by Paul Hill
Hard and steep-cheeked, wrapped in red
Gold and garnet, ripped from a plain
Of bright flowers, wrought–a remnant
Of fire and file, bound in stark beauty
With delicate wire, my grip makes
Warriors weep, my sting threatens
The hand that grasps gold. Studded
With a ring, I ravage heir and heirloom . . .
To my lord and foes always lovely
And deadly, altering face and form.
Seaxes and Sidearms
The Anglo-Saxons were known by their contemporaries from a very early age for carrying with them a distinctive form of sidearm known as a seax. In essence, this weapon was a single-edged knife. Something like this weapon is referred to in the sixth century by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks (iv, 51) when he refers to ‘boys with strong knives . . . which they commonly call scramasaxes’. However, it is not at all certain that the scramasax and the seax are one and the same thing. What we can glean from contemporary sources, however, is that the connotations are more with the seax as a weapon than as a tool. This would especially make sense when we consider the length of some of these later examples. There are two heriots from the later Anglo-Saxon period that include the term ‘handseax’. We do not know exactly what a ‘handseax’ was, but it was clearly important enough to be considered as part of the war gear comprising the gift of a lord to his man.
The origins of the weapon are obscure. The Scandinavians of the late Roman Iron Age (that is, around about the third to fifth centuries AD) carried similar single-edged knives and the Hunnic sabre is also thought to be an ancestor of the weapon. Before long, the male Merovingian graves of the fifth to sixth centuries in France contained seaxes of a type categorised by Mortimer Wheeler as Type I (Fig. 10). This type, Wheeler’s ‘Frankish Type’, has its back and edge curving to a point. Wheeler’s still influential 1935 classification contains three further types of seax. Type II Wheeler calls the ‘Norwegian Type’, which is characterised by a straightness of the back of the blade (the non-cutting edge) that runs all the way down to the point. They are longer than the Frankish type and are roughly datable to the seventh and eight centuries. Type III, the ‘Hurbuck Type’, is later still and has an English connection. A hoard found at Hurbuck in County Durham contained this form of seax, which is longer still than the other types and is datable by association to around 900. It has runic inscriptions and usually has deeply scored lines beneath the non-cutting edge. A very similar type to this has been found in Norway, but it is considered that this was an import from England. Wheeler’s Type IV, the ‘Honey Lane’ type, gets its name from a knife found in association with coins from the reign of Æthelred II (979–1016) on the site of the old City of London School at Honey Lane Market. It has a distinctive broken back form, is shorter than Type III and often is pattern welded or inlayed beneath the non-cutting edge before the angle of the back drops to the point of the blade. This type it is now thought to have developed out of the angled back smaller knives that appear in both English and Continental graves at the end of the Migration period.
Fig. 10. Seax examples from Wheeler’s typology.
To Wheeler’s typology must be added the work of Böhner, whose analysis of a group of cemeteries around Trier resulted in a three-part classification by which these knives are referred to as Class A (small narrow seaxes), Class B (broad seaxes) and Class C (long seaxes). For convenience, these weapons are sometimes referred to in a way that covers both types of classification, namely as long seaxes and short or ‘common’ seaxes. The long seaxes can be up to 76cm in length and only about a dozen have been found in England. Those long seaxes with an angled back are thought to be the more ‘English’ examples. The shorter common seaxes share the angled back characteristics of their longer cousins and fall into three further types, each with varying degrees of angle and cutting edge blade line. Their lengths range from only 8cm to 36cm. In all cases, the tangs that accommodated the handles of these blades are flat and wide and slightly tapering. The make-up of the handles themselves is a matter for conjecture, although it is known from some Viking period knives that horn, bone and wood were all used in the period. However, the absence of any rivet holes on the tangs has lead to suggestions that the tang may have been repeatedly heated and simply rammed into the handle.
