I’m so glad you cover that the broken back is only one form of Seax. Too many people think it’s only a seax if it looks like that. Seax just means knife, and they run the whole gamut of sizes from little whittling knife up to sword-length (longseax). Like anything remotely associated with the Viking period, mythology vastly overpowers reality.
These things probably functioned way better as bushcraft/survival knives. If you’re traveling, you absolutely NEED at least a knife in the context of medieval European travel.
It kinda still does if you're hitchhiking. You never know if you're gonna be particularly unlucky and end up sleeping in some bush. Unless you look like me then you know you will be. Just make sure to never poop in the woods in England, you can't even get a license for that in fact!
I have a skrama from varusteleka (a saex for the 21st century) and thus shape of tool is amazingly versatile and perfect for the European countryside. It hacks through undergrowth, batons branches and small logs for firewood, drills with the point and the shape of the blade let's you use it like a spoke shave or simple push plane to shape wood. Also use mine for slicing bread, meat and cheese at lunch.
I've always assumed that Saxony got its name not because people from there necessarily used seaxes in warfare, but because it was a region where everyone carried a seax and the people had a reputation for "solving" civil conflicts between two individuals with a seax. Kinda like how Finns have a historic reputation in the Nordics of really liking their work knives, giving them splendid sheathes, and fighting each other with them. I doubt anyone could afford or was allowed to carry a sword in old Saxony during the migration era. In such an environment, the most common work knife could work as a "social substitute" for the non-noble Saxons. This reputation caught on and made their British descendants cherish their knife-wielding reputation, making the seax a cherished tool and part of every nobleman's dear belongings.
Heavy “bush” knives of various styles are incredibly common amongst rural people around the world, particularly those who still obtain a high proportion of their materials and implements from the native vegetation. Call them Goloks, Simis, Parangs, Machetes or Pangas… the size and shape varies according to the materials and types of work that are most common, but the common theme is a relatively heavy “chopper” that can be used on light timber, thatching material, heavy butchering and -in a pinch - self-defence.
Great video as always, I have a few relevant things to add about 6th-7th century Merovingian seaxes if anyone's interested, I've been studying them as part of my PhD. As Matt pointed out, Merovingian seaxes are very different from Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian seaxes, they often have curved edges. In fact, long seaxes are not only common in Norway, they're highly represented in later Merovingian contexts. In that vein, I think that Matt is quite right to point out that seaxes existed on a spectrum from tool to weapon. I certainly have no trouble believing that the standard broken back seax was a tool but I find it very hard to believe that a lot of the seaxes that I've been looking at (mostly from Alsace in Eastern France) were not weapons. The smallest one that I've seen so far was about 20cm long (just the blade), which is already a fairly hefty knife, though, much more in line with later anglo-saxon seaxes, so that could well have been something like a bowie knife. In contrast, the largest seax that I've looked at so far was 80cm long (including 30cm tang) and 6cm wide. That's a heck of a bowie knife and while it was large, it wasn't exceptional, a lot of the seaxes I've seen from that period exist in similar dimensions.
110 cm is too much for edc and 20cm blade probably wouldn't get used on a battle field but would be a warning to anyone thinking of robbing you, in civilian life, and could work as a tool too.
@@julianshepherd2038 Yeah, that's pretty much what my conclusion was as well, and the big seax that I studied wasn't even the largest I've seen. There's some seaxes in the Musée d'Histoire de Belfort in Eastern France which are 1m-1.3m long.
Thanks for that. The more information I can get about the ‘Seax’ the better. You have saved me from the embarrassment of posting the wrong info about Seax’s. Stay sharp Brother 👍.
I had a similar opinion on the weapon. It's more of a multi-purpose tool than a combat knife, but it could do in a pinch if you're in a fight and don't have your primary arms.
Funny thing, the word seax is still around in some Germanic languages (specifically the Scandinavian ones) as a word for scissors. It's even jumped from those to Finnish as "sakset" (notably, that's a plural word just like "scissors" (the singular would be saksi, and refers to a seax) whereas the Scandinavian languages seem to keep it singular from what I can tell).
@@alicelund147 and afterwards an area roughly south of denmark was still being called some variant of saxony. It's entirely possible that the ethnonym was in fact adopted after the land rather than the other way around, like for example with the Hittites (who literally called themselves the people from the land of Hatti, of course with a simple suffix system not descriptively like this, rather than simply Hatti)
I just realised we even have an example from modernity, the name Pakistan technically means "the state of the Paki", however Paki (unlike Afghani, Kazakh, Turkmen etc) is considered a slur, because the name for the country, from which the ethnonym is derived (and based on which the actual national identity was created) was invented by a British student who didn't particularly think it through >< this monstrosity ("Pakistani") is really unique btw, it's like saying Englandian instead of English :v
The Bowie knife comparison seems apt, given that the latter is also a utility knife that ends up seeing a great deal of combat, not only on the frontier but by bushwackers, partisans, and home guard types through the American Civil War (and by vampire hunters if you've read the original Dracula).
Rezin Bowie created the Bowie knife primarily as a fighting knife. It later became popular as a bush craft tool during the westward expansion. This is the exact opposite of how the Navaja developed in Spain ( the Navaja was a tool that became a weapon , while the Bowie was a weapon that became a tool ) . Props to the Bram Stoker reference.
Thank you for your insight on the seax. It is a very interesting tool and you can see the similarities to the later bauernwehr. Speaking of the bauernwehr I would be very interested in seeing more information on that iconic tool from you as well.
In german there is die Wehr, and das Wehr. Das Wehr is a kind of dam(m) in a , river' to give ( give not) water to the wheel of a waterpowerd ,mill' . Die Wehr means simply weapon. The dated word Seitenwehr means sidearm, and a Seitengewehr is a bayonnet, the 18th century Kurzgewehr is a kind of sponton, and Gewehr is in german an umbrella term for rifles, shotguns and combined guns.
In England a type of knife used by a thatcher to cut thatching is called a sax, so it's an interesting etymological link to the seax of the early medieval period. Would love to hear your thoughts on the scramasax, which seems to be a more continental phenomenon, and quite unique as a short sword possibly better suited to stabbing which is unusual in a shield and spear context.
How heavy is that one? I always thought they were a utility/camp knife, like the Bowie knife. More handy and able to do the same and more things as a small camp axe. Perfect for cutting up camp wood as well as defense when needed or the last rights on a animal. At least that is what I use my Bowie knife for, a little big for eating with, but I have a small piggy back blade for that. This size of knife has so many uses in the woods, hard to list them all.
I'm coming to think that "knife" = "medieval cellular phone". Everybody's got one, and you use for all sorts of things. It's not the best at everything (spears are better than knives in shield walls, kindles are better for prolonged reading than phones), but it's usable for a lot.
7:32 The German etymology for 'Seax', 'Sax', 'Sachs' goes back to the Old High German word for 'sword' or 'knife': 'sahs'. In northern European, Scandinavian countries it was also used to say 'scissors'; Swedish 'sax', Norwegian and Danish 'saks', Finnish 'sakset'. Funny too, how the German word for scissors 'Schere' looks so similar, but 'Schere' apparently comes from 'scari', which is the plural for knife, which is 'scar', in Old High German. And why did scar mean knife!?
Sakset in modern Finnish use refers to scissors, but I'm sure in the past the seax, or a knife, was the scissors of the time, used for the same purpose.
@republicjim120 of course. Swiss Army Knives is commonly abbreviated to SAKs or saks, which is a spelling of Sax, popularised in the Victorian period to avoid similarity to the word sex.
That beautiful seax reminds me, to some extent, the Fallkniven THOR knife, a hunting/outdoors tool. A very expensive one too... anyways, excellent video, as always. I feel pampered by these free, generous and top rate expositions of yours, and that's a tad deceiving. Usually for content of this quality you have to reach for your pockets and pull substantially. An exercise I am not particularly in shape to exercise right now... so, thank you Matt. Cheers.
When dealing with historical weapons/tools, broad strokes are required as you have pointed out here. Was the seax used in battle? Certainly. How many hunting knives went onto the beaches of Normandy during D-Day? Many, I'd presume. And if those, how many were used against the Germans? Most likely a few. Your point is absolutely valid! Well done Matt!
Likewise, look at any picture of a Confederate partisan in the Civil War, and there's a pretty good chance he'll have a Bowie knife on him. Did he ever actually use it? Well that depends entirely on how ugly the situation got.
