Scramasax

[FAVENTIANVS]

Gracias compadre! BTW, do you read latin?

[FAVENTIANVS]

I'd like to study Latin again... and begin with classical Greek as well.

It is very difficult to have access to the Vatican Library, you have to be persona grata, aka non critical with the Catholic Church... they have an efficient secret service 8)

[FAVENTIANVS]

Thanks for the images, they are great!

[aitor iriarte]

Many thanks, Gioi!

Aitor

[adamparsons]

Not sure if you guys would finds this interesting but here goes-

Up here in the North of England we still call food generally Scran, which is obviously a corruption of Scram. This is especially so of the North East around Newcastle.

They also pronounce their English very differently so where as most would say Long as in circular open mouthed sound, people in the NE say Lang instead pronouncing a long A.

This naturally in Old English this is where the term Langsaex comes in- Its just a langer saex! :lol:

Adam

[kuura]

Greetings.

Interesting 6th century variants of the seax can be found in whats now Lithuania and the eastern Baltic coast.

These are between 28cm and 47cm in length, and approximately 2 - 3.8cm wide.

They appear to come in two main forms (larger ones) wide bladed and 'dagger' bladed. The wide bladed variants have an almost machete look about them and, probably due to there wide flaring tips, were thought to be carried without scabbards. These could almost certainly be used as tools or as a dual weapon/bushcraft knife.

The other variant has a long pointed blade and would be useless as a tool, but deadly as a stabbing weapon :twisted:

The 'backs' of these tools/weapons can be up to 1cm thick, especially in the case of the wide bladed machete types.

This information was gleened from an excavation report on the Plinkaigalis burial ground sent to me by a friend in Lithuania.


Kuura/Jools Sleap

''Let us measure our swords, appraise our blades'' The Kalevala.

[Dan Howard]

FWIW "langsax" is probably a more accurate term. "scramasax" is only ever used once in the primary sources.

[kuura]

FWIW "langsax" is probably a more accurate term. "scramasax" is only ever used once in the primary sources.

Thats right Dan. It was Gregory of Tours who made the primary reference to 'scramasax' in his 'History of the Franks'.

I prefer to simply use the term 'Seax' for all medium sized knives, suitable as both tools and weapons, and call the eating, leather working varients 'Hadseax' with blades 3''-14'' long.

The Langseax, certainly in Britain was not common until the 8th century where they had a blade length of 22''-30''.

[Virilis]

There are some"scramasax" finds also in Finland. Here it was called "väkipuukko" (loosely translated in english as "crowd-controller" :wink: ...)

[adamparsons]

I have always just called them knives or large knives, and explained to others that saex just means this kind of knife and langsaex long knife. After all I don't speak old english the rest of the time. (I don't speak modern english very well most the time either! :lol: )

I studied 'British' knives/saex's a few years ago and made a chronological drawing of them to scale in CAD. It is interesting to see the development of shape and length. It starts off a nice curved leaf shaped, becomes a short angular backed blade, then extends to a longer thinner, completely angled weapons, before shrinking back up into a short angled knife in the 10th-11th century, and the longer saex's become obsolete.

This is presumably because the A-S attitude of restricting sword usage to nobles only had been tempered by the 'viking' more apathetic one after Cnuts (probable) introduction of housecarls Meaning lower ranking hosecarls and wrriors could just carry a normal plainer sword.

After all scandinavian saex's (different shape as the have straight backs and the blade curving up to the back like a modern knife) are usually always hilted up when they are sword length, and only left unhilted when they are 18-20" and less. The only two saex's with pommels in Britain I have seen are very early medieval (6th-7th century), so it seems to me that perhaps the hilt was what defined a 'nobles' weapon in the 8-9th century. It does mean that in the 8-10th century a non noble warrior could carry a secondary side arm like a sword (the langsaex) and not upset the anglo-saxon sense of propriety, but still use what in effect is a great stabbing and bone breaking weapon!

sorry if this has got off topic! I have not looked much at continetal saex- howe do they vary?

Adam

[egfroth]

Adam,

I'd be VERY interested in your drawings. What version of CAD did you draw them in?

I did some investigations on the same subject a while ago, and I'd be interested to see how your observations compare with mine, and what sources you had access to (mine were very bit-and-piece - mostly taken from bad photos in various coffee-table books - usually called "The Vikings" or "The Anglo-Saxons")

BTW - that "Arms of Valor" site is full of misinformation. The blade shape is wrong, the handle is wrong, and the great majority of representations of people wearing saxes show them horizontally at the front of the body, not the back. (Apart from that, it's fine :wink: )

And the Wickepedia description leaves a bit to be desired, too. I don't recall any saxes with false edges, they don't seem to me to have been particularly crudely made (some have the most beautiful inlaid decoration), and I have no idea where they got the statement that "it became a staple with poorer soldiers", let alone how they determined that "it was still a weapon of choice for English bowmen as late as 1450"!

Interesting, the Latin version of the entry is totally different, simply giving historical references to the name scramasax. But if you click the "English" link at the bottom left of that page, you get yet another description, and this one has a link to a pretty damned good page on the sax - at http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_seax.html - however, it is specifically Anglo-Saxon, and most examples are from the 11th century.