Many seaxes are decorated, some to an elaborate degree, mixing grooved incisions, pattern-welding techniques and various metal inlays. In some cases, care has been taken to inlay a personal owner’s name into the pattern. When polished and etched these blades would have danced magically in the flickering firelight and it is easy to see how prized they would have been by their owners. Although it is difficult to date seaxes accurately, it is generally thought that by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period the amount of decoration dropped off somewhat, possibly indicating a tendency towards more functional blades.
Some sheaths survive for these weapons. They are all made of leather, folded over and decorated with tooled incisions. They closely resemble the shape of the blades they accommodate. Where the folded edges meet around the blade they are often stitched or riveted together.
The method of wearing the seax is evidenced by some sculptural representations. A Frankish tombstone of about 650 from Neiderdollendorf depicts a man wearing a seax slung across his midriff with the handle facing his right hand. From the position of the rivets on the scabbard it is suggested that he wears it with the cutting edge facing upwards. A cross fragment from Repton in Derbyshire shows the famous ‘Repton Rider’ with a similar weapon in exactly the same place (Fig. 11). This sculpture is thought to date from the eighth century. It should be borne in mind that each of these depictions are of the common seax and that no pictorial representation exists of the long seax, and the method of wearing this example remains a mystery except to say that it may not have differed greatly to that of the sword (Plate 17).
Fig. 11. The ‘Repton Rider’ showing seax and possible scale armour.
There is much speculation regarding how these weapons were used. Clearly, the common seax might be employed more as a utility weapon, or a weapon of last resort. However, the smaller ones that cannot have had any practical military purpose may well have proved more effective in hunting. It is even suggested that the symbolic connotations of carrying a seax may mark out the hunting man, or perhaps even the freeman. The elaborate decoration on some of the smaller seaxes might tend to support this theory.
The longer seaxes, however, with their single-edged blade and pronounced v-shaped section, may on the face of it seem to indicate usage as a single-edged slashing sword, perhaps similar in use to the Medieval falchion. However, the blades are still quite delicately structured for this purpose and it is questionable to what extent a blade would survive first contact with the enemy. It might be that the long seax was as symbolic as it was functional.
Axes
For much of the early Anglo-Saxon era the type of axe most commonly in use from the military point of view seems to have been the francisca, or throwing axe. This sidearm was a distinctive feature of northern European Germanic cultures during the Migration period and its method of deployment was usually that it was thrown at the enemy prior to an infantry onslaught. The blades were heavy and small and triangular in section at the socket. They were almost certainly used one handed. There are precious few literary references to the axe in a military context in Anglo-Saxon hands until the second Viking age, when it suddenly becomes a widely acknowledged weapon of war developed from those used by the Scandinavians themselves, or in most cases directly wielded by the Scandinavians. This latter type of axe is known as the Dane-Axe, or Broad-Axe. Wielded in two hands, its shape, design and usage was very different than the francisca of the old days. It was more of a primary weapon than a sidearm. Thin sectioned blades with cutting edges up to at least 18in long were hafted onto what are presumed to be ash shafts. In fact, some of the blades were so thin in the centre that they have
clearly corroded right through at this point. These weapons were the domain of the Viking houscarl, or later period Anglo-Saxon king’s thegns and other noblemen.
Archaeologically, the early franciscas are certainly apparent in the record. There is then a gap in the seventh to eighth centuries in England punctuated only by the remarkable iron axe found in the Sutton Hoo grave, complete with both shaft and head made of iron, a curious item of uncertain ancestry. Then the record in England falls silent again until the tenth to eleventh centuries when English finds of Dane-Axes, such as those discovered at the site of Old London Bridge, show clear Scandinavian connotations. These types of axes appear in abundance on the Bayeux Tapestry, mainly in the hands of well-armoured men on the English side, although there is one Dane-Axe that is being transported by the Normans to the battlefield and another in the hands of the Duke of Normandy himself. The occurrence of so many Dane-Axes in the Bayeux Tapestry might very well lend weight to the idea that Harold had with him numerous Danish mercenaries (Fig. 12).
