Dane-axes: collars and mystery

Few things are as such iconic symbols of "vikingness" as battle-axes, and the bigger the better. Leaving aside all sorts of fantasy designs, the historical version of this iconic weapon is the big, bad, broad-axe, also known as the breið-öx in Old Norse, the Dane-axe (for its Scandinavian origin, as experienced painfully by Anglo-Saxons), or the large variant of the Type M axe (for the Petersen typology aficionados) - I'll use the term Dane-axe from here on to keep things simple.
  In almost all respect, our knowledge about it lives up to our modern (cliché) expectations of the fearsome battle-axe: a very large blade with sharp edge and horns, wielded in two hands by elite warriors... Several surviving axes further confirm their elite status by the presence of decorative inlays in silver or gold on the axe-head. 

One of the largest known Dane-axes (24x28cm), found in the Thames river, a small axe from Norway with gold overlay, a medium-sized axe from Sweden with silver inlay, and a Norman nobleman holding his Dane-axe from the Bayeux tapestry.

Among the numerous finds of such Dane-axes of various sizes and shapes, there is a specific category that emerges: the axes with a collar made of a sheet of copper-alloy (brass or bronze) inserted between the axe-head and the shaft. The archetype of such axes is the axe from Langeid, one of the best-known (and largest) Dane-axes. A few axes with collars of different types have been found (in particular a number of small bearded axes from Gotland), but in general the copper-alloy collar is very much a Dane-axe thing - you can find a catalogue of such axes here.

The iconic (and massive) axe from Langeid, Norway, alongside its replica, a similar axe found in London, England, and a different design of collar on an axe from Bjorå, Norway.

The purpose of such collars is dual, and quite obvious to figure out. First, the purpose is of course decoration of the haft (in addition, or rather in substitution as we'll see, to the inlaying of the axehead). And second, the purpose is reinforcement of the shaft: we know that having the head of a Dane-axe flying off its haft is a plausible thing (according to the Bayeux tapestry); additionally, the Dane-axe can be seen as a predecessor of later medieval cut-and-thrust pole-weapons such as bills and halberds, which often had their head attached to the haft by the means of long langets - strips of iron meant to protect the the haft from breaking just below the head, because that is the part of the haft which takes the most stress when striking with the weapon, and also the part which is the most likely to be damaged by the enemy's weapons.

This is what langets are on a halberd head.

And this is why they are useful.

Because the presence non-ferrous metal helps with the archaeological survival of perishable materials such as wood, these Dane-axes with collars very often have the part of the shaft inside the collar preserved in good shape. This is a tremendous source of knowledge about the shafts of Norse axes, but it also raises a serious question:
How does the head of such a collared Dane-axe even hold on its haft? (and why is that even a question?)

Let's take it slowly.
  To be usable, an axe needs to have its head attached to the haft robustly enough that the head doesn't fly off when it is subjected to the centrifugal force of a swing with the axe, or when the axe is shaken by an impact. Independently from the shape of shaft and wood species used in various axe traditions, there are fundamentally two ways of hafting a typical axe: hafting from above, and hafting from below using a wedge.

Left, an axe hafted from above. Right, an axe hafted from below, secured with a wedge. The areas in red show the pressure and friction between the haft and the axe-head, which is what keeps everything together. See how the "conical" shape of the haft is opposite in the two cases: hafting from above is naturally proof against the head flying off, when hafting from below the wedge is mandatory.

The Norse tradition was very definitely to haft from below using a wedge, which makes even more sense for a large two-handed axe, which has more than enough weight at the top and would benefit from a solid grip provided by a flared bottom of the haft. However, the collared Dane-axes have no wedge.

No. Wedge.

OK, technically there is one example with a large nail in the eye of the axe serving the purpose of a wedge, and one shaft has a crack which might be the slit were a lost wedge was once inserted. But in most cases, no wedge, and a hafting from below. How can that possibly work?
  Gluing? Nope - even with modern chemistry gluing metal on metal is far from easy, and no one in their right mind would use an axe the head of which has merely been glued to a polished haft.
  Wedging with the brass collar itself? Hm, maybe, but not really. Some collars are indeed made of several parts, some of which look like they have been inserted from above, but a pair of carefully inserted 1-mm-thick brass wedges would be far from having the reliability of a good old 5-mm-thick oaken wedge smacked into place with a big hammer - not to mention that this method wouldn't provide any answer for all the tubular, single-piece collars, which are a majority.
  What are we left with, then? Even renown experts and museums have given up on that quest and resorted to using a wedge on such axes.

The replica of the Langeid axe, made for the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo under the supervision of expert archaeologist Vegard Vike, next to the original. Yes, they've put a wedge through the eye of the replica, and no, they shouldn't have, there is none in the original.

But I have a theory to offer - and I'd love to see a blacksmith testing it in practice.
  You see, there is an item in European history (until recent times), subjected to harsh stress and daily use, which managed to fix to each other the worst possible shapes in iron and wood - a cylinder around another cylinder - without the use of any wedge, nail, glue or other element. This object is the carriage wheel. To perform this miracle, the wheelwright would prepare an iron banding that would be a little bit too small for the intended wheel. This banding would then be heated in a fire, so that the heat would get the iron to expand - just enough to fit onto the wheel. The iron band would then be put into place, and quickly doused with water to cool it down and get it to shrink, thus locking it into place (and preventing the wooden wheel from catching fire).

How does that relate to our wedge-less Dane-axes and their collars? To put it simply, the idea would be to prepare the haft so that with wood only it barely fits, add the copper-alloy collar which now makes the haft too thick, heat the axe eye to expand it, insert the brass-wrapped haft into it, hammer it as deep as reasonable to form the eye of the axe tightly around it, and cool the axe-head quickly to protect the wooden haft and lock everything into place.

