Hello everyone,

I have noticed that among seax sheaths through the centuries we don't see much development among reproductions.

We see seax sheaths looking pretty much the same whether reproducing examples from the 8th. to the early 12th. centuries.

We have the same brass or copper running along the edge and a thick leather sheath section.

Is this just what we have to draw from archeological finds?

They easiest way is to link to Patrick Barta's website:
http://templ.net/english/weapons-antiquity_an...le_age.php

You'll find there a couple of "early" saxes with very different scabbards, mainly simplified contemporary spatha scabbards.

Only this one:
http://templ.net/english/weapons-antiquity_an...p#173-seax
Has the commonly reproduced sheath as you describe. It's also a bit later and more knife-like than the others.

I don't think anybody has published something comprehensive about saxes but in Menghin's book about migration age spatha's, he also depicts and describes the entire find context, so it also depicts several saxes.

Interesting question so searched a bit, only things I found...

There appear to be 3 sax sheath pics from Dublin museum in Jeroen Zuiderwijk's "information about saxes" zip file from years ago. Only the leather remains but fwiw to me it appears 1 likely had the metal strips along bottom. Maybe partial or clips or none on the other 2 but appear to be for smaller saxes.

Tod commented on little available sax sheath info & attached 1 museum pic (still works) in this thread:

http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=269...ngseax+tod

Hopefully someone will recall additional artifacts.

Perhaps another example... In William Short's book Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques there is a photo of a reproduction lang sax, & says "the sheath is based on a find from Trondheim". That reproduction decorated sheath appears to be sewn closed along the edge side with no metal except for 2 metal hanging clips and maybe 1 small metal clip near the entry. A web search for "trondheim sheath" found some images of an artifact. A low res pic of the reproduction is at:

http://www.hurstwic.com/history/articles/manu...ng_sax.htm

I strongly recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sheaths-Scabbards-England-AD400-1100-British/dp/1841710652/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=scabbards&qid=1615202305&s=books&sr=1-5