I would say you’re spot-on about the word *seax* : from the Online Etymology Dictionary: *saw* toothed cutting tool] Middle English saue, from Old English sagu, from Proto-Germanic [sago] "a cutting tool" *source also of Old English seax "knife,"* . . . from Proto-IndoEuropean root [sek-] "to cut" (source also of Latin secare "to cut"). One thing, though: in Old English "ea" and "eo" were diphthongs: I detest hearing "Smeagol" pronounced as "Smee-gol"! Things changed as Middle English developed into Modern English, which is why "read" present tense is pronounced diferently from "read" past tense: similarly with "lead" present tense and "lead" metal.
I personally see seaxes in 4 loose caragories: 1) the smallest ranging from an 1" or so up to about 7" or so I refer to as a hadseax. 2) the 8" to 15" general tools possibly used as weapons at times that I refer to as a scramasax. 3) the 16-24" machete like ones that probably originate as tools but were often used as weapons (although some do seem to be purpose built as weapons) that I refer to as a langsax. 4) the Norwegian single edged swords that I refer to as a sviða or höggsax.
The obsession some people seem to have that everything is a fighting knife like video games, I don't see people going around killing three others in fights every week that's not a practical way of existing. But as a tool to cut a bit of hazel and thorn knock up some scruffy arrows snare some rabbits do all kinds of outdoors stuff a good sized knife is excellent. Spend a lot more time with everyday tasks than going to war, so I agree Seax look much more like tools. Seen the same said of broadaxe's where people would put them on eBay as a beheading axe, totally oblivious to the fact many guys would square logs with them as their day job.
I am a little heartbroken to find out that there is no connection between seax and Saxon. I had read someone years ago that Saxon meant a person who carries a seax. Since thralls (slaves) weren't allowed to carry weapons, carrying a seax was a symbol of one's freedom, thus a Saxon would roughly translate as freeman. Oh well, seax are still cool knives. Thanks for the info Matt.
Many models if Seaxs share a multitude of charscteristics of traditional Sami "choppers". The Sami chopper knifes are mostly used as a small multipurpose machete; collecting/preparing firewood, making camps, some heavier bushcraft, chopping game meat etc. I think that many of the seax could have been used in a similar way.
I agree with the idea that these are a multiple-use “bush” knife. Such knives are still very common amongst rural dwellers who still utilise a high proportion of natural materials for building material and fashioning utensils. Elsewhere we call the Goloks, Parangs, Simis, Machetes, Pangas and I’d even include Kukhris… but the common theme is a medium-heavy chopper that can be used to cut a stick, fashion a snare, collect material for thatching, basket-making, hurdle-making, hedging, butchering or - in a pinch - self-defence.
The claim that it was primarily a fighting knife has always - for me - seemed to be contradicted by the dropped point That make it a less-effective thrusting weapon, but a better weight-forward chopper.
i do believe that due to their strait edge, they where easier to produce than blades with a curved end like most knives/blades.and they still had a very pointy end suitable for stabbing. just produce an iron flattened bar, cut it diagonally and sharp it on one side of both pieces, voila, you have two seaxes. it just seems very easy to produce to me.
In Skandinavia, big puukko style knives (about 30-50cm long knives called väkipuukko) were meant as cheaper alternatives to swords for everyday carry. They were tools and weapons of war. There were various styles, and some blades were technically broken back seaxes. They were used in close combat with the shield when you can't use your spear anymore. Length was similar compared to gladius. Varusteleka's skrama is a modern version of the seax knife without that pointy tip. It's meant to be used as a tool, so it doesn't have that old-school pointy tip, which is a feature weapon/tool combination need. So seaxes were tools, everyday tasks knives, and the weapons of war. Just before the matchlock firearms archers and crossbow men in Scandinavia were still using seax/väkipuukko style big knives as a back up weapons because swords were expensive.
love it! I do have a nuanced view of the seax though. during that era, people were very poor, and I think that the seax was still very common as a sidearm even during battle, be it a raid or even a larger battle. I think it's this misunderstanding of the relative poverty of the period that causes people to see more swords, metal helmets and armor. Obviously that had all changed by the time of Hastings or even by the time that seax was popular. Some would likely carry them just to harken back to a previous era. I don't know what ratio is appropriate, but if I was making a video game in 500AD Brittain, I'd go with 20% sword, 50% seax, 30% axe as a sidearm. everyone has a shield. armor is rare, but helmets were more common than later. most have a spear. by 800AD, maybe like 30% sword, 50% axe, 20% seax with most of them being longer than the previous era. a small amount of people using 2 handed weapons like spear, Dane axe and poleaxe. less helmets by this point and mail coats were rare. by Hastings, maybe 50% sword, 30%axe, 20% seax (almost all of the langseaxe type) Dane axes by people that have mail coats and helmets so maybe 25% of troops? also maybe something like a gambeson was already available, so way better protection by that point.
There are many Sax found in merowingian graves in southern germany, some of them the length of short swords. Like the francia the origin of these weapons might be a tool but they are distingly different from tools when you see the blade profiles of those larger Sax.
The seax is also on the flag of Essex (and the almost identical but obviously less impressive Middlesex flag) apparently it is on our flag due to a story about an East Saxon (or Essex) king carrying some with him while in a battle. These on the flags are often confused with scimitars as they are very curved.
@@daviddavidk2352 well the ones on the Essex flag are actually just a curved saex so I assume yours is the same. There are however variants of it for sports etc which actually do have straighter depictions which is always interesting.
@@qz7474 both coats of arms unfortunately show something that is curved, has a guard, is bellied with a notch out of the blade. A typical Seax has none of these features. They were straight blades with typically a broke back and no notch with an unhilted handle. I presume the scimitar is just a heraldic symbol.
On the language side, my understanding (i have been learning englisc = old English for a couple of years now) is that seax is pronounced (in englisc) as se-ax. It is a neuter noun so the pleural would be the same. Interestingly there is an englisc word 'seaxbenn' which means a wound from a seax. As you say seax means knife, short sword or dagger. Englisc also has a word ''cnīf' (pronounced cnive) which also means knife.
Your point on tool vs weapon is fairly clearly correct, I think, and also echoed in later Germany. The bauernwehr knife and the messer and clearly similarly designed objects. One is more of a tool, the other more of a weapon. The broken back seax you show, more of a tool. A sword-hilted, curved edge Norwegian seax, more of a weapon. Same spectrum I think.
Is that seax you had from a few years ago finally finished? I think it was shown in a vid about seax's compared to Bowie knives. You said you'd do a follow up vid when it was finished and it never happened. So I'm wondering if that's it?
i been thinking about adding one to my collection, not an old one since i don't have that kind of money but one that isn't new or what people like to call damascus but what's really just folded, but one
I feel you are correct about that size seax being a tool that occasionally might be used as a weapon. This is, in my opinion, partly from the lack of any guard. While it's true not every combat blade has a guard (the shashka for example doesn't) most I aware of do. The guards are often a hand stop rather than protecting from opponent's weapons. One reason a weapon needs a hand stop & a tool does58s that a tool is used in a less frantic way; you can take your time to get it out & position your hand. A weapon may need to be deployed quickly, swung rapidly & repeatedly but also may be used for stabbing. (Matt has previously stated he doesn't feel seaxes were used for stabbing).
@@kimashitawa8113 Väki is a bit of an odd word, because it can mean both "folk" or "power/powers". As such it can refer also to the spirits or powers associated with places or elements. So "tulen väki" = "the folk/power/spirits of fire".
Kinda like the bowie. It was basically a slightly redesigned kitchen knife of the day. Old pictures show folks carying basically kitchen knives. I lived on an island in the pacific and most everyone carried differing shapes of kitchen knives. They were used for bear everything. Then from there they carried or had access to machetes . So yea, the seax is just a differant style of knives used by many. I have always looked at knives as tools as that was my introduction to them. Not as weapons but as everyday tools..
I always was intrigued that Essex, Wessex, etc .. were named after the Saxons ... Anglo Saxon was named after the Angles and the Saxons .. and the groups that are normally named are the Angles, Saxons and Jutes ... and occasionally Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, but Old English is largely a Frisian Language ... ?
I watched a video by a linguist in which he said that English and Frisian were probably mutually intelligible until about 1000 AD. IIRC, he also said that one of the places where Frisian is still spoken is in Lower Saxony. I suspect the people of the era didn't call themselves by the names we use today and the Saxons may well have been what today we call Frisians. Or not. It's unlikely we will ever know with certainty.
The languages of those groups were pretty close together. Old Frisian and Old Saxon evolved into Frisian and Low German which are still more or less mutually intelligible.
