As somewhat of an amateur Viking Age history enthusiast, I am probably missing something incredibly simple, but I have been unable to find any information about how the majority of seax hilts were attached to the blade. It seems rather to be an uncommon exception rather than the rule for them to be peened over a sort of cap or given a sword hilt even on larger examples, and despite quite a bit of searching I have not found any examples of a pinned grip. Were they likely just glued in place like Indian tulwar hilts, somehow wedged in place, or do we not really know? I apologize if this has been mentioned somewhere before, but I couldn't find anything. Thanks in advance.

Not an expert here, but my understanding is that many of them used what's called a 'whittle' assembly, where a thin, pointed tang is stuck firmly into a solid wood or horn grip. This is a surprisingly good assembly for a basic utility knife of small to medium size. A few were peened across a grip cap, usually the larger ones. Resin may have been involved with some.

Second on the "whittle assembly"

also the tang could be heated (not to the point of losing/changing temper) and then pressed into the material of the grip; this works especially well for horn and bone.

You can find lots of very good museum photographs of various kinds of seaxes with remains of hilt elements in this old thread, as well as some useful discussion.

A blind tang, carefully friction fit and possibly fixed with glue or resin, is the most common method especially for later period seaxes such as those used by vikings. The method is plenty strong if made with due care - as you already pointed out, this is also how kukri, dha, tulwar and many other South-East Asian weapons were historically constructed. Note that on larger seaxes the tang is far from the small whittle tang you see on most tool knives, sometimes being almost the full width and length of the grip (and on at least one example an actual full tang sandwiched by two riveted grip slabs).

PS. And in this thread Jeroen Zuiderwijk discusses the practical details of how to burn the tang into the hilt.

My thinking, after studying seaxes for some time, is that they must have had some really good glue to have made them the way they did. The usual method is a whittle-tang, sometimes robust, sometimes not, with glue and possibly wedges....

I know of 2 full-tang seaxes, both from Germany, found within 50 miles of each other, possibly a regional oddity. One is a langsax, the other a breitsax. To say they were rare is being generous, this is 2 out of 1000.... Occasionally one sees a through-tang, with the end of the tang peened over (or contained within) a pommel, this is fairly common on breitsax (often seen without a pommel, the tang simply bent over the end of the handle) and earlier saxes but almost unheard of with Saxon-style broke-backs and langsax, with one exception (a langsax) that I know of. I am not familiar enough with the Scandinavian/Norse knives/saxes to be able to say for certain how they were usually constructed.

If you take the ingredients of a vegetable based oil, beeswax, rosin and pitch and try heating and mixing in various proportions and ingredients (but only a tiny bit of oil if any) you will end up with a range of surprisingly tough and sticky substances.

Not saying this is what they used, but I have used it successfully on whittle tang knives.

Tod

I had seen the "seax question" thread before, but I had never seen Jeroen's post about burning in the hilt though, that was very interesting. And I was also under the impression that they used a milk glue to hold shields together, which I had forgotten about, but it must have been rather strong to do so. I wonder if they used that for seax hilts? I saw it mentioned in the threads you linked and thinking back to the shields gave me a sort of " light bulb" feeling. Also, do you have a picture of the full tang riveted seax? I've not seen one before. Thanks again, everyone.

From what I understand, and according to Mr. Matt Easton, the most common way was to use glue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQGgUbGv5vo

[ Linked Image ]
This is the other full-tang riveted grip, a langsax from Etting in Bavaria.