Literary accounts of the Dane-Axe in use speak of its ability to cut a man and a horse with one stroke. The only drawback with wielding these impressive weapons was that the user had to sling his shield over his back to wield the weapon two handed. This led to a vulnerability when the weapon was held high. However, the effectiveness of the weapon was widely acknowledged across Europe. The axemen were not exactly killed off by the advent of the Normans in England, either. Further adventures would be experienced by those landed axe-bearing warriors who left England and took service in the Byzantine Varangian Guard. There in the East, the Dane-Axe had a new lease of life which lasted for at least another century.
Fig. 12. Dane-Axes, from the Bayeux Tapestry.
The Bow
That the bow was in existence and used in military contexts is indisputable. Quite how it was used is argued over. Famously, we have a piece of pictorial evidence in the form of a lone English archer on the Bayeux Tapestry (Fig. 13). This man, unarmoured and seemingly smaller that those warriors around him, creeps out from the English shield wall. The men in the wall are mail-clad warriors, possibly housecarls or king’s thegns, but our solitary fellow with his bow stands in great contrast not just to them but to the serried ranks of Norman archers (some of whom are armoured), who face the English in the same piece of work.
Fig. 13. The lone English bowman
on the Bayeux Tapestry.
There are two opposing schools of thought drawn from the available literary and pictorial evidence. It is assumed by some that the lone archer mentioned here stands testimony to the lack of priority the English gave to the bow as a military weapon. Supporting this theory is the idea that the bow was merely the weapon of the outlaw or poacher and not a weapon with which an Anglo-Saxon warrior could prove his prowess or bravery. Against this idea, however, can be placed a body of evidence that mentions the bow in Anglo-Saxon England from military contexts and which occasionally places the weapon not only in the hands of some unlikely high-ranking people, but also hints at an organised usage on the battlefield. So, which body of opinion is right? Or is there an inevitable middle ground?
The word ‘boga’, or bow, in Old English has an implied meaning ‘to flex’ or ‘to bend’. The bow is known from some graves in the pagan Saxon cemeteries of England, but arrowhead finds are rarer in England than in the contemporary homelands. Their number pales into insignificance when compared to the huge amount of spearheads found in these English graves, however. One early period bow of significance from Chessell Down was estimated to have been 152cm in length, this being approximately 5ft.
The archaeological evidence for the bow in the later period is scant to say the least. Literary evidence provides a few clues, however. For example, in Beowulf (lines 2435–40) the bow is referred to as a horn-bow in a passage describing the tragic killing of one brother by another:
For the eldest was, unfittingly,
by a kinsman’s deeds a death-bed strewed,
when him Haethcyn from a horn-bow
his friend and lord struck down with an arrow,
missed his mark and his kinsman shot dead,
the one brother the other with a bloody bolt;
that was an irreparable fight . . .
Another passage in the same poem (lines 3114–19) gives a glimpse of the usage of the bow in a warfare context that we might not expect to be hearing about, given the weight of the argument against its widespread adoption by the Anglo-Saxons on the battlefield:
Now must the fire devour,
the dim flame grow, the ruler of warriors,
he who often endured shower of iron,
when the storm of arrows, impelled by bow-strings,
shot over the shield-wall; shaft held true to task,
its feather-trappings eager, arrow-head followed.
Here is an image of the bow being employed as an organised weapon of war. No mention here of an outlaw, a hunter or an opportunist. The bows have been kept to the rear ranks and have been used as preparatory fire on the battlefield, a deployment we might expect for an organised command.
Similarly, the poem The Battle of Maldon refers to the use of archery as preparatory fire:
With tumult they stood along Pante’s stream,
the van of the East-Saxons and the ash-army
nor might any bring harm to the other,
but those who through flane-flight took death.