Several elements speak in favour of such a hot-assembly method.
  First, none of the surviving axes with collars shows any sign of having been decorated with metallic inlays. Of course the statistics are limited, but the fact that the options for Dane-axe decoration were either inlay or collar would make sense if the final assembly of an axe with a collar required heating the eye of the axe, which would destroy the inlay (of course it's possible, although annoying, to do the inlaying on an already hafted axe, but in case the haft would need to be replaced the repair could then only involve a collar-less haft).
  Second, copper-alloys are good heat conductors, meaning that the collar would dissipate the heat and help protecting the wood from damage when inserted into a red-hot axe eye.
  Third, a commonly used tool for forging axe-heads (or rather, for finishing the details of the eye) is a drift, a slightly conical punch which is hammered into the (red hot) axe eye to give it its final shape. Using the brass-covered haft itself as a drift would therefore not be a completely exotic axe-making technique.

Oh, and speaking about glue, this is where it actually comes back! What is the best way to "glue" metal to metal? Welding or brazing or soldering (depending on the temperature and metals involved)! And it is possible (however untested to the best of my knowledge on the surviving examples) that some brazing was used, brought to heat together with the axe eye so as to fuse it to the copper-alloy collar upon cooling. So, in case any archaeo-metallurgist reads this and has access to such axes, you know what to try and analyse!

So there you have it. If you are blacksmith with experience in making Dane-axes reading this and you're willing to test this hafting method, I just want to say two things:
1) I would be delighted to see the results of your test, and have your opinion about why and how it succeeded or failed.
2) maybe don't start your sharpest axe-head, and take some safety precautions before you start swinging the thing around! Just because I like my theory doesn't mean I would trust my life to it!

Yours,
   Eiríkr

A few points about Norse archery

This is part 2 of posts on archery, find part 1 here.

In part 1, I discussed many details of how a Norse bow was made and equipped, but a bow is only interesting in so far as it shoots arrows, so today the big question is: how were Norse bows shot?

As mentioned in the post about bow construction, the focus here is on the Norse bow proper (Norse longbow, examplified by the Hedeby and Ballinderry bows), not on the other bows that the Norse could have come in contact with and used (Sámi two-wood bow, and Magyar composite bow). So, while one cannot exclude the fact that some cross-pollination happened between the different archery traditions present in Scandinavia (for example someone could have tried to shoot a longbow with a thumb draw, with or without thumbring), let's focus on the "normal" way to shoot a Norse longbow.

A counterexample to the rest of the discussion:
this large bone ring found in Iceland might be a thumb ring, which might have belonged to one named Hjörtr (stag),
who might be the archer from Brennu-Njáls Saga (killed close to the find site), which might indicate the use of a thumb-ring in Norse archery.

There are three key elements to determine an archery technique: the grip (or draw, or release, depending on how one considers things), which defines how the string is held by the draw hand; the arrow positioning, which interacts with the structure of the bow and/or the bow hand; and the drawing motion itself. For all these elements, information is scarce, and we have to mostly rely on iconography and parallels (in particular with later Welsh and English longbows).
  Regarding the grip and the arrow placement, relevant depictions of archers are few and far between, but in general we can guess quite safely that the grip was, like for the better known English longbow, a Mediterranean grip with the arrow on the inside: two or three fingers pulling the string, set above and below the arrow, with the arrowhead on the left of the bow for archer drawing the string with the right hand (and vice versa). The two-finger versus three-finger variants are in practice very similar, with debates in favour of one or the other spanning centuries among archers - the only definitive point being that beyond a certain bow poundage the two-finger grip becomes too weak. It is however possible that other styles of draw were used, such as variations of the pinch draw (primary, secondary or tertiary release): some intact arrows have been found that lack a nock, such arrows would need to be held in the fingers in order to stabilise them on the string while drawing the bow (however it is likely that such arrows predate the Viking Age by a few centuries). There is similarly a debate about the possibility that medieval (English) longbows were shot with the arrows on the outside of the bow (on the right for a rightie) but even then, the vast majority of depictions suggest that the arrow is on the inside of the bow. So, with the possibility of minor usages and exceptions, let's keep the Mediterranean grip with the arrow on the inside.
  Now to the question of the drawing motion. For this, there is more or less no direct source that can help us: no text describes it in detail, archaeology has nothing to say on the matter, and pictorial sources are static at best if not distorted by artistic conventions. So, what are we left with?

12th century English depiction of
9th century Norse archers (MS M.736)

15th century French depiction of
14th century English archers (MSS Fr. 2643–6)