@@Warpwaffel so if Saxon and Frisian were very closely related languages, it's possible that the reason the closest relative of English is Frisian has to do with Low German exhibiting a greater degree of linguistic drift from the original tongue than Frisian. That would leave English more closely related to Frisian than to German even though the original English settlers were Saxon. Do I have that right? In other words, English is descended from a "common ancestor" of both Frisian and Saxon?
@@itsapittie That's more or less how I understand it. Btw, German is a collective term for twoish languages: Low German (what we are talking about here) and High German (which is a bit different and not as closely related to English and Frisian).
Construction, age, context, eventual decorations. Indeed, not every big knife with a hidden tang is a seax, there are typologies and fashions that where evidently followed by the warrior class of the time, from Italy to Scandinavia
For example, seaxes are mainly found in graves since they are not just simple tools (I personally consider continental seaxes mainly as weapons or pdws, the short ones pretty much as daggers). Usually together with a seax you will also find other pieces of equipment that fit in the regional Germanic culture (which depends from the zone, like langobards in Italy, Baiuvarii, Merovingians, Alamanni in Germany and Austria and so on...). These pieces are like belt fittings with specific decorations, metallic appliques for seax sheaths, combs, spears, swords, drinking horns, rings and more. Remember that often equipment produced by romans is found in Germanic graves, but at the same time, roman graves are considered to not hold grave goods cause Christianity, so in the early and middle period they are pretty distinguishable from Germanic ones. There are also late roman big knives which are sort of similar to seaxes, but they don't fit at all in regional typologies of seaxes and are not found in graves, they are too thin and the wear signs of the blade are much starker than on seaxes
Like Matt said, it's a spectrum. You had Seaxes the size of a potato knife and you had Seaxes that were almost swords in length. It's like the German Messer where you have Langmessers which are one-handed swords, Kriegsmesser that are two-handed swords and the Bauernwehr which is like a Bowie knife. Still they are all part of the Messer family.
Well, here in Sweden vikings used seax as a multipurpose tool for food, cutting wood ,self defense and even in war as a back up weapon if they lost their spear or sword that is what i have heard but i don´t know how much truth it is behind it but that is what i know anyway.
Arghhhh the Jutes came from Jutland the Angels came fro what is Schleswig - Holstein today ( including what the Germans call north Schleswig ) the southern part of Denmark. so The Angles came from what is now most northern part of Germany and the most southern part of Denmark. I could be that it was the Saxons ( traders or bodyguards ) that introduced a daily knife to the Romano English. A knife that was used by all the German tribes. and that's why it got that name in England. The Saxons, Angels and the Jutes, had another name for it. but they diden't write anything down.
@@johnfisk811 the last living person that spoke the angle dialekt in denmark died in the 1860th. The dialekt was spoke on the vestcoast only. Just like the German platte dutch back it was propperly 1 langauge
I've always thought of them as the bowie knife of their day: mostly a (hard use) tool, but large and sturdy enough to be better than a stick if you needed a weapon in a hurry. And yes, there were versions that were made with martial use in mind. (Look up some Confederate bowie knives from the American Civil War, for example.)
I get the impression that warlike daggers went a bit out of fashion from the end of the Roman Empire to maybe the 12th Century. Plenty of exceptions, of course, but they're exceptions. No idea why that started or stopped. I think knives have mostly been a sort of backup/utility thing. I'm a photographer, I use an interchangeable lens system camera (spear/sword/axe/shield) as my main weapon, and I have a phone (knife) for the days when I wasn't expecting to take pictures. Most people just have the phone/knife. But daggers (rondels and the like) *did* have a moment as primary-ish weaon in the era of plate armour, for jamming through the cracks while you wrestling around on the ground.
while I cant remember were the info came from but my understanding(and it may be wrong), the Seax got its name from sailors who used it as something akin to an axe/ utility knife. which ended up with the tool getting the name Sea axe or Seax
As far as utility as a weapon goes, I agree that it doesn't seem to have characteristics that would make it a good stabbing weapon, but to play with possibilities; is it possible we're just missing degradable materials that would make it better suited? For example chord to loop around the wrist and risers on the grip, a bit like that seen on kukris. Not to say either of those things would suddenly make it highly suited as a thrusting weapon. But as a second question that ties into the first, is it plausible that it may have mostly been used as a cutting weapon? I've been shocked by how well some knives can cut, and if you're in a world where most men are carrying similar knives, it would make some sense to have a blade that is better optimised for cutting as knife fights (where both parties have time to draw blades before grappling) seem to contain a lot of attempts at sniping the hands rather than going for stabs at the vitals.
With all the variation in blade size and shape, how do you know if you have a seax or just a knife? We have three of them in our county flag in Essex and they don't look exactly like yours.
This is a really interesting topic and I would love to hear more about it. For example you haven't yet mentioned the scramasax. One specific example is the seax of Beagnoth, a very interesting artifact.
I think there is only one early use of the word 'scramasax' - by Gregory of Tours - and nobody is quite sure what it means. There is an excellent RUclips video on the seax of Beagnoth by Tod, if memory serves.
@@paulinequinton1478 yes, just found that, after I commented. But I like when several youtubers make a video on the same topic, it provides a wide spectrum of reliable information.
My inclination is to believe that the seaxe was very much a battlefield weapon, as well as a potential tool. Loving Bernard Cornwell as an author who does his research, his assertion throughout his Last Kingdom series is that many Saxons in the age of Alfred the Great and his children (Late 800s to mid 900s) would carry 2 swords into battle, a longer sword (typical arming sword length) and the seaxe. The seaxe, as he depicts it, is used in the shield wall because much like the Romans figured out, longer swords are hard to use when your neighbours in the shield wall are shoulder to shoulder, your enemies are screaming in your face, and you need a short enough blade which can be drawn back behind your shield easily. Of course, his novels, while based on fact, are works of fiction. But it makes sense to me that cultures which fought in tight knit shieldwalls would see the need for a nimble and vicious long knife (or short sword) for the real close up work.
I've heard this opinion before and now I know where it came from, but this scenario seems quite unlikely to me. The Romans abandoned the use of short gladiuses in tight shieldwalls very much, while they adopted more "barbaric" tactics, like cavalrymen with oval or round shields and longer spathas and spears. The region in northern Germany where I come from was the target of a Viking incursion in the 10th century. These guys where not referred to as Normanni, or something in that vein, but as Askomanni, that is: "Ashmen", with ash referring to the shafts of their spears. The fact that these guys carried spears with them, shows that they expected to encounter armed resistance (which they did). When the Saxons where first mentioned in greek and and latin texts they appeared to be raiders. Raiders avoid open battle as much as they can and a big knife is a perfectly viable und sufficent weapon against unarmed farmers or monks.
@Lüder Brüning Alright, nothing you said really showed why you disagree. At the point in time I'm referring to, along with the usual longboat raids, the Danes and Saxons were fighting shieldwall battles involving thousands on each side. The Danes were fighting to break the power of Saxon kingdoms to take their land, and they couldn't do that with just Viking activities. A shorter weapon for when the enemy is pressed up on your shield seems very logical to me. Of course, men in the ranks behind the front line would find spears useful for stabbing past their comrades, and axemen in the front could hack enemy shields to pieces. I'm not saying every single warrior wore 2 swords for battle, but I can see it being a very viable option.
@@AwkwardDuck14 Well I disagree because I don't think that a seax is very helpfull when you stand in a shieldwall and an opposing spearman aims for your feet or an axman aims for your head. When you have lost your spear or your axe, then a seaxe is of course better than nothing. I think: Bringing a seax to the battle is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. On the other hand: Still today I don't need more than a knife to mug somebodfy unarmed on the street, and, as we have seen for example in Rwanda, big knifes (machetes) are even "usefull" for entire genocides against unarmed populations.
When I was young, a long time ago, every history book that mentioned the Franks or the Merovingians, always mentioned the Frankish throwing axe. Nothing in the last forty years or so seems to mention them. Are they one of those "mistakes" that have since been corrected or were they actually a thing that is just out of vogue now?
There definitely aren't a lot of people talking about them. They were pretty much the European version of a Tomahawk. I would like for him to make a video about them.
The argument that many seaxes were tools may be reasonable for blades from the British isles, but is hard to maintain for continental saxes. While finds in England vary continuously between a few inches long a sword length blades, on the continent there is a very clear distinction in length between knives and saxes, with little in between.
