THE VIKING SEAX by Tyr Neilsen

The Viking Seax is a rugged sharp edged weapon that was commonly used in the Viking Age. According to the Icelandic Sagas, this was weapon that ranged from long knife to short sword.  Seax is an Old English word for "knife" and in Old Norse the name Sax referred to a cutting tool.

Often called “Viking knife”, “Viking hunting knife”, “Viking fighting knife” and “Viking war knife”, the Viking seax was a mean, one-handed, single edged cutting weapon. It had no crossguard and was often simply made, with hilts of wood, bone or horn and simple fittings.

The Viking seax's sharp tipped blade ranged in length from 30 to 70 cm (12 – 28 in), was usually about 8mm thick (0.3 in). It had one very sharp edge to its blade, and a thick, solid, blunt edge (or back). Some of these blunt edges were slightly curved, or were straight for the most part, then angled towards the tip. This type of seax was often called a broken-back seax. Other seax blades have a mild curve to the point on both sides of the blade.

The Viking seax is usually carried in a sheath, or scabbard, that hangs at a slight angle, horizontally from a belt. This angle prevents the seax from sliding accidentally out of the scabbard. It is carried mostly sharp edge up, so that the blade doesn’t cut through the scabbard. 

Depending on its length, the Viking seax is referred to by historians as seax, short seax, narrow seax, scramseax, höggsax, handseax, broad seax, light broad seax, heavy broad seax, narrow long seax and long seax.  

The shortest seax is called simply seax or short seax. The narrow seax has a longer narrow blade. The scramseax or scramsax means "wounding-knife". The höggsax means chopping seax and handseax simply means hand-seax. The light broad seax has a larger blade, and the heavy broad seax has an even broader, longer and heavier blade.

The narrow long seax has a long, narrow blade, and looks like a short sword. A long seax blade is 50 cm and over and looks like a sword. Sometimes a long seax has fullers, grooves, pattern welded blades, and even inlays of brass, copper or silver.

Top: Long Seax with rune decorated blade - Second row: Undecorated seax and seax with decorated grip - Third row: Seax with Oseberg dragon style grip and small seax - Bottom: Unfinshed Viking seax

In peacetime, the Viking seax was as an everyday machete-like tool that was useful in the forest, wood working, farm-work, hunting, skinning wild animals and preparation of food. In a time of conflict or war, the Viking seax was a rugged and deadly weapon that served well in combat and on the battlefield.

According to the Icelandic Sagas, some Vikings even preferred the seax over a sword for fighting.