Some people, based on iconography such as the martyrdom of St Edmund above, suggest that there is an "early medieval draw", which would consist in drawing the arrow towards the middle of the chest, with the bow arm pointing somewhat in front of the chest, in contrast to modern archery where the arrow is drawn towards the face and the bow arm is in line with the shoulders. This is in my opinion a completely wrong interpretation: not only is such motion completely inefficient in using the muscles of the upper body, but it also makes aiming very difficult (admittedly we're talking about instinctive aiming, but even then some angles offer a better intuition that others). This error probably stems from a misinterpretation of artistic conventions (early medieval art struggles with perspective, and hates putting anything in front of a human face) as well as from the reenactors' desire to set themselves clearly apart from modern archery. It is instead more likely that the arrow was drawn in a motion happening more or less at the level of the archer's head, or slightly above it, as illustrated by any more realistic artistic representation, or just about any traditional archery form in the world. This quasi-universality of drawing techniques can be explained in terms of body mechanics, optimizing the way the skeletal structure is locked, and as many muscle groups as possible are harnessed when drawing powerful bows (or for more comfort and stability when drawing weaker bows): for an excellent explanation, see these two videos.
  We can therefore quite safely assume that at full draw of a Norse archer would have their upper arms slightly above horizontal, with the nock of the arrow somewhere between the level of the chin and the eyes. That would possibly imply, when shooting on a flat trajectory, canting the upper body to bring the bow arm horizontal - this posture is well visible on the English archers above, and possibly hinted at in the depiction of the Norse archers shooting poor Edmund. That still leaves us with the question of the motion itself - was it closer to the exagerrated downward arch performed in kyūdō, or an almost perfectly horizontal draw like in modern olympic archery ? - and the question of the anchor points - to where (and thus how far back) was the arrow drawn?
  It is very tempting, to answer all these questions, to simply apply principles from modern barebow archery, saying that this is just a matter of using a slightly different style of bow (short comment here - don't). The other common, somewhat more relevant avenue is to assume that since we're dealing with a type of powerful medieval longbow coming from north-western Europe, let's use as a reference some other type of powerful medieval longbow coming from north-western Europe - namely the English longbow, for which far better documentation (writings, depictions and archaeological finds) is available, and which has already been revived and is practiced by a solid community of enthusiasts. Is that "Norse English longbow" hybridisation a good approach though?

This leads to a topic which I think suffers from a misrepresentation : the power of Norse longbows, and as a consequence the energy of the arrows shot out of such bows. Replicas of the yew longbows from Hedeby, Ballinderry and Wassenaar have yielded bow weights in the range of 80 to 110 pounds. This seems in line with what was known for English war bows (with typical draw weights in the 100 – 160# range), and probably also in line with the idea of "strong, manly Viking warriors". However, there are elements which speak in favour of Norse longbows typically having a lower poundage.
  First, there is a survival bias in the archaeological material: the most powerful bows are the thickest, and thus the most likely to get through centuries undamaged, even if they are not of "typical" draw weight. This is very clear when including the broken bow fragments from Hedeby in the picture: their draw weights is impossible to determine, because one could not make a proper replica, but it is very obvious that all of these bows were thinner, and therefore weaker, than the "Hedeby 1" intact bow.
  Second, there is the context of use of these bows. Unlike the English longbow, Norse bows are primarily known from a hunting context, where a heavy poundage is useful against large game (such as very commonly reindeer), but does not need to be as high as against an armoured opponent. Then even if different, more powerful bows were used for war rather than for hunting, the armour involved was much lighter than in later medieval times (mail was present but was nowhere near as widespread as it became later, not to mention gambesons and plate), and no source points at the archers themselves being trained from the youngest age to wield extremely powerful bows (as was the case for English longbowmen). It is thus both unnecessary and unlikely to find a very heavy bow on an early medieval Scandinavian battlefield.
  And third, the draw-weight of a bow doesn't mean anything without a corresponding draw-length - and that's where the key misconceptions lie.

The bow is a spring, and as such it takes more force to pull it a longer way. That's why the poundage of a bow is always given in relation with a draw-length. In modern archery the standard is of 28 inches (the typical draw-length on a modern bow for a ~180 cm tall person), this is also the draw-length for which the poundage of replicas of Norse longbows are typically reported. For English longbows the draw-length is typically longer than in modern archery, due to the anchor point being at the ear rather than the cheek, so poundages are given for draw-lengths 30 or even 31". But what is the typical draw-length used by Norse archers?
  This is something which can be answered by archaeology as well as literature. Entire arrows survive very rarely in archaeological contexts, and the only thing left to be found is usually only the rusty arrowhead. But in some cases, intact shafts survive, sometimes with the fletching still present: this is the case for example in the ancient hunting grounds of the Norwegian mountains, where glacial archaeology has uncovered countless items in almost pristine conditions. From these finds, we can tell that the average length of arrow shafts was around 66 cm or 26".

If we account for the depth of the arrow nock and the fact that the front of the shafts was reinforced with sinew or wire wrapping, we're left with a typical draw-length of 25.5" if not less (for a clean arrow flight it is very unlikely that the archer would have rested the wrapping, and even less the admittedly very long arrowhead, on his bow hand for an increased draw-length). That tells us two things:
  1) the energy of the arrow (and the strain put on the bow) is 10-15% lower than it would be with a 28" draw-length, and this can be more than 20% with respect to shooting English longbow style.
  2) the anchor point was typically set quite forward. People in the 10th century were not particularly short (unlike commonly assumed): the average European male was about 172 cm tall, with Norsemen being a bit taller than average, so the expected draw-length for "modern style" archery would have been expected to be of the order of 27" to 28". At 25.5 inches we are dealing with a draw which barely reaches the face!

Such a short draw-length is hard to understand, given that most archery traditions try to maximise draw-length. It might be a matter of aiming (bringing the arrow to eye level - makes sense for the very short-range shooting that reindeer hunting involved) but also maybe a way of adapting to the bow itself. That's where literature enters the discussion!
  One of the best know accounts of Norse archery comes from the story of the Battle of Svolder (year 999 or 1000) in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla. During the battle, the archer Einarr Þambarskelfir, renown for his accurate and powerful shooting, fights for king Óláfr Tryggvason on the royal flagship. Despite his bow being struck by an enemy arrow, he attempts once more to shoot the enemy leader, Eiríkr jarl Hákonarson, and then...

"What is it" cried King Olaf, "that broke with such a noise?"
"Norway, king, from your hands" said Einar.