'Saxon' seems to have been a general name used for Germanic people by Celtic peoples, then potentially then got applied to the weapon. Worth noting that even today militaries often refer to their soldiers by the weapon they carry, or traditionally did, eg. spears, sabres etc. Also, my understanding is they became more popular as the tactics changed to the shield wall, from a more open formation.
@@GriffinParke the Chauken seem to be the origin of the Sachsen (the people using the Sax) Source: Albert Genrich: Der Name der Sachsen - Mythos und Realität. In: Hans-Jürgen Häßler, Ulla Lund Hansen (Hrsg.): Studien zur Sachsenforschung. Nr. 7. Lax, Hildesheim 1991, ISBN 3-7848-1619-3, S. 137-144.
A weapon is anything used offensively or defensively. Teeth, claws, hooves, antlers, and horns in the animal kingdom are weapons. Likewise, a broom handle, bar stool, or frying pan can be used as weapons (either to attack or defend). Just because something is or isn’t specifically designed for warfare or to “cause harm,” doesn’t alter this reality. I’m sure some barristers would like to disagree, they’re always attempting to redefine common sense and reality.
Actually, in the Germanic saga of Dietrich von Bern his sax (named Eckesachs after his former owner, the giant Ecke) is clearly a fighting sword, not a utility knife.
It's a very basic design for a knife and unsurprisingly something similar was used almost everywhere in the world at one time or another. It isn't fundamentally different from a Scottish dirk, for example, or knives used at various times in eastern Europe and even Asia. It's simply a strong blade with a handle which makes it useful for all sorts of everyday tasks. I think of it much like what we would today call a camp knife. The ordinary person of the Middle Ages had more need for such a tool than the average person today. Cut cord, chop brush, trim kindling, make pegs, slaughter an animal -- things we don't have much need for today but which would have been essential to a man of that era. And, of course, since humans are gonna human, if that's the best weapon they had, they took it to war. In fact, they almost certainly took it to war for the same daily tasks even if they hardly ever used it for combat.
I do rather like Bernard Cornwell's contention that the seax was used rather like a gladius in the shield wall where regular swords and axes would be unwieldy. If everybody had one as a 'tool' they would be more likely to be used than swords which were expensive and beyond the means of an average Fyrde man.
These were farmers and herdsmen, I see the Seax used for utilitarian purposes for clearing brush, working with animals, fashioning rough wood tools and byproducts (staffs [staves?], bark straps, etc.)
It is part of the early english identity... its still on the flag of Essex... and the broken back knife is part of that as it almost entirely was found in England... It's like saying norse mythology shouldn't be called norse because the same gods and stories existed in England and Russia...
My theory still holds on the name bring from the knife, since I think the term Saxon is actually an Roman use of a Inguaevonic (North Sea coastal Germanic) word. A simple catch all term for a wide and desperate set of mostly unRomanised Germanic tribes.
Seax is a type of knife. Seaxneat is a Germanic god whose name means basically "sword/knife companion" and was possibly a byname for another god, maybe Tiw/Tyr or Fro Ing/Freyr. So, the tribe wasn't named after the blade. Like many other tribes (such as the Ingvaeones, named for Ing, and possibly the Anglii also named for Ing) the tribe was named after the god, and the god was named after the blade.
I used to think seax were odd, as if someone who never saw a knife before sharpened the wrong side of the blade. But looking at yours, it seems like the fore-runner of the clip point but just without any belly.
I have heard people say "Saxon" is related to "Seax", and if anything it feels a bit too good to be true in a way lol. But I've not honestly heard another proposed origin that seems as compelling. I've heard an uncommon suggestion that it might be etymologically linked to "sea" which makes sense considering the location, but the etymology itself feels a little too hazy imo. If anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear it.
The sax like the huntig knife and later the Bowie knife were deffence/ last ressort weapons that they will use rarely if ever in their life as a weapon but use everyday as a tool. The sax was also aneasy to carry statu weapon indicating a free man/ warrior however poor . It did meant respect and honnor as a same time as a utility/ deffence knife.
+scholagladiatoria *The **_Гachs_** was used by the **_Гachſen_** and their neighbor tribes in the Greater German nation.* COLD STEELⓇ, Ventura, CA, USA, perfected a modern interpretation in the 17" OAL Woodsman's Sax (P/N 88HUA).
The modern German state of Saxony is NOT northern Germany. It is actually far eastern Germany nowhere near the NW coast where the Saxons are reputed to have migrated from. I have no doubt that the two names are related but that claim was an error Matt.
From what i know The Vikings used Saex's too. The "funny" thing is that the danish (Denmark) word for scissor is "Saks" Saks = Saex 🤷♂️? Maybe some sort of connection...?
Under a period in Skandinavia (later vendel era) the larger seaxes (sword sized) replaced the sword it seems. They are fond in warrior graves that do not have swords at all. The swords are mostly found in the very high status graves, together with seaxes. No one really knows why.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
We all know that the Saxons were really named after their most famous invention, the Saxophone.
Also their deadliest weapon, at least in early childhood training. XD
Used for talking to other Saxons across a great distance.
Also used to woo potential mates.
They were named after a Salt company !
Looking at that knife you’re waving about, I really distrust that convex edge.
The Seax is named after the Saxons, the point where two lines meet is named after the Angles and the string type is named after the Jutes.
Clever... This comment needs way more likes... Nicely done..
im very confused. could you elaborate?
Should have said the "string wrapped handle is named after the Jutes". Would have kept the joke inside the realm of knife construction..
@@Skelstoolbox ok
@@anglosaxaphone672 Yes certainly. Open and honest discussion is named after the Franks.
I’m so glad you cover that the broken back is only one form of Seax. Too many people think it’s only a seax if it looks like that. Seax just means knife, and they run the whole gamut of sizes from little whittling knife up to sword-length (longseax).
Like anything remotely associated with the Viking period, mythology vastly overpowers reality.
These things probably functioned way better as bushcraft/survival knives. If you’re traveling, you absolutely NEED at least a knife in the context of medieval European travel.
It kinda still does if you're hitchhiking. You never know if you're gonna be particularly unlucky and end up sleeping in some bush. Unless you look like me then you know you will be.
Just make sure to never poop in the woods in England, you can't even get a license for that in fact!
I have a skrama from varusteleka (a saex for the 21st century) and thus shape of tool is amazingly versatile and perfect for the European countryside. It hacks through undergrowth, batons branches and small logs for firewood, drills with the point and the shape of the blade let's you use it like a spoke shave or simple push plane to shape wood. Also use mine for slicing bread, meat and cheese at lunch.
I've always assumed that Saxony got its name not because people from there necessarily used seaxes in warfare, but because it was a region where everyone carried a seax and the people had a reputation for "solving" civil conflicts between two individuals with a seax. Kinda like how Finns have a historic reputation in the Nordics of really liking their work knives, giving them splendid sheathes, and fighting each other with them.
I doubt anyone could afford or was allowed to carry a sword in old Saxony during the migration era. In such an environment, the most common work knife could work as a "social substitute" for the non-noble Saxons. This reputation caught on and made their British descendants cherish their knife-wielding reputation, making the seax a cherished tool and part of every nobleman's dear belongings.
Heavy “bush” knives of various styles are incredibly common amongst rural people around the world, particularly those who still obtain a high proportion of their materials and implements from the native vegetation.
Call them Goloks, Simis, Parangs, Machetes or Pangas… the size and shape varies according to the materials and types of work that are most common, but the common theme is a relatively heavy “chopper” that can be used on light timber, thatching material, heavy butchering and -in a pinch - self-defence.
Yea a general utility belt knife and last ressort deffence weapon.
Great video as always, I have a few relevant things to add about 6th-7th century Merovingian seaxes if anyone's interested, I've been studying them as part of my PhD.
As Matt pointed out, Merovingian seaxes are very different from Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian seaxes, they often have curved edges. In fact, long seaxes are not only common in Norway, they're highly represented in later Merovingian contexts.
In that vein, I think that Matt is quite right to point out that seaxes existed on a spectrum from tool to weapon. I certainly have no trouble believing that the standard broken back seax was a tool but I find it very hard to believe that a lot of the seaxes that I've been looking at (mostly from Alsace in Eastern France) were not weapons.
The smallest one that I've seen so far was about 20cm long (just the blade), which is already a fairly hefty knife, though, much more in line with later anglo-saxon seaxes, so that could well have been something like a bowie knife. In contrast, the largest seax that I've looked at so far was 80cm long (including 30cm tang) and 6cm wide. That's a heck of a bowie knife and while it was large, it wasn't exceptional, a lot of the seaxes I've seen from that period exist in similar dimensions.
