Posts: 335 Location: Stuart, Florida
Thu 03 Nov, 2016 11:44 am
Neat stuff, Niels!
I've always just accepted that Vikings exclusively fought on foot without questioning it but I did some quick image searches... lo and behold there is no shortage of images depicting mounted warriors in combat during the "Viking Age." Granted, most of these images aren't from Scandinavia but they were all using "Viking swords" which we know were just the common kind of swords that were mass produced at the time. For what matter these swords appear to be the direct descendants of the Roman cavalry spatha and that may even explain why early on single handed swords were sometimes referred to as "longsword" as the spatha was clearly longer than the
gladius. The idea of elite mounted warriors among Viking footsoldiers seems plausible to me and we would tend to have more of their swords because they're the ones who would have gotten the elaborate burials that we now excavate.
It's interesting what you said about diet and the relative height of the warrior caste. The word "tall" in English nowadays refers exclusively to height but it used to mean "brave." If warriors were taller than average it makes sense that an association between the word and physical size would develop.
The full sized swords were definitely used for combat on foot but cavalry sabers can and were used on foot sometimes too even if they aren't specifically adapted for that purpose and I get the impression that prior to the 15th/16th c. there was more of an expectation that a knight or man-at-arms would have to fight on foot occasionally. For most of the past 500 or 600 years swords that were specifically intended for use on foot tended to weigh less than those meant for use primarily on horseback. Replicas of
Oakeshott X.12, a.k.a. the BOAC, tend to display characteristics in keeping with those of messers, cutlasses, hangers, etc. I know similar sized Viking Age swords have also been found, with era-appropriate blades and hilts of course. Then there's the
seax, too.
LOL @ the "boneless" thing.
So anyway this all ties back to the out of time type XII's for me because I don't believe they developed in response to armor because, well, there's no real chance they're going to thrust through riveted mail or a coat of plates. In fact I don't really buy into the idea that type XII's were supposed to be more "thrusty" than X's or XI's, some of which are already close to as pointy as any XII. What I've noticed is that even for the same weight and
point of balance a XII tends to be a bit more nimble than the earlier types. Reach is good but it's not an absolute advantage, I'm only 5'8 and I beat much taller fencers all the time. A more maneuverable sword can be quite an advantage too and these early XII's may have been an attempt to create a weapon that had an edge in foot combat.