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.
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| 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).
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| Hunter on skis (the god Ullr?) Böksta runestone, 11th century | St Edmund martyred by vikings MS M.736 fol. 14r, 12th century |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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!
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