110 cm is too much for edc and 20cm blade probably wouldn't get used on a battle field but would be a warning to anyone thinking of robbing you, in civilian life, and could work as a tool too.
@@julianshepherd2038 Yeah, that's pretty much what my conclusion was as well, and the big seax that I studied wasn't even the largest I've seen. There's some seaxes in the Musée d'Histoire de Belfort in Eastern France which are 1m-1.3m long.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing.
Thanks for that. The more information I can get about the ‘Seax’ the better. You have saved me from the embarrassment of posting the wrong info about Seax’s. Stay sharp Brother 👍.
I thought these were Norman/Viking.
I had a similar opinion on the weapon. It's more of a multi-purpose tool than a combat knife, but it could do in a pinch if you're in a fight and don't have your primary arms.
Funny thing, the word seax is still around in some Germanic languages (specifically the Scandinavian ones) as a word for scissors. It's even jumped from those to Finnish as "sakset" (notably, that's a plural word just like "scissors" (the singular would be saksi, and refers to a seax) whereas the Scandinavian languages seem to keep it singular from what I can tell).
Also in Finnish the word "Saksa" means Germany, so maybe that tells something about where these tools originated from.
@@erkkoanttila3770 It is because during the Viking Age the Scandinavians called Germany Saxland. "Land of the Saxons", so it was the same,
@@alicelund147 and afterwards an area roughly south of denmark was still being called some variant of saxony. It's entirely possible that the ethnonym was in fact adopted after the land rather than the other way around, like for example with the Hittites (who literally called themselves the people from the land of Hatti, of course with a simple suffix system not descriptively like this, rather than simply Hatti)
I just realised we even have an example from modernity, the name Pakistan technically means "the state of the Paki", however Paki (unlike Afghani, Kazakh, Turkmen etc) is considered a slur, because the name for the country, from which the ethnonym is derived (and based on which the actual national identity was created) was invented by a British student who didn't particularly think it through >< this monstrosity ("Pakistani") is really unique btw, it's like saying Englandian instead of English :v
@@erkkoanttila3770We also have a word kamasaksa. That must be a strange kusari-gama -like weapon.
As archer would say: "Phrasing..." If it was carried everyday it would make a solid defensive weapon in a pinch.
The Bowie knife comparison seems apt, given that the latter is also a utility knife that ends up seeing a great deal of combat, not only on the frontier but by bushwackers, partisans, and home guard types through the American Civil War (and by vampire hunters if you've read the original Dracula).
Rezin Bowie created the Bowie knife primarily as a fighting knife. It later became popular as a bush craft tool during the westward expansion. This is the exact opposite of how the Navaja developed in Spain ( the Navaja was a tool that became a weapon , while the Bowie was a weapon that became a tool ) . Props to the Bram Stoker reference.
"Oh, it's so big, ti-hi" - Lucy, "Bram Stoker's Dracula", by F.F. Coppola
@@vde1846 That movie was a travesty.
Thank you for your insight on the seax. It is a very interesting tool and you can see the similarities to the later bauernwehr.
Speaking of the bauernwehr I would be very interested in seeing more information on that iconic tool from you as well.
In german there is die Wehr, and das Wehr. Das Wehr is a kind of dam(m) in a , river' to give ( give not) water to the wheel of a waterpowerd ,mill' . Die Wehr means simply weapon. The dated word Seitenwehr means sidearm, and a Seitengewehr is a bayonnet, the 18th century Kurzgewehr is a kind of sponton, and Gewehr is in german an umbrella term for rifles, shotguns and combined guns.
In England a type of knife used by a thatcher to cut thatching is called a sax, so it's an interesting etymological link to the seax of the early medieval period. Would love to hear your thoughts on the scramasax, which seems to be a more continental phenomenon, and quite unique as a short sword possibly better suited to stabbing which is unusual in a shield and spear context.
In Germanic languages like German or Dutch the adjective(s) is attach with the name to form one word Scramasax meant only fighting sax .
How heavy is that one? I always thought they were a utility/camp knife, like the Bowie knife. More handy and able to do the same and more things as a small camp axe. Perfect for cutting up camp wood as well as defense when needed or the last rights on a animal. At least that is what I use my Bowie knife for, a little big for eating with, but I have a small piggy back blade for that. This size of knife has so many uses in the woods, hard to list them all.
I'm coming to think that "knife" = "medieval cellular phone". Everybody's got one, and you use for all sorts of things. It's not the best at everything (spears are better than knives in shield walls, kindles are better for prolonged reading than phones), but it's usable for a lot.
Also a fair amount of utility in combat if you need it to. Not like bowie knives didn't kill an awful lot of people in American frontier areas.
The seax is probably one of my favorite blade types, I have several. Trying to bring it back and get more modern renditions of it
I love how Matt couldn't put a handle on that Seax for years.
And then Todd did it for him.
7:32 The German etymology for 'Seax', 'Sax', 'Sachs' goes back to the Old High German word for 'sword' or 'knife': 'sahs'. In northern European, Scandinavian countries it was also used to say 'scissors'; Swedish 'sax', Norwegian and Danish 'saks', Finnish 'sakset'.
Funny too, how the German word for scissors 'Schere' looks so similar, but 'Schere' apparently comes from 'scari', which is the plural for knife, which is 'scar', in Old High German.
And why did scar mean knife!?
PS
If a sentence seems too complicated, you are not reading hard enough!
Sakset in modern Finnish use refers to scissors, but I'm sure in the past the seax, or a knife, was the scissors of the time, used for the same purpose.
Just gonna put this out there. Swiss army knives are found all over the world but we all know that they're from switzerland
Yes, but is the SAK actually named after the Saxons?
@republicjim120 of course. Swiss Army Knives is commonly abbreviated to SAKs or saks, which is a spelling of Sax, popularised in the Victorian period to avoid similarity to the word sex.
@@republicjim120 I'm just saying. Just because it's all over doesn't mean it can't have been named after them
@@republicjim120 or the other way around??
Invented in Germany actually. The Swiss army being the first large customer.
It cuts onions, rabbits and a&&holes as needed...
Just like a Bowie or a Tennessee Toothpick.
That beautiful seax reminds me, to some extent, the Fallkniven THOR knife, a hunting/outdoors tool. A very expensive one too... anyways, excellent video, as always. I feel pampered by these free, generous and top rate expositions of yours, and that's a tad deceiving. Usually for content of this quality you have to reach for your pockets and pull substantially. An exercise I am not particularly in shape to exercise right now... so, thank you Matt.
Cheers.
Very good and thanks for continuing to be Matt Easton!
Thank you for your outstanding work Matt.
When dealing with historical weapons/tools, broad strokes are required as you have pointed out here. Was the seax used in battle? Certainly. How many hunting knives went onto the beaches of Normandy during D-Day? Many, I'd presume. And if those, how many were used against the Germans? Most likely a few. Your point is absolutely valid! Well done Matt!
Likewise, look at any picture of a Confederate partisan in the Civil War, and there's a pretty good chance he'll have a Bowie knife on him. Did he ever actually use it? Well that depends entirely on how ugly the situation got.
I would say you’re spot-on about the word *seax* : from the Online Etymology Dictionary: *saw* toothed cutting tool] Middle English saue, from Old English sagu, from Proto-Germanic [sago] "a cutting tool" *source also of Old English seax "knife,"* . . . from Proto-IndoEuropean root [sek-] "to cut" (source also of Latin secare "to cut").
One thing, though: in Old English "ea" and "eo" were diphthongs: I detest hearing "Smeagol" pronounced as "Smee-gol"! Things changed as Middle English developed into Modern English, which is why "read" present tense is pronounced diferently from "read" past tense: similarly with "lead" present tense and "lead" metal.
The Saxons get their name from their progenitor god Seaxnēat who is likely named after the knife however
I personally see seaxes in 4 loose caragories:
1) the smallest ranging from an 1" or so up to about 7" or so I refer to as a hadseax.
2) the 8" to 15" general tools possibly used as weapons at times that I refer to as a scramasax.
3) the 16-24" machete like ones that probably originate as tools but were often used as weapons (although some do seem to be purpose built as weapons) that I refer to as a langsax.
4) the Norwegian single edged swords that I refer to as a sviða or höggsax.
The obsession some people seem to have that everything is a fighting knife like video games, I don't see people going around killing three others in fights every week that's not a practical way of existing. But as a tool to cut a bit of hazel and thorn knock up some scruffy arrows snare some rabbits do all kinds of outdoors stuff a good sized knife is excellent.
Spend a lot more time with everyday tasks than going to war, so I agree Seax look much more like tools.
Seen the same said of broadaxe's where people would put them on eBay as a beheading axe, totally oblivious to the fact many guys would square logs with them as their day job.
"Fallen to Saexes" was famous speech phrase from medieval England describing last resourt measures.
I am a little heartbroken to find out that there is no connection between seax and Saxon. I had read someone years ago that Saxon meant a person who carries a seax. Since thralls (slaves) weren't allowed to carry weapons, carrying a seax was a symbol of one's freedom, thus a Saxon would roughly translate as freeman. Oh well, seax are still cool knives. Thanks for the info Matt.
Please do a more in-depth look at early medieval knives, as in 'when is a seax a seax and not a different type of knife'?
Many models if Seaxs share a multitude of charscteristics of traditional Sami "choppers".
The Sami chopper knifes are mostly used as a small multipurpose machete; collecting/preparing firewood, making camps, some heavier bushcraft, chopping game meat etc.
I think that many of the seax could have been used in a similar way.
I agree with the idea that these are a multiple-use “bush” knife.
Such knives are still very common amongst rural dwellers who still utilise a high proportion of natural materials for building material and fashioning utensils.
Elsewhere we call the Goloks, Parangs, Simis, Machetes, Pangas and I’d even include Kukhris… but the common theme is a medium-heavy chopper that can be used to cut a stick, fashion a snare, collect material for thatching, basket-making, hurdle-making, hedging, butchering or - in a pinch - self-defence.
The claim that it was primarily a fighting knife has always - for me - seemed to be contradicted by the dropped point That make it a less-effective thrusting weapon, but a better weight-forward chopper.
i do believe that due to their strait edge, they where easier to produce than blades with a curved end like most knives/blades.and they still had a very pointy end suitable for stabbing. just produce an iron flattened bar, cut it diagonally and sharp it on one side of both pieces, voila, you have two seaxes. it just seems very easy to produce to me.
In Skandinavia, big puukko style knives (about 30-50cm long knives called väkipuukko) were meant as cheaper alternatives to swords for everyday carry. They were tools and weapons of war. There were various styles, and some blades were technically broken back seaxes. They were used in close combat with the shield when you can't use your spear anymore. Length was similar compared to gladius. Varusteleka's skrama is a modern version of the seax knife without that pointy tip. It's meant to be used as a tool, so it doesn't have that old-school pointy tip, which is a feature weapon/tool combination need. So seaxes were tools, everyday tasks knives, and the weapons of war. Just before the matchlock firearms archers and crossbow men in Scandinavia were still using seax/väkipuukko style big knives as a back up weapons because swords were expensive.
love it! I do have a nuanced view of the seax though. during that era, people were very poor, and I think that the seax was still very common as a sidearm even during battle, be it a raid or even a larger battle. I think it's this misunderstanding of the relative poverty of the period that causes people to see more swords, metal helmets and armor. Obviously that had all changed by the time of Hastings or even by the time that seax was popular. Some would likely carry them just to harken back to a previous era. I don't know what ratio is appropriate, but if I was making a video game in 500AD Brittain, I'd go with 20% sword, 50% seax, 30% axe as a sidearm. everyone has a shield. armor is rare, but helmets were more common than later. most have a spear. by 800AD, maybe like 30% sword, 50% axe, 20% seax with most of them being longer than the previous era. a small amount of people using 2 handed weapons like spear, Dane axe and poleaxe. less helmets by this point and mail coats were rare. by Hastings, maybe 50% sword, 30%axe, 20% seax (almost all of the langseaxe type) Dane axes by people that have mail coats and helmets so maybe 25% of troops? also maybe something like a gambeson was already available, so way better protection by that point.
There are many Sax found in merowingian graves in southern germany, some of them the length of short swords. Like the francia the origin of these weapons might be a tool but they are distingly different from tools when you see the blade profiles of those larger Sax.
Great episode. Hey Matt! Any chance to talk about the fantastically preserved Bronze Age sword in Nördlingen, Germany?
The seax is also on the flag of Essex (and the almost identical but obviously less impressive Middlesex flag) apparently it is on our flag due to a story about an East Saxon (or Essex) king carrying some with him while in a battle. These on the flags are often confused with scimitars as they are very curved.
It really annoys me that the Seax is depicted as a handled scimitar on the arms of Middlesex and Essex. Why not show them as a recognisable Seax.
@@daviddavidk2352 well the ones on the Essex flag are actually just a curved saex so I assume yours is the same. There are however variants of it for sports etc which actually do have straighter depictions which is always interesting.
@@qz7474 both coats of arms unfortunately show something that is curved, has a guard, is bellied with a notch out of the blade. A typical Seax has none of these features. They were straight blades with typically a broke back and no notch with an unhilted handle. I presume the scimitar is just a heraldic symbol.
On the language side, my understanding (i have been learning englisc = old English for a couple of years now) is that seax is pronounced (in englisc) as se-ax. It is a neuter noun so the pleural would be the same. Interestingly there is an englisc word 'seaxbenn' which means a wound from a seax. As you say seax means knife, short sword or dagger. Englisc also has a word ''cnīf' (pronounced cnive) which also means knife.
Interesting, thank you. I’d love a ten minute nutshell, too, on what you mentioned about the migration to England.
Thanks for your nuanced argument!
The point on a Sea Axe being backwards to what we are used to. It's very useful because the point can do really fine work for a knife that size.
Your point on tool vs weapon is fairly clearly correct, I think, and also echoed in later Germany. The bauernwehr knife and the messer and clearly similarly designed objects. One is more of a tool, the other more of a weapon. The broken back seax you show, more of a tool. A sword-hilted, curved edge Norwegian seax, more of a weapon. Same spectrum I think.
1:02 If something isn't really backed up by evidence, then it isn't a theory.
Hypothesis?
looking forward to the upcomming video of Safe Seax handling.. (I'le see myself out)
Is that seax you had from a few years ago finally finished? I think it was shown in a vid about seax's compared to Bowie knives. You said you'd do a follow up vid when it was finished and it never happened. So I'm wondering if that's it?
Yes it's the same
Just how good was the metallurgy of such knives. I am assuming that they were very soft low carbon steel or iron.
Reminds me of a field modded Ross rifle bayonet ( canada style)
Great for removing dandelions
i been thinking about adding one to my collection, not an old one since i don't have that kind of money but one that isn't new or what people like to call damascus but what's really just folded, but one
would you say it's similar to the Bollock dagger? As in being a tool.
I feel you are correct about that size seax being a tool that occasionally might be used as a weapon. This is, in my opinion, partly from the lack of any guard. While it's true not every combat blade has a guard (the shashka for example doesn't) most I aware of do. The guards are often a hand stop rather than protecting from opponent's weapons. One reason a weapon needs a hand stop & a tool does58s that a tool is used in a less frantic way; you can take your time to get it out & position your hand. A weapon may need to be deployed quickly, swung rapidly & repeatedly but also may be used for stabbing. (Matt has previously stated he doesn't feel seaxes were used for stabbing).
Are there any Seax's that have cross-guards?
Mildly interesting note: one of the Finnish words for this type of knife is Väkipuukko, which more or less translates as powerknife or mighty knife.
My knowledge on Finnish is very limited but knowing that Puukko is a knife, i always thought that the Väki was supposed to mean Viking.
@@kimashitawa8113 Väki is a bit of an odd word, because it can mean both "folk" or "power/powers". As such it can refer also to the spirits or powers associated with places or elements. So "tulen väki" = "the folk/power/spirits of fire".
@@GOAT-rl2uq Funnily enough, Google Translate just translates it into "utility knife".
Kinda like the bowie. It was basically a slightly redesigned kitchen knife of the day. Old pictures show folks carying basically kitchen knives. I lived on an island in the pacific and most everyone carried differing shapes of kitchen knives. They were used for bear everything. Then from there they carried or had access to machetes . So yea, the seax is just a differant style of knives used by many. I have always looked at knives as tools as that was my introduction to them. Not as weapons but as everyday tools..
I always was intrigued that Essex, Wessex, etc .. were named after the Saxons ... Anglo Saxon was named after the Angles and the Saxons .. and the groups that are normally named are the Angles, Saxons and Jutes ... and occasionally Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, but Old English is largely a Frisian Language ... ?