Now the interesting part is that king Óláfr then hands him his own bow and commands him to keep shooting.

Einarr took the bow, and drew it over the head of the arrow.
"Too weak, too weak," said he, "for the bow of a mighty king!" and, throwing the bow aside, he took sword and shield, and fought valiantly.

While drawing a bow over the arrowhead would be physically impossible in the case of arrows made for a 30" draw-length, it is absolutely possible to do with short arrows such as the ones found in Norway. But why would Einarr draw the bow so far back instead of stopping at his usual anchor point (and maybe still complaining about the bow's power)? It seems that he only borrowed the bow from the king, and kept using his own arrows, so even if there was a significant difference in stature between the king and him that should not have created such a problem. The other explanation is that bows were not necessarily drawn to a fixed anchor point (as would a modern archer do when switching bows) but rather to the maximum draw strength of the wielder.
  In a context where accurate measurements of a bow's performance were not available, where no one would keep changing equipment for the sake of performance or fanciness (like some modern archers do) unless the previous item broke, and where regular archery practice (from which comes a well-established shooting form and the ability to shoot the heaviest of bows) was not common, it is very likely that an archer would procure (or make) a bow that would roughly match his physical capacity, and then procure or make arrows matching his draw-length with that bow. This approach to draw-length would be familiar to anyone attempting to shoot a bow far beyond their strength!

I hope that all this series of posts will inspire you to try out new things in your reenactment archery practice.

Yours,
Eiríkr

A few points about Norse bows

This is part 1 of posts on archery, find part 2 here.

After years of "conventional" archery practice, I have started to pursue it in a way as historically accurate as possible. It did come with its knarr-load of questions and problems, and while the following doesn't intend to be a comprehensive overview of Norse archery, I would like to share here a few ideas on specific, often overlooked details. In all this I am greatly indebted to my friend Robin, bowyer and stringer at L'Atelier Légend'R, for both beautiful equipment and enlightening discussions.

Archery for Norsemen involved three types of bow: their native longbow ("Hedeby type") design, called "ýbogi", as well as two types of composite bows with which they were in close contact and used too, with archaeological finds in a Norse context: the Sámi two-wood bow (a birch/pine laminate), called "tvíviðr", and the Magyar (Hungarian) horse-bow (a horn-wood-sinew laminate), called "hornbogi". In the following the focus is on the typical Norse longbow, although there is surely a lot to be told about the other ones.

Yew longbow (mine!)
(L'Atelier Légend'R)

Sámi bow
(Kviljo Buemakeri)

Magyar bow
(Peter Benczik)

The "Hedeby type" longbows are best knows through a number of finds from... Hedeby (would you have guessed!), the Norse town in present-day northern Germany - a complete bow and several fragments of limbs. In addition to that, two other almost complete specimens in the same style were found in Ballinderry (central Ireland) and Wassenaar (Dutch coast). This collection gives us a good overview of how these bows looked like.
  These longbows were, obviously, long (about 180-190 cm), and made of a single piece of yew (occasionally elm). A few of them sported iron nails stuck near the end of the upper limb, which were most likely acting as string holders (holding the string loop in place when the bow was unstrung), and possibly as a reference for the string length when tying the string (we'll come back to that). The nail doesn't seem to weaken the bows in any significant way (none of the bows found broke at this point). Another option to achieve the same effect is to use a string-holding loop (an extension above the main string loop), which can be seen in the Stuttgart Psalter for example. It is also possible that some of these bows had a cord-wrapped handle.
  Perhaps the most recognisable feature of the Norse longbows is their deflexed tips (bent towards the archer). Both tips are steam-bent on a length of about 7-10 cm, the upper tip being usually slightly bigger and more bent than the lower one. There is a debate on the use of these tips. Given that the string would be generally attached almost at the bending spot, these tips are passive and have no influence of the shooting performance of the bow (other than by making the limbs marginally heavier). An often proposed explanation is that it gives the bow a "ship-like" profile, magnifying the importance of longships in the sea-faring Norse culture. I personally find this hypothesis dubious, exaggerating the importance of the ship pattern (despite the fact that both the aft of a ship and the tip of a bow are referred to in Old Norse as "háls" - neck), and a much more convincing explanation is that the bent upper tip offers an extremely convenient handle for pulling the upper limb when stringing the bow. The lower tip would then be bent mostly for the purpose of symmetry, and to provided a visual reference when tying the string (we'll come back to that).

Hunter on skis (the god Ullr?)
Böksta runestone, 11th century

St Edmund martyred by vikings
MS M.736 fol. 14r, 12th century

Note the deflexed bow tips.

Since we're talking about bow tips, let's focus on the string nocks. The complete Hedeby bow, the Ballinderry and Wassenaar bows, and other fragments, show the presence of side-nocks on the upper tip of the bow, the nock being on the left side (seen from the archer's perspective). It is often assumed, based on the surviving bows and on the example of later medieval longbows (especially the Mary Rose bows) that the Norse longbows therefore had side-nocks on both tips, the nocks being on opposite sides. This is however contradicted by the lower tip of the complete Hedeby bow (Ballinderry and Wassenaar have their lower tip broken off) as well as several fragments from Hedeby, which have no nock at all, but sometimes show imprints from the string. The Norse longbows therefore had an interesting string configuration, where the lower end was tied to the bow permanently, and the upper end had a loop going through a side-nock. This ensures that the string stays in place when unstrung, being held on the other end by the nail or a string-holding loop.

