Wings of doom

What were the wings, or lugs, of the famous Norse (and Germanic, in general) winged spears (krókspjót) used for? These wings were very common, and came in a variety of shapes and size.

Assortment of winged spearheads, the topmost being 38 cm long

There are several possible answers.

The one that comes immediately to mind is that they are here to prevent over-penetration, so that the spear doesn't bury too deeply into the body of the opponent. This answer is motivated by the use of later period hunting spear (boar spear) and swords, in which the lugs or the crossbar prevented the impaled animal, sometimes as dangerous as a wounded boar, to run up the blade or the shaft towards the hunter.

This use is attested at least once, in Grettis Saga, where Gretti kills both Thorir and Ögmund with a single thrust, and the spear is buried into Thorir's body up to the wings:

IS: Í því bili kom Grettir að. Hann tvíhenti spjótið á Þóri miðjum er hann ætlaði ofan fyrir riðið svo þegar gekk í gegnum hann. Fjöðurin var bæði löng og breið á spjótinu. Ögmundur illi gekk næst Þóri og hratt honum á lagið svo allt gekk upp að krókunum. Stóð þá spjótið út um herðarnar á Þóri og svo framan í brjóstið að Ögmundi. Steyptust þeir báðir dauðir af spjótinu.

EN: Just at that moment, Grettir turned up. Using both hands, he thrust the spear at Thorir's stomach just as he was on his way down the steps, and it went straight through him. The spear was fitted with a long, thin blade; Ögmund the Evil was behind Thorir and bumped against him so that the spear pierced him right up to the wings, out between his shoulderblades and into Ögmund's chest. Both of them tumbled down dead from the spear.

However, in my opinion this use is rather the exception than the rule. Unlike the hunting spear, which is used to kill only one animal, the battle spear must be wielded against multiple opponents. Therefore, one cannot wait with an immobilized weapon until the first opponent is dead - the spear must be retrieved quickly and used again against the other incoming enemies. So spear thrusts have to be quite shallow, even more so when the spear is used one-handed: as soon as the blade encounters a bit more resistance, it must be withdrawn, or it risks getting stuck in the wound it created. This applies just as well for winged and wingless spears. Besides, wings are present on spears with various sizes of blades, including very large hewing spears where the blade is almost broader than the wings (so that the wings would get into the wound) and so long that the opponent would be pierced through long before the wings reach his body (and such an exaggeratedly deep thrust is useless, and not recommended for the aforementioned reasons).

The wings must therefore have another role. And this role is contained in the name of the weapon: the krókspjót is a "hooking spear", and the wings are called krókar, that is "hooks".
Before the Viking Age, there were even example of spearheads having literally (and laterally) hooks on the socket, not wings.

Merovingian hooked spearhead, 7th century

So, if the Viking-Age "hooking spears" have appendices that do no look so much like hooks anymore, the name rather indicates a use, than a shape. The wings of the Norse spearheads were mostly used for hooking.

But hooking what, and how?
Well, several answers to that, again.

The one that is heard most often is "hooking limbs to hinder the opponent, hooking the shield to create openings". And again, it might not be the most important answer.
Just like in the case of over-penetration, one important point is to be able to retrieve the weapon quickly, since a spear is effective through its quick succession of thrusts. And to hook means to be hooked as well, therefore, hooking with the spear should be kept to a minimum, to avoid ending up with a trapped weapon and no other option than to drop it and draw an axe or a sword to keep up the fight.

In the case of a missed thrust, when drawing back the spear, an option would be to hook the limb of the opponent to unbalance him, or his shield to create an opening for the next thrust. But this might be a waste of time, compared to just withdrawing and thrusting again. Besides, if the spear is used in one hand, the shield hooking could work, but the limb hooking would be too weak to be effective.
The shape of the wings tells us something about it, too. If the goal was to harm the opponent when withdrawing the spear, the back of the wings would be sharpened - and it is never the case. If the goal was to hook anything when withdrawing the spear, the wings would have a shape optimised for hooking backwards - and it is not the case.
There are Dark-Age spearheads from Finland (of which I can find no pictures at the moment) that have the wings "backwards" compared to the Norse spears, and that could be a sign that the spear was meant to hook in a drawing motion, maybe used two-handed to create openings in a shield wall. However, the roughly triangular shape of the wings on Norse spears proves the exact opposite: the shape allows the spear to slide quite easily on encountered obstacles when it is withdrawn (remember, you don't want your spear to get stuck anywhere), but it maximizes the hooking ability during the thrust.