I watched a video by a linguist in which he said that English and Frisian were probably mutually intelligible until about 1000 AD. IIRC, he also said that one of the places where Frisian is still spoken is in Lower Saxony. I suspect the people of the era didn't call themselves by the names we use today and the Saxons may well have been what today we call Frisians. Or not. It's unlikely we will ever know with certainty.
The languages of those groups were pretty close together. Old Frisian and Old Saxon evolved into Frisian and Low German which are still more or less mutually intelligible.
@@Warpwaffel so if Saxon and Frisian were very closely related languages, it's possible that the reason the closest relative of English is Frisian has to do with Low German exhibiting a greater degree of linguistic drift from the original tongue than Frisian. That would leave English more closely related to Frisian than to German even though the original English settlers were Saxon. Do I have that right? In other words, English is descended from a "common ancestor" of both Frisian and Saxon?
@@itsapittie That's more or less how I understand it.
Btw, German is a collective term for twoish languages: Low German (what we are talking about here) and High German (which is a bit different and not as closely related to English and Frisian).
If there are so many different types than what common features distinguish them as seaxes?
Construction, age, context, eventual decorations. Indeed, not every big knife with a hidden tang is a seax, there are typologies and fashions that where evidently followed by the warrior class of the time, from Italy to Scandinavia
For example, seaxes are mainly found in graves since they are not just simple tools (I personally consider continental seaxes mainly as weapons or pdws, the short ones pretty much as daggers). Usually together with a seax you will also find other pieces of equipment that fit in the regional Germanic culture (which depends from the zone, like langobards in Italy, Baiuvarii, Merovingians, Alamanni in Germany and Austria and so on...). These pieces are like belt fittings with specific decorations, metallic appliques for seax sheaths, combs, spears, swords, drinking horns, rings and more. Remember that often equipment produced by romans is found in Germanic graves, but at the same time, roman graves are considered to not hold grave goods cause Christianity, so in the early and middle period they are pretty distinguishable from Germanic ones.
There are also late roman big knives which are sort of similar to seaxes, but they don't fit at all in regional typologies of seaxes and are not found in graves, they are too thin and the wear signs of the blade are much starker than on seaxes
Hi I have a question for you as far as buying a good reproduction of a sax are there any knife makers that you would recommend
Paul Binns, Owen Bush
@@scholagladiatoria thank you
Isn't this one a little large? I was under the impression the Seax was a boot knife, primarily used by the Norse.
Like Matt said, it's a spectrum. You had Seaxes the size of a potato knife and you had Seaxes that were almost swords in length. It's like the German Messer where you have Langmessers which are one-handed swords, Kriegsmesser that are two-handed swords and the Bauernwehr which is like a Bowie knife. Still they are all part of the Messer family.
Well, here in Sweden vikings used seax as a multipurpose tool for food, cutting wood ,self defense and even in war as a back up weapon if they lost their spear or sword that is what i have heard but i don´t know how much truth it is behind it but that is what i know anyway.
Arghhhh the Jutes came from Jutland the Angels came fro what is Schleswig - Holstein today ( including what the Germans call north Schleswig ) the southern part of Denmark. so The Angles came from what is now most northern part of Germany and the most southern part of Denmark.
I could be that it was the Saxons ( traders or bodyguards ) that introduced a daily knife to the Romano English. A knife that was used by all the German tribes. and that's why it got that name in England. The Saxons, Angels and the Jutes, had another name for it. but they diden't write anything down.
And it would appear that they all ended up being called Angles, hence Angleland and speaking Frisian…………
@@johnfisk811 the last living person that spoke the angle dialekt in denmark died in the 1860th.
The dialekt was spoke on the vestcoast only.
Just like the German platte dutch back it was propperly 1 langauge
🎵"Let's talk about seax baby, let's talk about you and me, let's raid the monastery"🎵
I've always thought of them as the bowie knife of their day: mostly a (hard use) tool, but large and sturdy enough to be better than a stick if you needed a weapon in a hurry. And yes, there were versions that were made with martial use in mind. (Look up some Confederate bowie knives from the American Civil War, for example.)
Was their some other kind of knife or dagger for military use in the early middle ages then, or did they just not have one?
I get the impression that warlike daggers went a bit out of fashion from the end of the Roman Empire to maybe the 12th Century. Plenty of exceptions, of course, but they're exceptions. No idea why that started or stopped.
I think knives have mostly been a sort of backup/utility thing. I'm a photographer, I use an interchangeable lens system camera (spear/sword/axe/shield) as my main weapon, and I have a phone (knife) for the days when I wasn't expecting to take pictures. Most people just have the phone/knife. But daggers (rondels and the like) *did* have a moment as primary-ish weaon in the era of plate armour, for jamming through the cracks while you wrestling around on the ground.
while I cant remember were the info came from but my understanding(and it may be wrong), the Seax got its name from sailors who used it as something akin to an axe/ utility knife. which ended up with the tool getting the name Sea axe or Seax
No, it's just the old German word for knife.
origin for seax=sahs, axe=akusjo (protogermanic)
Can you make a video about the bronze age sword that was just found it Germany? It looks so well preserved!
Can you do a video on the post-Roman Britons vs the Anglo Saxons? Especially in the West Country? Would be very interesting!
As far as utility as a weapon goes, I agree that it doesn't seem to have characteristics that would make it a good stabbing weapon, but to play with possibilities; is it possible we're just missing degradable materials that would make it better suited? For example chord to loop around the wrist and risers on the grip, a bit like that seen on kukris. Not to say either of those things would suddenly make it highly suited as a thrusting weapon.
But as a second question that ties into the first, is it plausible that it may have mostly been used as a cutting weapon? I've been shocked by how well some knives can cut, and if you're in a world where most men are carrying similar knives, it would make some sense to have a blade that is better optimised for cutting as knife fights (where both parties have time to draw blades before grappling) seem to contain a lot of attempts at sniping the hands rather than going for stabs at the vitals.
i'd very much like one of those, i love seax.. s? anyway, are they legal to purchase in uk matt? i don't know what i can buy anymore hahaha!
Yes they are legal for now! Let's call them kitchen knives.
@@scholagladiatoria haha nice! i'll use it for cooking, no problem sir :P
well i guess they did too anyway.
Super informative. I really enjoy the honest, historical context when you explain bladed weapons.👍🏻👍🏻🗡️🗡️🪓🪓⚓🔱🇺🇲🇺🇲
With all the variation in blade size and shape, how do you know if you have a seax or just a knife?
We have three of them in our county flag in Essex and they don't look exactly like yours.
I think "Seax" is just an umbrella term for every type of knife used by Germanic peoples in the early middle ages.
This is a really interesting topic and I would love to hear more about it. For example you haven't yet mentioned the scramasax. One specific example is the seax of Beagnoth, a very interesting artifact.
I think there is only one early use of the word 'scramasax' - by Gregory of Tours - and nobody is quite sure what it means. There is an excellent RUclips video on the seax of Beagnoth by Tod, if memory serves.
@@paulinequinton1478 yes, just found that, after I commented. But I like when several youtubers make a video on the same topic, it provides a wide spectrum of reliable information.
@@marton_dobo Agreed - well. *mostly* reliable information. Matt Easton is always worth listening to.
I sometimes wonder if the Scottish Highlander's dirk is a variant of the seax.
My inclination is to believe that the seaxe was very much a battlefield weapon, as well as a potential tool. Loving Bernard Cornwell as an author who does his research, his assertion throughout his Last Kingdom series is that many Saxons in the age of Alfred the Great and his children (Late 800s to mid 900s) would carry 2 swords into battle, a longer sword (typical arming sword length) and the seaxe. The seaxe, as he depicts it, is used in the shield wall because much like the Romans figured out, longer swords are hard to use when your neighbours in the shield wall are shoulder to shoulder, your enemies are screaming in your face, and you need a short enough blade which can be drawn back behind your shield easily. Of course, his novels, while based on fact, are works of fiction. But it makes sense to me that cultures which fought in tight knit shieldwalls would see the need for a nimble and vicious long knife (or short sword) for the real close up work.
I've heard this opinion before and now I know where it came from, but this scenario seems quite unlikely to me. The Romans abandoned the use of short gladiuses in tight shieldwalls very much, while they adopted more "barbaric" tactics, like cavalrymen with oval or round shields and longer spathas and spears. The region in northern Germany where I come from was the target of a Viking incursion in the 10th century. These guys where not referred to as Normanni, or something in that vein, but as Askomanni, that is: "Ashmen", with ash referring to the shafts of their spears. The fact that these guys carried spears with them, shows that they expected to encounter armed resistance (which they did). When the Saxons where first mentioned in greek and and latin texts they appeared to be raiders. Raiders avoid open battle as much as they can and a big knife is a perfectly viable und sufficent weapon against unarmed farmers or monks.