Esau's hunting bow:
twisted string with two loops
Brit.Lib.Cott.Clau.B.IV, 11th century

Caroligian soldier's bow:
tied string and string-holder
Stuttgart Psalter, 9th century

This brings us to a very specific point about these bows, about which we know very little: the bow strings. What were they made of? How were they made? How were they attached to the bow? So many questions!
  Given that no string survives archaeologically, the material of which they were made has to be guessed based on other evidence. The possible materials include all forms of vegetal fibre (linen, hemp, nettle, or even tree bast), as well as an array of animal materials (hair, sinew, gut, hide, or even imported silk). Out of these, western medieval longbows were preferentially equipped with hemp string, or linen, occasionally silk if available. Sámi bows were probably fitted with reindeer sinew or gut, like among other Uralic people, and the Hungarian bow tradition also uses sinew, or rawhide, for their strings. From other archaeological finds of ropes, bast seems to be the most common material (but seems a poor choice for bow strings, being less resistant and less flexible than other fibres), horsehair is an option too, reinforced by the mention of (human) hair as emergency material for a makeshift bowstring in Njáls Saga. Finally, the Old Norse term "hörr" (meaning linen or hemp) is used to refer to bow strings in Egils Saga or in the Edda. That does not answer the question very much, does it? Add to that the fact that the availability of flax, sinew, etc. clearly wasn't the same in Denmark, northern Norway or Iceland... I personally use linen strings, because they are the most readily available, and given the available sources linen or hemp seem like the most likely options for the areas were "Hedeby type" bows were found.
  No matter what material was used, and how it was prepared, one thing is for sure is that the strings of the bows were thick. Forget the 1.5-2.5 mm diameter of modern bowstrings: surviving arrows nocks, of wood or bronze, prove that strings might have reached diameters of 3 to almost 5 mm! Not only are all these string materials less resistant (to traction or wear or both) than modern fibres such as Dacron or Dyneema, but without scientific measurements the stringers of the days went for safety and made their strings thicker than nowadays would seem necessary.

Now how were these strings made and attached to the bow? All contemporary evidence points to the fact that the string were not braided, or made from an infinite loop like modern bowstrings, but rather made from two or three twisted ("laid") strands. The main questions regard the making of the loop, and the type of knot used to attach the lower end of the string.
  There are basically three ways of making a loop at one end of a laid rope or string. The most common today, for 3-stranded ropes, is to make an eye splice, where the strands are unravelled and woven over-under the twisted strands in the rope. The most common in modern archery, with 2-stranded (sometimes 3-stranded) strings, is the Flemish loop, where the strands of the two sides of the loop merge to form the strands of the string itself, resulting in a string twice as thick as the loop. The Flemish loop can actually be a form of splice too, if the strands of one side stop after a short distance instead of forming the full length of the string. Finally, the loop can be laid directly during the rope-making process, the two or three strands first twisted around each other in a circle before carrying on to form the rest of the string. Of these methods, the eye splice is unattested in medieval times, it is a relatively modern concept adapted to ready-made commercial ropes. In contrast, the laid loop is the most common among early medieval archaeological finds, in a context where almost all ropes are purpose-made. As for the Flemish loop, the image of Esau's bow above suggests that the loops are indeed thinner than the rest of the bowstring, so this method could have been used for archery - the fact that the loop is thinner is not a problem, because the weak spot is actually the knot.

Eye splice

Flemish string

Laid loop

Which brings us to... the knot! As mentioned the knot is the weak spot of the entire bow string, because every sharp turn weakens the cohesion of the fibre bundle, and every pinching spot tends to wear the string down. With my first string, I could barely get three shots out before it broke it exactly at the knot - the struggle is real. Not only that: learning knots and choosing which knot is suitable for what purpose is in general difficult, but guessing knots based on almost nothing is horribly hard - however I might have some clues for you! The common "archer's knot" (or timber hitch) does not work because it slips when not under tension and would therefore be useless on an unstrung bow. Nowadays the reference on this topic is the reconstruction made by Harm Paulsen, expert of the Hedeby archery finds - he tied a marline hitch or chain hitch (that is, a succession of overhand knots or clove hitches) on the lower tip, below the attachment point of the bowstring. However, this solution is not satisfactory both in practical terms (as in, mine broke after three shots), and in the face of the available evidence.
  First, the placement of the knot is quite bad at preventing the string from slipping up the bow limb - a knot placed above the attachment point of the string is more effective in that role, given that it is blocked by the gradual thickening of the limb.
  Second, while the choice of knot is historically consistent (we know this knot was known), it is far from being optimal to resist friction, intermittent tension, and traction parallel to the attachment post: in these categories, there are relatively simple knots such as the anchor hitch (which, as the name suggest, is designed to resist the movements of a moored ship) or the rolling hitch (best known, and historically attested, in the form of the taut line hitch). These knots in particular minimise sharp turns and maximise grip by adding turns around the attachment post.
  Third, iconography might actually help us here. But should we trust the illustrations from the Martyrdom of St Edmund and from the Stuttgart Psalter? These are but a few lines sketched on a bow, can they be a faithful technical representation of the knot?... This is a very vast question in itself, but anyway. The former suggest the presence of a binding, or long knot, above the string attachment point. This could be consistent with Paulsen's chain hitch, but placed differently, and it is the option chosen by my bowyer friend Robin. The Stuttgart Psalter, on the other hand, consistently shows all "knots" as a series of three or four loops on the bow tip, the string emerging in the middle of this "knot". This is actually very consistent with a simple representation of a rolling hitch - a knot which also has the advantage of being quite easy to make with a string already somewhat under tension, such as with the loop resting on the string-holding nail to have a direct reference for the string length and brace height of the bow. This option is my personal favourite, tested with a string made of Dacron, it still needs to be tested with a natural string!

Various relevant knots

Chain hitch

Timber hitch

Anchor bend

Rolling hitch

This post is already becoming super long by now, so that's it for today. Stay tuned for more ideas on Norse archery in part 2!

A spear flying through History?

The brynþvari is an elusive type of spear mentioned in the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson, an its name seems to define it as a mail-piercing weapon.

A very accurate description is given in the chapter 53 of the saga (that is, as accurate as it can be once biased by the translation and interpretation):

He had a kesja in his hand; the blade was two ells long, and forged to a four-edged point, but at its base the blade was broad. The socket was both long and thick. The shaft was not longer that what was needed to be able to grasp the socket with the hand, and was exceedingly thick. There was an iron spike in the socket, and the shaft was all bound with iron. Such spears were called brynþvarar.

Let's skip over the fact that kesja is also a debated name for a weapon, and assume that it is just a literary word for a spear. The description might be slightly exaggerated (the 90 cm long spearhead seems a bit huge), but we have to trust the author on the other details.

The description of the brynþvari matches no weapon found during the Viking Age, nor does it really match any later weapon that could been incorporated into the saga between its historical setting (10th and 11th century) and its time of writing (13th century).

However, some older weapons are able to match the description very closely.

First, let's have a look at high-ridged spears of the Vendel Age (Migration Period). These are the most closely related to the Norse culture, being Scandinavian and separated in time by only two or three centuries. Several spearhead of this type have been found in Scandinavia, at least two of them being stored at the Stockholm Historiska Museet.

Vendel Age spearhead, about 38 cm long.

But if we take a leap back in time and move out of Scandinavia, we can find many more examples of such spearheads : "bayonet-spears" of the late Iron Age (La Tène Period) are a subtype of Celtic spears with a strong ridge and a narrow, elongated point.

In the middle, a large bayonet-spear from the Gournay-sur-Aronde sanctuary in northern France.

A reconstruction of the previous bayonet-spear, about 68 cm long.

Another interesting fact is that Celtic spears very often had a butt-spike (as can be seen above), much more often than Norse spears, and in the Saga of Egil, the brynþvari's shaft is firmly thrust into the ground so as to keep aloft an impaled body... which strongly suggest the presence of a butt-spike.

It is a known fact that sagas are full of anachronisms, usually bringing later medieval elements into Norse stories of the 9th to 11th centuries. Having a 1200-year old Celtic spear originating from continental Europe featured prominently in a major saga goes beyond that usual level of anachronism...

It is almost impossible that the author of the written saga would have had knowledge of the Celtic weapon. At best could he had known of the Vendel age weapon. But the most probable answer is that of an actual similarity between all these spears from different time periods. Is it a lineage? Is it a random evolutionary convergence? In any case, it seems that the bayonet-spear, or the brynþvari, was a blade design that saw action across at least twelve centuries.

Yours,
Eiríkr

Swords, helmets and Swiss watches

You all have seen Norse swords and helmets, haven't you...

Well, actually, you may have seen many Norse swords, but only one actual Norse helmet among other early-medieval ones.

Many Norse swords...

... and the lone Gjermundbu helmet.

And why is that? Let my present you my humble theory.

Imagine that you live, nowadays, in a culture that practices grave-good burials, and that, unfortunately, you have to bury both of your grand-parents. You are expected to put in their graves objects that are status symbols, that were dear to them, and maybe have everyday use (for the afterlife). You can also keep part of the objects for yourself as part of your heirloom, but you can't keep everything of course.

Now let us imagine that your grandfather had a reasonably priced Swiss watch that he liked a lot, and is still in perfect working order, and your grandmother cared a lot about her set of gilded porcelain tableware, which is also in perfect shape. Both items are worth about a thousand euros. What would you keep?

My guess is that many people would choose the Swiss watch, which is still practical and fashionable, even several decades after its initial purchase, instead of the gilded porcelain ware, which is outmoded, cumbersome and cannot be put in the dishwasher. On the other hand, a few decades earlier, your grandmother chose to keep her ancestor's gilded porcelain ware, while your grandfather put his ancestor's pocket watch to the grave and chose to buy a Swiss wristwatch.

Now, my theory is that the same thing happened to Norse swords and helmets in burials in the turn from the 8th to the 11th century (and of course there is the change in burial practices, under the influence of christianity and other things, but let us forget about that for a moment, please).
In the case of swords, Norse swords of Petersen types A to W are the porcelain ware, and swords of type X are your modern Ikea tableware.

Ten centuries of spathæ

and a transition to medieval swords.

In the case of helmets, spectacles spangenhelms are the pocket watches, and conical nasal helmets are the Swiss watches.

Five centuries of spangenhelms

and a transition to conical helmets.

Burials tell us about objects which already belonged to the past at the time they were buried with their owners. And the heirs could choose to keep, or not, part of these objects based on a ratio between the symbolic value of the object as a grave good, and its practical value in the living world.

Swords evolved at a tremendous pace during so-called Viking Age. After ten centuries of using swords that where more or less direct descendants of the Roman spatha, the "medieval" sword was born somewhere at the turn of the 10th and 11th century. For centuries, sword hilts evolved slowly, and the blades almost didn't evolve at all. Long, flat, parallel-edged pattern-welded blades (Geibig type 1) where standard among Germanic people from the last centuries of the Roman Empire to the first half of of the 9th century. And suddenly, things start to change quicker and quicker. The hilt styles evolve a bit, like they did before, and the decoration styles change, but the main changes occur in the blades: in about 150 years and a few stages of evolution, we reach blades of Geibig types 4 and 5, which are to be found both on the last versions of Norse swords (often associated with Petersen type X hilts), and on early medieval, knightly swords. These blades as pointy, tapering, have substantial fullers in them, and handle in a whole different way to their predecessors.
A sword represented a tremendous amount of economical value, and also a very large amount of symbolic value as a grave good. But in a context of rapid technological change, it can be understandable that it is the symbolic value that prevailed, and the heirs didn't want to keep a sword which, despite being so beautiful and expensive, was already outdated as far as blade properties went. And, given that most of the price of the sword came from the long and difficult forging process, it was a better option to leave the beautiful grave good for the ancestor, and buy a new sword, rather than reforge the old blade.

Things where different with helmets. We know, from rune stones, from illuminations, stories, etc. that many vikings wore helmets in their raids. And from a purely practical point of view, it is even possible that more vikings wore helmets that had swords - a helmet is better as keeping you alive, and maybe doesn't require as expert craftsmanship as the sword does. So why wouldn't we find helmets in warrior graves ? Well, because of Swiss watches. The technological and stylistic transition that occurred for swords during the Viking Age occurred before the Viking Age in the case of helmet. Several depictions show Norsemen during that period wearing conical nasal helmets - a design that first appeared in the early 9th century, and proved popular enough to last well into the 13th century. It superseded earlier helmets, also descendants of Roman designs, the spangenhelms and ridge helmets. It might have been due to the re-increasing amounts of mail armour, used in aventails to protect the face, or to the type of warfare, or the development of other weapons... but that's another question.
Given the amount of iron is needed to make one, a helmet was clearly an item with substantial economical value. And if it was of the new, up-to-date design, it had also a lot of practical value for the heirs, given the centuries of use that the nasal helmets had. A helmet also has clearly less symbolic value than a sword, especially if is has a plain, undecorated design (unlike the rich Vendel helmets, and unlike the swords), so it is not as important to keep it in the ancestor's grave. The Gjermundbu helmet was merely a "last survivor" of the old style of helmets, and ended up been buried in a mound, rather that been reused in battle.

And there you have it. Vikings and other Norse warriors had old swords and new helmets - the former where buried and preserved, the latter, reused for generations, well into the christian times and eventually destroyed. But this is of course just my humble theory!

Yours,
Eiríkr

Achtung Panzer !

Ugh.

URGH!

I really HATE lamellar armour. Or rather, I hate the stupendous amounts of lamellar armour seen in viking reenactment, and especially its horrible leather variant.
But I'm willing to talk about my problems in order to feel better about them, so let's have a go at lamellar armour and leather armour.

The existence of lamellar armour during the Viking Age is undeniable, since it is supported by a number of archaeological evidences, such as the 33 sets of plates found in Birka, at the so-called "garrison" site. It is likely that such plates were found in other places too.

Set of plates from a lamellar armour found in Birka
(now kept in Stockholm History Museum)

In Old Norse, lamellar armour was called "spangabrynja". "Brynja" is the byrnie, or mail shirt, while "spǫng" designates a spangle, a floe or ice flake. So a "spǫng" is a small, flat, shiny thing, and it is perfectly logical to think of the "spangabrynja" as a spangle, i.e. lamellar, armour. However, this kind of armour is mentioned extremely rarely, appearing only in chapter 63 of the Laxdœla Saga, and in chapter 10 of the Sagan af Hákoni herðibreið, in the 3rd book of the Heimskringla. So seeing them everywhere in all reenactment battlefields does not seem to reflect the realities of the Viking Age.

Now that we know for a fact that these lamellar armours did exist, both practically and conceptually, we'll see where they did come from, and how they did look like.

For the origin, the answer is twofold.

The first possible origin for lamellar armour is local: it might be a descendant of the types of armour found either during the Vendel Age, or more generally in North-western  Europe during the Migration Era.

An example of Vendel splint armour from Valsgärde is discussed here in details (only in Czech).

Valsgärde splint armour, 7th century. The interpretation of this armour is debatable, more recent studies see these sets of staves as shin and forearm protections.

An example of earlier Germano-Roman lamellar armour is discussed here in details (only in Czech, again...)

Fragment of 5th century Germano-Roman lamellar armour.

It is interesting to note that the Valsgärde armour seriously lacks longitudinal mobility, while the Roman lorica segmentata lacked transversal mobility - the Germano-Roman lamellar armour solves the two problems.

The second origin of the Norse lamellar armour is obviously Varanguian. Lamellar armour is well known to have been favoured by Byzantine military, and the elite Varanguian guards, of Norse origin, loved using the heaviest available protection, therefore wearing lamellar armour on top of mail. Many Varanguians, such as the future king Harald Hardrada, came back to Scandinavia after their service in Byzantium, and they could have brought back with them such armour, or at least the idea of it.

Therefore, the Viking Age "spangles" that we find in museums today come from armour that either derived from earlier Scandinavian designs, or was imported from Constantinople, or was a copy of these imports.

The looks of such sets of lamellar armour it unknown, too.  What everyone is mostly used to are the lamellar armours with smaller or larger pauldrons and faulds, that we see in reenactment (or on the first to pictures of this page). But my bet is that they most probably looked like this:

Byzantine fresco showing 12th century lamellar armour

Well, maybe the pteruges were not part of the Scandinavian lamellars, but the armour itself is nothing but a cuirass, while the protection of other parts of the body, such as the arms or the hips and thighs, is granted by something else, lighter and more mobile, such as mail or pteruges.

The reason behind the shape of the reenactment lamellars is the wish of the fighters of having more and more protection to bash each other with more and more force on a set of allowed targets, which include the torso, the thighs and upper arms. Therefore, sacrificing mobility for the sake of protection in a context were the number of moves is reduced by the fighting rules makes sense.

On the other hand, real armour is always a trade-off between weight, mobility, and protection. Historically, one can see that most rigid or semi-rigid torso protections stop at the waist, not at the hips or below, to allow for a full flexibility of the body. The shoulder protections have to be mobile as well, and are therefore highly articulated, unlike the broad single-piece pauldrons that we see on the first two pictures.

The need for flexibility of the lamellar armour is further illustrated by an element that we can see on the archaeological finds, but never on modern reconstructions: the plates are of many different types and sizes. We see larger scales on the chest and stomach, to provide a more rigid protection to vital areas, and smaller plates that allow for more flexibility around the shoulders.

Now, on to leather armour!

Game nr. 2:

Which of these leather armours has the slightest chance of being historically accurate?

You can be level 0 and think that leather armour did exist. Or be level 1, and know that it didn't. Or level 2 and know that it actually did exist, but not in the form of that weird leather plate armour we often see in fantasy settings. Let me take you to level 3...

Leather can obviously be a very resistant material. Be it very thick veg-tanned leather or "boiled leather" (i.e. leather cooked in wax or gelatine), it can provide a substantial protection against cuts and thrusts. As late as in the 17th century, thick leather was used as a primary level of protection again edged weapons. The word "cuirass" itself, which designates an armour for the torso, comes from the French "cuir" - leather.

Now, how was it in the Viking Age ?

We know that Norsemen used mail for protection, which is highly ineffective at absorbing impact. Therefore, the use of gambesons or other kind of subarmalis is very likely, even though unattested. Leather, either in one thick layer for a subarmalis, or as the outer layers of a padded gambeson, is a good material, and there comes a first possibility of having some kind of leather armour.

What about leather lamellar armour then? Well, as we have seen, lamellar armour was already very rare, and the chances of having some leather surviving archaeologically were close to zero. And having someone making a copy of an elite armour in a cheaper material is not impossible, but rather unlikely.

But what do the texts say about this? Well, here comes the much-dreaded word : "leðrpanzari"! It exists! A leather panzer, it must be some kind of leather armour! Well, not quite. Translators rather use the term of "leather jack" - so rather a gambeson - and we'll see that it is for good reasons.

The word "leðrpanzari" appears only in one text, the Karlamagnús saga. It is a Norse translation of the "Matter of France", a collection of Carolingian chansons de geste, for the court of Norway. So we're not strictly speaking looking at a text that is supposed to describe Norse arms and armour - the Matter of France is even said to have Oriental influences, which can be seen for example in the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

In this saga, the word "panzari" appears 23 times. This word comes from the Latin "pantex" (belly, intestine), through the Frankish "pancier", which designates a cuirass (no leather pun intended). So we're dealing with a kind of armour for the torso.

It is interesting to note that the world "brynja" (mail shirt) appears over a hundred times, which shows how unimportant the "panzari" is.

Out of 23 times, the "panzari" is described:

• 7 times as a "leðrpanzari"
• 2 times as a "silkipanzari"
• 1 time as a "linpanzari"

Do I even need to translate these words or do you already understand that there is no way that "panzari" would designate a lamellar armour? Would you believe in plates made of linen or silk? No! The "panzari" is most obviously a kind of gambeson, which can be made of a variety of materials, depending on the wealth and the wishes of the wearer.

Silk-covered gambesons became quite popular among nobility in Europe from the 14th century on, but we can imagine Easterners wearing such kind of protection in the tales of pilgrimages to Jerusalem and other travels to the Middle-East.

So, I guess we're done here. As far as Norsemen are concerned, they probably wore a "panzari", which could be made of leather, and, if they could afford it, a "brynja" over it. If they wished and had the extra silver, they could also have a "spangabrynja" on top of the "brynja". Maybe (maybe) someday I'll come accross a clever reenactor in a perfectly historically valid kit, with a short lamellar cuirass made of a variety of specialized plates... I'll take pictures, I promise.

Yours, Eiríkr

UPDATE!
Another point about the "spangabrynja" that I think is worth mentioning: by the time the sagas were written, lamellar armour was clearly obsolete, but coats of plates were starting to appear in Europe. And guess how they were sometimes called? "Plate hauberk" (watch the whole video, it's worth it).
So, did the word "spangabrynja" used by the authors of sagas designate the Norse or the medieval armour? That's an open question.

UPDATE!
A few new thoughts about the "panzari":
According to several sources, like Hjalmar Falk's Altnordisches Waffenkunde, the "panzari", or linen gambeson, only showed up in Scandinavia aroud the 12th century, when the so-called Viking Age was long over, and Scandinavian kingdoms where fully integrated into the European culture, sharing a common faith and technology.
So it seems that the "panzari", be it made of leather, linen or silk, would be anachronistic for Norsemen. However, some kind of arming garment but have been worn under mail armour to provide some padding. It is maybe what the word "vapntreyja" (arming jacket / jerkin) refers to. It occurs often that the "vapntreyja" is mentionned as being "ermlauss" (sleeveless). This reminds of the Roman subarmalis, which was a sleeveless jacket with pteruges worn under the lorica hamata (mail armour). The subarmalis was either thick leather, or linen, or lighter leather padded with wool and / or linen... We don't really know, even for the Romans who wrote plenty. Guessing what Norse arming garments could have looked like it even more tricky. But experimenting with leather, wool and linen on Scandinavian pattern with or without sleeves seems a good starting point.