The ‘flane-flight’ here refers to the arrows being used. Both armies at this point in the struggle are unable to bring their hand-to-hand weapons to bear upon one another, but it is an interesting passage in that the suggestion is the preparatory use of the bow could bring death on the battlefield. Elsewhere in the poem we get a picture of the sky being full of arrows. In the heat of battle, bows are described as being ‘busy’. But the poem reveals something else too. It gives us our Northumbrian man held as a hostage. This man, at the end of the battle, joins in the fight:
The hostage began eagerly helping them;
he was of brave kin among the Northumbrians,
Ecglaf’s son; Aescferth was name to him.
He flinched not at battle-play,
but again and again shot forth arrow:
sometimes he shot against shield, sometimes a man tore;
ever and anon he inflicted some wound
while he could weapons wield.
So, why does such a man choose the apparently humble bow to deal death to others? Perhaps this is all he was allowed to use as a hostage, if indeed we are interpreting the Old English correctly. All of this notwithstanding, it is still the case that there does not seem to be much support for the idea that the Anglo-Saxons used the bow en mass in a military context. However, the observations made above should point towards the fact that the Anglo-Saxons certainly had the knowledge of the use of the weapon for preparatory fire and for skirmishing activity. We cannot, however, dismiss our forlorn-looking lone archer mentioned above, nor can we ignore the obvious contempt with which the high-born warriors viewed the bow. We must not take all this to mean that the armies of England at the time were ignorant of the military usefulness of the weapon.
Slings, Maces and Improvised Weapons
Slings are certainly known from Anglo-Saxon times. They are given the name ‘liðere’, indicating their leather construction. One such is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, but it appears to belong to an unarmoured male in the margins of the work who is using it to scare away some birds. It seems to be constructed of a leather-like pocket or pouch with two leather straps, one of which the wielder still has in his hand as the missile within the weapon is unleashed at the birds. The ammunition is unknown, but is thought to have been simple stones, perhaps rounded ones from nearby river beds. It is possible, however, that slings were upgraded or extended in this period for a more military use. This might explain the occasional references to staff-slings (‘stæfliðere’). These, it is thought, would have propelled their missile with force in the same way
as the later trebuchet did, albeit on a dramatically smaller scale.
There is scarcely any reference at all to slings in use in a military context, however. What little we have comes from the early biography of Bishop Wilfred of York (634–709), which mentions how one of Wilfred’s companions picked up a stone that had been blessed by ‘all the people of God’ and hurled it from his sling ‘after the manner of David’. The sling struck a pagan priest in the forehead and penetrated through to his brain.
It is possible that slings were among the weapons chosen by the lesser ranking men in the English army at Hastings. William of Poitiers refers to the initial Norman approach to the English lines being thwarted by missile fire, but although the sling is not mentioned it may have played its part. It was, however, by no means a traditional Anglo-Saxon weapon of war.
Maces are another area of uncertainty. The Bayeux Tapestry shows what look to be items akin to William of Poitiers’ ‘stones tied to sticks’, particularly in the final scenes of fleeing unarmoured Englishmen. Whether the English ceorls, which these figures are assumed to represent, were wielding genuine maces or hastily improvised weapons is unclear. There is, however, one very obvious depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry of what would appear to be a mace flying out from the English line towards the Normans. The item is three-headed, or tri-lobed, in form and is attached to a seemingly wooden haft. It is not clear who has hurled it from the lines, but this section of the line is full of heavily armed and armoured warriors and there is not a lowly peasant in sight. It may be that this item is a genuine mace. The carrying of maces by Odo of Bayeux and Duke William in the Bayeux Tapestry is clearly depicted, but whether these are symbols of power or rank as opposed to real fighting weapons is not so clear. Certainly, the mace developed throughout the Medieval period as a weapon of war, but what the Anglo-Saxons had in their hands at around the time of Hastings will remain an uncertainty.