@Lüder Brüning Alright, nothing you said really showed why you disagree. At the point in time I'm referring to, along with the usual longboat raids, the Danes and Saxons were fighting shieldwall battles involving thousands on each side. The Danes were fighting to break the power of Saxon kingdoms to take their land, and they couldn't do that with just Viking activities. A shorter weapon for when the enemy is pressed up on your shield seems very logical to me. Of course, men in the ranks behind the front line would find spears useful for stabbing past their comrades, and axemen in the front could hack enemy shields to pieces. I'm not saying every single warrior wore 2 swords for battle, but I can see it being a very viable option.
@@AwkwardDuck14 Well I disagree because I don't think that a seax is very helpfull when you stand in a shieldwall and an opposing spearman aims for your feet or an axman aims for your head. When you have lost your spear or your axe, then a seaxe is of course better than nothing. I think: Bringing a seax to the battle is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. On the other hand: Still today I don't need more than a knife to mug somebodfy unarmed on the street, and, as we have seen for example in Rwanda, big knifes (machetes) are even "usefull" for entire genocides against unarmed populations.
Is that the blade you’ve had for two forevers and one always? Looks good!
When I was young, a long time ago, every history book that mentioned the Franks or the Merovingians, always mentioned the Frankish throwing axe. Nothing in the last forty years or so seems to mention them. Are they one of those "mistakes" that have since been corrected or were they actually a thing that is just out of vogue now?
There definitely aren't a lot of people talking about them. They were pretty much the European version of a Tomahawk.
I would like for him to make a video about them.
How hard to make one able to be fitted to a spearshaft in need?
The argument that many seaxes were tools may be reasonable for blades from the British isles, but is hard to maintain for continental saxes. While finds in England vary continuously between a few inches long a sword length blades, on the continent there is a very clear distinction in length between knives and saxes, with little in between.
'Saxon' seems to have been a general name used for Germanic people by Celtic peoples, then potentially then got applied to the weapon. Worth noting that even today militaries often refer to their soldiers by the weapon they carry, or traditionally did, eg. spears, sabres etc.
Also, my understanding is they became more popular as the tactics changed to the shield wall, from a more open formation.
The word seax (spelled various different ways) is a common word for knife in many Germanic areas. It is not limited to the Saxons or English.
@@GriffinParke the Chauken seem to be the origin of the Sachsen (the people using the Sax) Source: Albert Genrich: Der Name der Sachsen - Mythos und Realität. In: Hans-Jürgen Häßler, Ulla Lund Hansen (Hrsg.): Studien zur Sachsenforschung. Nr. 7. Lax, Hildesheim 1991, ISBN 3-7848-1619-3, S. 137-144.
Thank you
A weapon is anything used offensively or defensively. Teeth, claws, hooves, antlers, and horns in the animal kingdom are weapons. Likewise, a broom handle, bar stool, or frying pan can be used as weapons (either to attack or defend). Just because something is or isn’t specifically designed for warfare or to “cause harm,” doesn’t alter this reality. I’m sure some barristers would like to disagree, they’re always attempting to redefine common sense and reality.
Actually, in the Germanic saga of Dietrich von Bern his sax (named Eckesachs after his former owner, the giant Ecke) is clearly a fighting sword, not a utility knife.
Yes, there are a few fighting seax in the sagas, and a few examples in art. But they are rare. Hardly any period art shows soldiers with a seax.
@@scholagladiatoria Well, maybe a giant’s seax would have just the right size for a human‘s sword.
It's a very basic design for a knife and unsurprisingly something similar was used almost everywhere in the world at one time or another. It isn't fundamentally different from a Scottish dirk, for example, or knives used at various times in eastern Europe and even Asia. It's simply a strong blade with a handle which makes it useful for all sorts of everyday tasks. I think of it much like what we would today call a camp knife. The ordinary person of the Middle Ages had more need for such a tool than the average person today. Cut cord, chop brush, trim kindling, make pegs, slaughter an animal -- things we don't have much need for today but which would have been essential to a man of that era. And, of course, since humans are gonna human, if that's the best weapon they had, they took it to war. In fact, they almost certainly took it to war for the same daily tasks even if they hardly ever used it for combat.
There's some African bush knives that are similar too. Like you said, the ideas show up nearly everywhere
@@DestinationBarbarism That's reasonable. Nevertheless, it was something that most people would have need for in their day-to-day lives.
I do rather like Bernard Cornwell's contention that the seax was used rather like a gladius in the shield wall where regular swords and axes would be unwieldy. If everybody had one as a 'tool' they would be more likely to be used than swords which were expensive and beyond the means of an average Fyrde man.
These were farmers and herdsmen, I see the Seax used for utilitarian purposes for clearing brush, working with animals, fashioning rough wood tools and byproducts (staffs [staves?], bark straps, etc.)
It is part of the early english identity... its still on the flag of Essex... and the broken back knife is part of that as it almost entirely was found in England...
It's like saying norse mythology shouldn't be called norse because the same gods and stories existed in England and Russia...
That is the best title in the history of the interweb
I believe that was the favorite weapon of Darryl the Great in the Battle of Walmart, 1056 AD.
Does Tod not make his own blades?
What would determine if someone called their knife a seax? Any single-edged knife or were there other criteria?
As far as I'm aware, the word literally just means knife.
@@scholagladiatoria Then it’s time for a Swiss Army Seax
Broken back sax sounds like it could be a great jazz album
My grandmother has one of these. She keeps it locked in a glass case in her office. I've only ever been allowed to touch it once.
My seax was a recreation from an historical find and is basically an heavy wide blade bowie
The Seax of Beagnoth would make an interesting episode.
My theory still holds on the name bring from the knife, since I think the term Saxon is actually an Roman use of a Inguaevonic (North Sea coastal Germanic) word.
A simple catch all term for a wide and desperate set of mostly unRomanised Germanic tribes.
Seax is a type of knife. Seaxneat is a Germanic god whose name means basically "sword/knife companion" and was possibly a byname for another god, maybe Tiw/Tyr or Fro Ing/Freyr. So, the tribe wasn't named after the blade. Like many other tribes (such as the Ingvaeones, named for Ing, and possibly the Anglii also named for Ing) the tribe was named after the god, and the god was named after the blade.
I used to think seax were odd, as if someone who never saw a knife before sharpened the wrong side of the blade. But looking at yours, it seems like the fore-runner of the clip point but just without any belly.
I have heard people say "Saxon" is related to "Seax", and if anything it feels a bit too good to be true in a way lol. But I've not honestly heard another proposed origin that seems as compelling. I've heard an uncommon suggestion that it might be etymologically linked to "sea" which makes sense considering the location, but the etymology itself feels a little too hazy imo. If anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear it.
old german sahs (knife,sword) seems to be related to the Chaulken who seem to be the origin tribe of the Sachsen (people who use the Sax).
I love the name of this episode
The sax like the huntig knife and later the Bowie knife were deffence/ last ressort weapons that they will use rarely if ever in their life as a weapon but use everyday as a tool.
The sax was also aneasy to carry statu weapon indicating a free man/ warrior however poor . It did meant respect and honnor as a same time as a utility/ deffence knife.
+scholagladiatoria *The **_Гachs_** was used by the **_Гachſen_** and their neighbor tribes in the Greater German nation.* COLD STEELⓇ, Ventura, CA, USA, perfected a modern interpretation in the 17" OAL Woodsman's Sax (P/N 88HUA).
The modern German state of Saxony is NOT northern Germany. It is actually far eastern Germany nowhere near the NW coast where the Saxons are reputed to have migrated from. I have no doubt that the two names are related but that claim was an error Matt.
From what i know The Vikings used Saex's too.
The "funny" thing is that the danish (Denmark) word for scissor is "Saks" Saks = Saex 🤷♂️? Maybe some sort of connection...?
Yes it's the same word. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes could speak in their own languages and mostly understand each other.
@@scholagladiatoria.. Waow, I didn't know that.
If I didn't even watch the video, I'd have to give a like just for the title.
Under a period in Skandinavia (later vendel era) the larger seaxes (sword sized) replaced the sword it seems. They are fond in warrior graves that do not have swords at all. The swords are mostly found in the very high status graves, together with seaxes. No one really knows why.