations.
As I said, I think the term is "sword brother", but unfortunately, the only sources I could find for this were a review here of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, where the reviewer mentions that "Gunnar has unjustly slain his sword-brother" (I have the book, so can dig out the full context if needed). The other source was St Eadweard the Martyr – The Historical King (which needs checking as it may be a non-mainstream view - see last paragraphs of that text), where there is this: "Another word, more widely applicable than þegn, which came to be applied only to noblemen, was gesiþ. This can be understood as companion, but it really means more than that, and also implies the sworn sword-brother of the Heroic Code, which I shall mention particularly in a moment."
There is an entry on wiktionary for gesiþ. For more on this and the fyrd in general, see here. Our material on the fyrd is in our leidang article. But the whole concept of a 'sword brother' seems difficult to pin down. What I'm looking for is the concept of a pair of warriors working together to defend each other in a battle. Is there another term that I'm missing here? And the term "heroic code" (a concept found in many cultures) appears in lots of sources - enough for an article on heroic code? For some reason, the term is only mentioned twice in Wikipedia.
Anyway, apologies for saying very little about the article shield mate, but I was hoping people here might be able to help with sword brother and heroic code. If not, I'll ask at various WikiProjects and the Reference Desk. Carcharoth (talk) 19:49, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The public women of the rare settlements we encountered in our wandering would have been nothing to our numbers, even had their raddled meat been palatable to a man of healthy parts. In horror of such sordid commerce our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies — a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort.