Did you know?
According to Viking law, all free men had to own their own weapons. If you did not have a weapons you would have been viewed as a slave.
Everyone had weapons
The Vikings really admired warriors. They thought the finer the weapon you had, the better.
Swords were the best
The most important weapons all free men were supposed to have were spears, shields, swords and axes. Swords were more expensive than axes. The richest also had extra gear like helmets and chain mail, and weapons that were finely decorated.
Ordinary people
The poorer people used their tools as weapons; like axes, knives and wooden staffs. They could also throw stones.
Imported Weapons
Scandinavian affinity towards foreign arms and armour during the Viking Age had an eminently practical aspect. Norse weapon designs were obsolete and sources of iron within Scandinavia were of poor quality. During the mid-9th century, there was an influx of these high-quality weapons into Scandinavia, and Frankish arms became the standard for all Vikings.
Practice makes perfect
In addition to improving coordination, acquiring muscle memory, and toning the body, practicing with weapons also resulted in gaining the self-control necessary to adequately use a weapon. It should be remembered that any public drawing of a weapon had legal consequences, just as it does today.
Swords
The Viking sword was one of the most important weapons in Norse society during the Viking Age, and is one of the most recognizable historical weapons in the world.
Swords were highly valued in Norse culture, as they were costly to make and a sign of high status. Owning a sword was a matter of great honour, and persons of status often owned ornately decorated swords with silver accents and inlays. Most Viking warriors owned a sword, as one raid was usually enough to afford a good blade.
Swords usually complemented the military equipment, rather than being its only part. In all types of sources for the early Middle Ages, we encounter a frequent combination of polearms and swords.
The swords were kept in scabbards with a two-piece wooden core, which was covered with leather, a combination of leather and textile, or layered textile. The sword belt allowed for comfortable wearing at the hip or over the shoulder. The interior of the wooden core was lined with textile or fur, which was probably impregnated with oil or wax, so that the sword was protected.
If the sword did not hang from its owner's waist, it could be hung on the wall by the table or above the bed. There were many weapons in the noblemen's halls, which probably also served as armories. When traveling by ship, the sword was kept in a chest.
Spear/Polearm
The spear played a huge role in mass clashes, especially in their initial stages. The King's Mirror (37) recommends: " Be very careful never to throw away your spear in battle line unless you have two, for in a land formation one spear is more useful than two swords. " That this is not just a theoretical instruction from a manual but rather a common practice that is shown by references from all over Europe.
Spear heads took many forms. Some spear heads had "wings" on the head, useful for a variety of tricks such as hooking an enemy’s weapon, shield, or body part, while other spearheads were quite small. Spear heads were fixed to wooden shafts using a rivet. The sockets on the surviving spear heads suggest that the shafts were typically round, with a diameter of 2-3cm. There was no regulation for the length of a Viking spear shaft, but a shaft of around 2 meters (6 feet) makes for a fast and well balanced weapon when used in combat
Seax/Long Knife
Seax is an Old English word for "knife" and in Old Norse the name Sax referred to a cutting tool.
The Viking seax was a mean, one-handed, single edged cutting weapon. It had no crossguard and was often simply made, with hilts of wood, bone or horn and simple fittings.
In peacetime, the Viking seax was as an everyday machete-like tool that was useful in the forest, wood working, farm-work, hunting, skinning wild animals and preparation of food. In a time of conflict or war, the Viking seax was a rugged and deadly weapon that served well in combat and on the battlefield.
Axe
Viking warriors were feared and admired around the known world for their use of weapons, but they acquired a special reputation for their use of the axe. As a weapon, the axe had fallen out of fashion over the centuries, but when the Vikings improved the old design, they brought the axe back into fashion with a vengeance.
In Viking Age Scandinavia, the axe was the common tool used by every farmer. Even the poorest farm had to have an axe for cutting and splitting wood, so from childhood, everyone who grew up on a farm knew how to use an axe. As there was far less iron and steel work on an axe head than a sword, axes were usually much cheaper than swords and a lot more available.
Being light, fast and well balanced, the one-handed axe showed great versatility when used as a weapon. It could be used in a variety of clever combat moves, and as the combat potential for the one-handed axe was realized, special axe head shapes were developed.
Combat axes with a square shaped projection at the bottom of the axe head had started to appear. This type of axe was called the ‘Bearded Axe’. The Bearded Axe projection was used to hook an enemy’s weapon or shield. When the edge of an opponent’s shield was hooked by the ‘beard’ of the axe, tremendous leverage could be used to control the shield with the axe. By using this technique, a shield could be forced in a direction away from the opponent, opening up attack possibilities against the opponent’s body, or even pulling or forcing a shield out of an opponent’s grasp.
Although there were a wide variety of Viking axes, they all fell into two basic categories, the one-handed axe, and the larger two-handed "Dane axe".
Dane Axe
The two handed Viking axe, also called the Viking battle axe or ‘Dane Axe’, was large and heavy, and needed both hands to be used effectively. This weapon was exclusively used for war.
On the battlefield, the Viking battle axe struck fear and terror into the enemy. Having a much longer reach than a sword, the Viking battle axe could very effectively cut or hook an opponent’s arm, leg, shoulder or neck from a distance. Being long and heavy, this weapon needed both hands to wield it effectively, but the cutting power of the devastating Viking battle axe was enough to rip through shield and armor.
Shields
Fighting men used large, round, wooden shields gripped in the center from behind an iron boss. Typical Viking shields were 80-90cm (32-36 inches) in diameter, but some were larger. A shield needs to be big enough to provide the desired protection but no bigger. A shield too small exposes additional lines of attack that an opponent might exploit, while a shield too large slows the defensive responses and exhausts the fighter unnecessarily.
At the center of the shield was a domed iron boss, which protected the hand. The shield was gripped from the inside of the boss. The arm did not slip through any straps, and as a result, the shield could be rotated freely from side to side. Many shields used a simple wooden handgrip. The handgrip typically ran the full diameter of the shield.
The shield would most likely have been rimmed with leather or rawhide to keep the shield from splitting when hit on edge.
The front of some shields may have been covered with leather or possibly faced with linen, held in place with hide glue. Shields would also have been painted and decorated.
A leather sling, used to carry the shield over the shoulder would have been common.