My interpretation is that such wings where most effective during an overarm downward thrust: the thrust intends to get in the gap between the opponent's shield and his helmet, and if the shield is raised for protection, the wing will push it out of the way and the thrust will connect anyway. At this point, it is just a hypothesis, and it will have to be tested with weapon simulators in sparring, and in a cutting session, to confirm this interpretation.

The overarm guard on the Bayeux tapestry

Last, but not least, the wings of a spear have a major role in hooking... another spear! When fighting spear against spear, be it with or without a shield, the contact of the shafts (the bind, in fencing theory) plays a major role. Controlling the opponent's spear in a bind allows to gain the control of the central line and therefore to thrust safely at the opponent. The wings allow to catch the shaft of the opponent's spear, control it to move the point aside, and, when control of the central line is achieved, a small rotation of the spear around its axis disengages the wings from the other shaft and allows the spear to thrust forward. We have already confirmed this efficient use of the wings when practising spear combat with Þorgeirr, and we intend to find later sources to confirm such use for similar weapons, such as the partisan or rawcon.

And remember, in Oðinn we trust, and with spears, we thrust. ;-)

Yours, Eiríkr

From carolingian army to norse women's fashion : the trefoil mounts

A very lovely example of reuse for foreign object by Norsemen is the trefoil brooch.

When browsing though excavation catalogues, (such as Holger Arbman's catalogue of the graves in Birka), you will encounter lovely clover-leaf shaped brooches in women's tombs. These brooches are usually ornamented with scroll-work or gripping beasts, but some stand out, with a completely different style of decoration, more Roman, or Byzantine than Scandinavian.

This example, found in Birka according to the manufacturer of this copy , has a central six-petals flower and sheaves of what appears to be laurel sprigs, a typical "antique" pattern for decoration.

Why is that ?

The first trefoil "brooches" were not brooches. They were Carolingian strap-distributors used to fasten a sword-scabbard to a belt or baldric, as we can see in these two illuminated images from Vivien's Bible.

 

This manuscript is a 9th century Bible which was offered to king Charles the Bald (grandson of the emperor Charles the Great, or Charlemagne) by Vivien, count of Tours. The book was probably composed at the abbey of St Martin de Tours, between 845 and 846, and provides us with interesting evidence concerning these trefoil mounts.

Apparently, one lobe of the trefoil was fixed to the belt, or baldric, and the two other lobes held two smaller straps from which the scabbard hung. My speculation is that these two smaller straps were fastened to the scabbard by means of small plaques of metalwork, like these two images suggest.

The "three connected straps" system probably wasn't a Carolingian invention, as a beautiful triangular strap-distributor of gold and garnet cloisonné was found in Sutton Hoo ship burial (Anglo-Saxon, 7th century), together with two mounts, a buckle, a strap-end and a slider... more or less the same assemblage of pieces as found in Vivien's Bible. The hypothesis is that this particular set of mounts was attached to a strap that ran across the body and over the shoulder to support the purse-belt, since it was found near a beautiful cloisonné purse-frame of the same style.

The strap-distributor is the triangular piece at the top of the image. We don't know for sure if it was indeed a distributor. It could also be a strap-end.

The Carolingian swords that had such mounts were items of prestige that would have been prized loot, or luxury import, both for the quality of the Rhine steel of the blades, and for the beautiful metalwork of the fittings.

This item (9th century), from a private collection, is of silver, with gold inlay.

This one, displayed at the British Museum (9th century, found at Kirkoswald, England), is a particularly fine work of filigree and granulation in silver that included garnets at the end of the lobes.

Reusing foreign items as pieces of jewellery is common during the viking period.

The most obvious reason is the luxury-character of the original items : weapons and belt-mounts were already used to display wealth and status among the Franks where these objects came from, so, they were made with costly materials and a great deal of craftsmanship.

An other reason is that they were "exotic" and showed how far they had come from, through raid or trade. For example, coins such as dirhams and even sassanid drachmas were used as pendants, fitted with loops  to be hung on necklaces, or were added a clasp at the back, to be used as brooches.

Such was the fate of these carolingian baldric-mounts that were modified as brooches, to adorn the garments of a wife, a daughter or a sweetheart.

It is hard to find images of the back of these mounts to know how they were fixed to straps before becoming brooches, so I have found little of them. Two can be seen on this very interesting blog article. It seems that a system of loops was in use, but rivets are also a possible options, as holes are found is some mounts.

The aforementioned British museum example of brooch shows no sign of either clasp or loops whatsoever.

This is probably due to poor restoration in the 19th or early 20th century, says Daniel Perrier, curator of the Merovingian section of the National Antiquities in St-Germain-en-Laye.

"When mineralized fabric or leather clung to metal objects, the excavators used to "clean" them the hard way, often removing any trace of rusted or crumbling loops or clasps entangled in the rotten fabric. Old-fashion archaeology didn't know yet the value of this kind of evidence, and a lot was lost with these rough so-called restorations."

While the first trefoil brooches that arrived in Scandinavia were foreign, reused items, they were rapidly copied and the fashion became widespread. Finds of such brooches are widely distributed in Scandinavia, with a particular concentration of them in Denmark, where imported Carolingian items are similarly concentrated. They also are found in significant numbers in Britain. It is hinted that they were both made locally and imported from Scandinavia. Geographic areas had their particular style of trefoil-brooch ranging from simple geometric patterns, lines and dots, zoomorphic, acanth-leaf-like patterns and intricate interlace.

It is worth noticing that the use of the trefoil-shape was not limited to jewellery : the presence of pairs or loops at the back of all three lobes of some trefoils suggest the pieces were rather elements of horse-harness than clothing.

I'm still looking for a complete time-line of trefoil brooches, to be able to tell you when the fashion died and they stopped being made. I'll make sure to update this post when I do !

Slippery ground

North = cold = ice + snow

This equation is obvious for anyone. Therefore, all the people living in the North have invented throughout History means on transportation on such winter ground.
Norse people had skis, ice-skates and sledges, to slide through the Northern cold. But sometimes, they didn't want to slide at all. That's were ice cleats come into play.
Wikipedia suggests (without any serious source...) that modern-day "Scandinavian crampons", with steel spikes embedded in a rubber contraption, are a direct evolution from the Norse cleats.
On the other hand, the few examples of those Norse cleats that we had seen with Þorgeirr in the Stockholm History Museum came back to my mind during slippery hikes on winter vacations.

So I decided to dig a bit more into that topic. I spent several hours in the digital collection of the SHM looking at Viking Age cleats, then several more thinking about the way they could function... Now the next step will be experimentation : I have to find the way to forge some replicas and try them on!
Since I'm unfortunately a total ignorant as far as horsemanship is concerned, I didn't do much research about the horse cleats, which are most probably designed to be attached to the horseshoe without the need of shoeing the horse again for winter with spiked horseshoes.

The first product of my thoughts about these cleats is a typology, and some hypothesis about the use of each type of cleats.

Type A: simple cleats, made of a roughly rectangular strip of iron with a protruding spike in the middle. The shapes and sizes vary a lot, hence the definition of several subtypes.
Type A1: they have the shape of a closed staple, with an internal width of about 2 to 4 cm. Type A1's are usually found in pairs, or alone, in one instance in a group of four.

Hypothesis: these cleats were literally stapled on a leather strap 2 or 3 cm wide, two by two, and the strap was then tied or otherwise attached to the front part of the foot.  I'm saying tied, because I'm not aware of any iron or bronze buckles found with such cleats.

Type A2: they have generally a narrow strip and a very pronounced U shape, and therefore have not been stapled to anything.

Hypothesis: (really unsure there...) they might have been nailed to the soles of wooden pattens ? But I don't know about any Viking-Age wooden soles or pattens...

Type A3:  similar to type A2, but with crooked / stapled extremities for the U, as if they had been affixed to something thick, with an almost square section.

Hypothesis: (of the top of my head) since the material to which these cleats were attached didn't survive, it was probably leather (as for type A1) or wood. If it's wood, it might have been the wheels of a chariot, to prevent it from slipping sideways when pulled by a horse wearing horse-cleats. The main problem here is that Norse chariots had rather very thick wheels, to my knowledge...

Type A4: these are quite rare, and often thought to be spurs. Similar to type A2, but with broader iron strips and a very broad U shape.

Hypothesis: these cleats are broad enough to accommodate a heel it they were actually spurs, or to accommodate the narrowest part of the foot sole. I'd rather go for the second option, since I would expect spurs to have a more rounded shape. So, such a tailor-fitted cleat could be placed under the foot and strapped.

Type B: these cleats have multiple spikes, and have generally the shape of a polygon, serving as a platform, with the spikes placed underneath it, one per angle of the polygon.
Type B1: triple-spiked cleats. They are shaped like a (slightly concave) equilateral triangle.

Hypothesis: from the designs that I tried, these cleats where probably rather worn under the heel (two spikes at the back, one at the front), being quite uncomfortable under the front part of the foot. One or two leather straps could be used to tie the cleats to the ankle, with quite a tricky lacing pattern.

Type B2: (existence unconfirmed) four-spiked cleats, with a square shape. Intermediate between types B1 and B3.
Hypothesis: similar in use to type B1, but their square shape makes them more suitable to be worn under the front side of the foot.

Type B3: hinged four-spiked cleats. These are found in later Middle-Ages, and would be descendants of type B1 and B2. They have the four-spiked, square shape of the type B2, but additionally they have two hinged plates on two opposite sides of the square, one with a slit, and the other one buckle-shaped.

Hypothesis: the use of this type of cleats is the most obvious : the square was place under the front part of the foot, and the plates secured the foot laterally when the leather strap attached to the slit was buckled, which also simplified the lacing.

One can very well imagine wearing in conjunction cleats of types B1 and B2, or B1 and B3, when going on a longer walk on something as dangerously slippery as a glacier. Such a combination of medieval cleats would make a good predecessor of modern-day alpinism crampons. On the other hand, type A1, being lightweight and versatile, might match more today's rubber "Scandinavian crampons".

So, next step is to build some type A1's, and maybe later some B1's too, and try them on the ice !
To be continued...

Yours, Eiríkr


UPDATE!
I had the opportunity to discuss several archaeological finds from the Birka catalogue with my friend Kára, who is an experienced horsewoman. Apart from various horse harness parts, her hindsight was also priceless for understanding the nature of several types of cleats.

Let's start with the simplest: for the type A4 cleats, they seemed very impractical to her to be used as spurs. Besides, comparing them with other Norse spurs, she concluded that it is definitely different and cannot be a surviving element of a spur. So we can even more confidently assume that this king of object was a cleat, not a spur.

Now on to a topic that I said I would not tackle: the horse cleats (or calks, as I just learned they are called). It appears that my interpretations of the type A2 and A3 cleats were wrong - they are just various occurrences of calks.
Horse calks were not intended to be attached to horse shoes as I initially thought. The simple reason for this is that there is no such thing as Norse horse shoes! Most representations of Norse town show them having either "raw", muddy streets, or covered with wooden planks or logs. So, no paved causeways and rocky paths, only soft surfaces that do not damage the hooves, and therefore do not require the horses to be shoed. This is perfectly consistent with the fact that not a single horse shoe was found in a large city like Birka. Therefore, the calks were directly nailed to the hooves when needed, and depending on the relative length of the spikes and thickness of the hoof, either the spikes stayed straight, or they went all the way through the hoof and were bent back, hence the more or less square shape of the calk spikes.
Birka grave nr. 887 gives a perfect example of such calks and their use. The calks and their position in the grave can be seen here, in Taf. 39 (9) and 40 (3). You can see that the cleats are situated near the back of the hoof, in a manner very similar to these modern, screw-in calks:

Thanks to Kára for her help, maybe I'll manage to get more ideas on Norse horsemanship from her!

Hwæt ! Greetings from Old England.

Hello, I'm Aelfgyva and will sporadically contribute to this blog.

I'm a French reenactor belonging to la Compagnie du Dragon Vert.

I embarked on reenactment by following an unusual path : my group aims at recreating Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but from a historical perspective.

As you can guess by my name, I chose to be a person from Rohan. Tolkien specified that Rohirrim were based on late Anglo-Saxons and used Old English to render rohirric language.Thus, my costumes are sourced from 11th century Anglo-Saxon England. They even have travelled to the Battle of Hastings reenactment !

I'm a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades and have doodled with dyeing, tablet-weaving, leather-working, cooking and some sword-fighting.

My main interest is in the evolution of costumes. One of my long-term goals is to understand the evolution from Dark Age fashion to 12th century in England.

Most 11th century women were Christian and wore a veil. But this picture is of Léofwyn, girl from Rohan, where there is no such thing as a Christian deity, and so, we can leave our hair uncovered.

Aelfgyva

#víkingligr

Let's go and kill some misconceptions #likeaviking !

Vikings ?

Viking ?

Vikings ?

Game nr. 1: Cross out the pictures which are not labelled properly

So, what are we talking about in this blog anyway ?

Viking stuff, right.
Viking stuff ?

Yes, for example we would like to know if Viking horses looked more like the Fjord or the Icelandic breed, what was the role of Viking women in the household, what games Viking kids used to play, how much cargo could a trading Viking ship carry, or what were the tools of Viking craftsmen.

Well, no. We're not. Because we won't look into things that didn't ever exist.

The word "Viking" (which in proper English is supposed to be absurdly capitalized, like a nationality) comes from the Old Norse "víkingr" (sea-rover, pirate) and "víking" (raiding expedition). Both words derive from "vík" (a bay - where the víking ship can moor) - hence place names such as Reykjavík.

So, "viking" is an occupation, and a temporary one to that (see Cleasby & Vigfusson on that topic) - and definitely not a nationality. Therefore I will from now on drop the capital letter, even if the autocorrect doesn't like it.

The vikings were therefore strictly speaking sea-rovers coming from Scandinavia. Of course, they had nationalities : they were Danes, Svears, Northmen, Icelanders, Geats... In these countries / regions, there were women, children, craftsmen, shepherds, horses, dogs, houses, merchant boats... that were Danish, Icelandic or Geatish as well, but who were by no means vikings. Shepherds and children don't go on raiding expeditions (women neither, but that another story). If we were to use a word to designate them all, they were all Norse. People from the North, speaking Old Norse ("norrœna tunga"), and sharing a common culture that was, during the Viking Age, quite distinct from continental Europe. Norsemen.

So, deal with it. In this blog, we are talking about Norse stuff.

I will ramble about Norse houses, Norse dogs, Norse games and Norse gods, and sometimes, only sometimes, about vikings.

Yours, Eiríkr

Fǫrum á viking fram !

Let us start the journey...

Welcome, dear readers. I am Eiríkr - a History enthusiast and Viking Age reenactor from France, as well as a HEMA (historical European martial arts) practitioner.

The idea of this blog arose from the numerous emails we are used to exchange with my friend Þorgeirr, to share our ideas, resources and rough research results about anything related to martial History or to the Viking Age.

The intent for this blog is to follow that way of sharing random thoughts while making it available to everyone, so the published articles will probably be regularly updated, edited, or written by several hands...

Depending on their will and availability, other people from our tiny French Viking group might start contributing to this blog. When it will happen, we'll introduce the new writers to you - but for now, I am the only author and editor on board !

Yours, Eiríkr