EARLY MEDIEVAL AXE

950

A well preserved late Early Medieval asymmetric iron axehead. The socket for the haft is D shaped in section and has triangular projections or spurs pointing up and down the haft on both sides. The curved blade does not appear to have any signs of wear.The author is indebted to Dr Kevin Leahy for his suggestion that this axe is similar to Wheeler's type VI in 'London and the Vikings' [Wheeler, REM 1927 p19-25]. Wheeler divides 7th-11th century axes into six types chronologically and dates type VI as starting around 1000AD, adding that there were 15 examples from the Thames and several from the home counties and southern East Anglia. Wheeler suggests that these derive from the campaigns of Cnut and subsequent periods.Dr Helen Geake has highlighted another even more asymmetric example, again with the spurs, illustrated in Roesdahl (ed) 1981, The Vikings In England, no I6, either from the River Yare at Surlingham in Norfolk, or from the River Witham in Lincs. The catalogue entry says 'The use of projecting spurs on the sockets is a feature of Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon axe heads'.There is also a similar axe in Viking Artefacts (James Graham-Campbell 1980) no. 265, from the River Thames. This is less asymmetric; it belongs to a broad-bladed type which apparently dates from the mid tenth to end of eleventh century, i.e. 950 to 1100, the type shown on the Bayeux Tapestry.