62874 m85

Spatha-type sword found in the River Lee at Enfield. It still has a short crossguard but now has the type of pommel referred to as ‘cocked hal’.

Curved, round shields, as portrayed in an nth-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript. The flowing robes are typical late Saxon. The right-hand figurę is probably wearing some form of leather jerkin as extra protection.

thrust into an opponent’s face or chest to throw him off balance. It was not unusual for a shield to be hacked to pieces early in a fight; but the boss could still be used as a mailed fist, or the shield of a fallen man might be seized.

The kitę shield (see under Normans) was adopted by the housecarls and other professional warriors from as early as c. iooo, but the round shield continued to be used by the lower ranks. Those housecarls at Hastings who were armed with round shields may perhaps have hacl their own shields shattered at Stamford Bridge and maybe had picked up Viking shields to replace them.

The most prized weapon, but not the most common one, was the sword. These are rarely found in graves, for their value was considered so great that they were handed down from father to son, or passed as gifts to great warriors or kings; thcy were considered to have a greater value ifthey were old or had belonged to a famous warrior in the past.

The early kings might thus have acąuired a smali collection of such swords, passing them out to their leading warriors, and receiving them back, their value enhanced, on that warrior’s death. Men below the rank of thegn, even as late as Knut’s reign, did not have swords.

At hrst the Saxon sword followed very much the pattern of the Roman spatha, having a broad, two-edged blade about 75cm long with straight edges and a rather rounded point. The hilt was plain and yirtually without a crossguard. The blades of these weapons, madę at a time when the method of manufacture caused great variation in ąuality, were often pattern-welded to obtain a better result. Pattern-welding consisted of twisting rods of iron together and beating them into a blade which had a soft core witliin a skin of case-hardened iron. A bar of case-hardened iron was then welded all the way up each side and round the point to create a cutting edge which was both harcl and sharp, while the blade retained its flexibility. Such a blade might take a month to manufacture, and in 958 was valued as ecjual to the cost of fifteen małe slaves or 120 oxen.

By the end of the 8th century these swords were being replaced by a new design, still about 75-80CIU long, two-edged with straight edges, but with blades which were much stronger, with a wide, shallow groove down the centre of both sides to lighten the blade without loss of strength. The width of these blades was approximately 55mm and the weight about o-68kg.

Blades were imported and hilts added in Eng-lancl. The later hilts had a much longer guard, almost always curved towards the blade; a grip of wood, or less often bonę, bound with cloth, leather, cord or even silver wire; and a morę prominent three- or five-lobed pommel to counterbalance the heavier blade. In the gth and ioth centuries there