A spear *is* a knife on a stick, so maybe you've got something there.

M.

The Kingsmirror(a norwegian text with advice for royal retainers) says that you should "never throw away your last spear, because a spear is worth two swords in the line."
This attitude seems to have been quite prevailent. The main battle tactic was massed shield and spear formations, making attacks with shorter weapons risky at best.

Two handed axes where most likely used with guiged shields, in the same style as the later Gallowglas. Reenactment experience sugest that a two handed axe without a shield in a spear rich enviorment will die very quickly, propably even more so in real life. A kite shield can be slung so that it protects you all the way to the chin, with the helmet protecting the top of the head. The same goes for two handed spear use.

As an example, the norwegian account of the battle of Largs describes the scottish infantry as "Poorly equiped, mostly with bows, spears and two handed axes". The norwegian Leidang, on their hand, where all equiped with shields, spears and hand weapons, with the royal retainers equiped similarly but with full armour. They where however very impressed by the scottish knights, not beeing acustomed to heavy cavalry at all. The differnece can be explained by who you expect to decide the battle; In the high middle ages, cavalry was the main battle arm on the continent and Britain, while the scandinavians, lacking a knightly aristocracy, focused on infantry as their main fighitng force.

OT: to Jeroen Zuiderwijk

I had made an error, and more than that because is an error I have often to correct when we talk of the middle ages at the historic recallings: to mix up the middle ages with the "farmer's ages", the period pre-industrial (in Italy, except for some parts of the Lombardia, pre 1950). I apologize for this.