is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. You can also check out this previous video of Nathan cutting tatami mats with an axe similar to the one in this video, demonstrating how well they cut unarmored targets.Ĭheck out the video to see what happened and what we might be able to learn from this little experiment. In this video Nathan explains the differences between Dane Axes with simple edges, and reinforced edges, and attempts to cut/damage cloth armor and maille armor with the axes. Luckily we happen to have a bunch of very nice Dane Axes, some lovely cloth armor made by our friend Charles Lin, and a decent piece of riveted maille. Many men in the tapestry are shown wielding large Dane Axes, which begs the question of how effective these weapons were against the various armors depicted therein. The variety of these representations suggests that fighters of differing status and or means were differently armored, probably with lower class combatants wearing cloth armor or simple clothing and elites wearing expensive suits of maille. Knights depicted in maille armor with helms Below you can see some of the variety of clothes and armor worn by armed men depicted in the tapestryĪrmed men in clothing, including possibly cloth armor In the tapestry there are over 200 depictions of armed men, and out of those 79 are depicted in armor. Many of the representations we have of these axes come from the Bayeux tapestry, an embroidered work depicting the events surrounding the Norman invasion of Anglo-Saxon England in and around 1066AD. These axes were a popular weapon during the Viking period right up through the end of the 11th century. These weapons were mainly used as secondary arms by poorer people.Today we take a look at how Dane axes interact with cloth and maille armors. The big groups of Pole Weapons were the battle axes and war hammers. One hit or blow with these battle axes could deliver a great power and damage, and so could apply relevant injury to the enemy. The blades of these axes used in the Middles Ages were usually crescent-shaped and were as long as 25cm from the lower to the upper points of the blades. Skilled fighters were able to bring great damage to the opponent by throwing the axes.ĭuring the Middle Ages, most battle axes had wide heads, and the hafts fit really well with the heads of the axes, in contrast with the Vikings’ axes, wich were mostly just lashed. Knights often used handled axes in mounted combats and fought with axes from the back of their horses.īattle axes were made as both single and double handed weapons, and were really efficient in close contact battles, but also could be hurled. In the middle ages mostly foot soldiers used battle axes, since the plate armors were very thick and it was hard to cause damage with light swords. These weapons were designed for inflicting bodily harm and physical damage, not to chop wood. There is a great chance that the first, to make axes for only wars and battles were the Vikings in Europe. People already used axes to fight millions of years ago. The Battle Axe had been a very significant weapon since the Stone Age.
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