Definition of a seax?

[Kenon Rain.]

yea, what defines a seax from another euro style sword? I've seen some that were knife length, chisle point, recurve, swords, curved handle, straight handle, straight blade, ect... really no consistincay other than the name so ya, what the heck?

I'de like to make one, but I guess I have to know what it is first..

 

thanks guys!

[David D.]

Wiki has an ok definition of a seax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seax

 

and MyArmoury.com a pretty good article: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_seax.html

 

The other thing to keep in mind is that there are so many different types of Seax's/Sax's

 

From early migration ones with a banana shaped handle, and later medieval ones with sharp angled geometric blade shapes.

 

 

I personally am no expert by any means!... so I won’t try to define it myself. I just know they come in many shapes and sizes and share a similar blade look throughout history.

 

Hope any of that helps!

 

Dave D.

Edited January 13, 2008 by David D3

[Adlai Stein]

Seax simply means knife in Germanic/Anglo-Saxon. We refer to it as a Viking style when in reality it's a lot more than that. A seax is a single edged blade with no guard which generally looks like the pre-cursor to a bowie or sever drop point. Also Look both here in the history section and in the design forums and you'll find many good discussions on the subject. Jeron's zip file really has some great pics.

[Richard Furrer]

Seax simply means knife in Germanic/Anglo-Saxon. We refer to it as a Viking style when in reality it's a lot more than that. A seax is a single edged blade with no guard which generally looks like the pre-cursor to a bowie or sever drop point. Also Look both here in the history section and in the design forums and you'll find many good discussions on the subject. Jeron's zip file really has some great pics.

 

Adlai,

Could you post a like to that zip file?

 

I made a study of seax some years ago and the further back you go (pre 10th cent) the more they look like kitchen knives...which makes a bit of sence really as they were used for daily tasks as well as other things. I have seen many small versions in the 4-9" range which rarely get photographed as they are "common" and therefore not spectacular enough to make it in the books. What we often see are the rare shapes or gold/silver inlayed pieces which were not too common, but look good in a book.

I would like to see more handles on these things, but not many are known to have survived...if you find some please post images.

 

Ric

[Adlai Stein]

Ric Here it is.

http://1501bc.com/files/information_about_saxes.zip

[Kenon Rain.]

cool, i think i get it now.. it really is just a broad term, like "knife" in english.. it has a few characteristics that define it, but other than that its an open playing feild for design.

 

thanks guys, I was just staring at my bar of 1-3/4 x 1/4 5ft bar of 5160 and was "inspired" so maybe I'll either have a sax or some other euro style blade hammered out here soon...

thanks again!

-Kenon

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Seax simply means knife in Germanic/Anglo-Saxon.

Even scissors were called saxes. Personally I call something a sax if archeologists call it a sax, otherwise I call it a knife

[GEzell]

http://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?showtopic=8954

http://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?showtopic=8901

These are two recent topics with alot of good information, and a site search came up with alot more. Myarmoury and swordforum have some good threads to dig through. Sax have very characteristic shapes and details that change according to time and region, along with the whim of the makers and commissioners. Very few have survived with handles intact, or even handle remains, so the exact handle shape and construction is only hinted at for most forms.

[Adlai Stein]

Even scissors were called saxes. Personally I call something a sax if archeologists call it a sax, otherwise I call it a knife

 

Jeroen,

I agree but my point was to demonstrate the broadness of the term, since the range of shapes seemed to be part of Kenon's dilema. Once that was said I went on to describe it in what I think of as a seax.

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Jeroen,

I agree but my point was to demonstrate the broadness of the term, since the range of shapes seemed to be part of Kenon's dilema. Once that was said I went on to describe it in what I think of as a seax.

I know, but the problem is that there is such a huge variety, that it's impossible to make a general description based on shape and construction. For any description, there will be exceptions which are also saxes. What makes it even more difficult, is that despite the large variety, they are all very specific designs. You can think up a thousand random large knive designs, and none will look anything like a sax. Therefore it's easier to refer to specific typologies instead, which are more constant, such as f.e. the heavy broadsax. The term sax is just to general IMO, like the term spatha.

[Jeff Pringle]

Would you believe people have been trying to figure this out since 1963?

Seitz, Heribert. Saxvapnens nomenklatur och dess förutsättningar.

(English at the end for you Swedish-challenged folk )

....By way of summary it can probably be stated that no tenable and

authentic distinction, as regards typology, between sax and scramasax would

seem to exist in the primary written sources and that there is no such contemporary

description as would make it possible to demonstrate a correspondence

between these words and certain types of weapon. The terminology

now employed may more or less be considered to have arisen through

custom. According to Valter Jansson, even the actual basis of the accepted

characteristic, i.e. that the blade shall be single-edged, can be questioned.

[J.Arthur Loose]

A Sax is like pornography; you know it when you see it.

[Christopher Price]

I was able to download that .zip at work, but at home it keeps bombing out on me after a few minutes... and I have DSL, and have done 60MB downloads before. Anyone know why this might be?

[Beau Erwin]

I've tried to download it a few times too.

Afterwards I try to open it and it said there was an unexpected end of archive, so I must be getting the same as you Chris, as I don't think mine is finishing either.

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

I've tried to download it a few times too.

Afterwards I try to open it and it said there was an unexpected end of archive, so I must be getting the same as you Chris, as I don't think mine is finishing either.

It might be an overload of the network at the server. I have similar problems with uploading. Perhaps one of those download programs (like Download Accelerator Plus), might help, which can continue if the connection is broken?

[GEzell]

I tried downloading it this morning with no problems... I'm using DSL with Firefox.

[rwaite]

It downloaded for me too, and is well worth the effort! Thanks very much for posting that.

 

Rob

[GEzell]

yea, what defines a seax from another euro style sword? I've seen some that were knife length, chisle point, recurve, swords, curved handle, straight handle, straight blade, ect... really no consistincay other than the name so ya, what the heck?

I'de like to make one, but I guess I have to know what it is first..

 

thanks guys!

What the heck, here's my definition.

A sax is a knife in the style of the blades made from around 400AD until about 1100AD in northern Europe. These could range from just a few inches long up to 3 feet plus, but the smaller end of the scale is usually referred to as women's knives, or just knives, and I tend to consider the sax a fighting blade, so the smallest ones don't quite make the list. The biggest ones could be called swords, but were constructed differently than the double-edged swords of the day, with no or minimal metal hilt components. The exception to this is the sax evolution in Norway and Sweden, where it does evolve into a true sword with fittings just like the ones used on double-edged swords. However, these are just referred to as single edged swords, not saxes. So lets call anything longer than 10" with a single edge, not mounted like a sword, and with a servicable point a sax.

 

Then, there are different styles of sax from differing times and regions. The first style is the Frankish, from which the other types seem to have developed. The Frankish sax is characterised by near symmetry in outline, the edge and back curving to meet one another near the centerline of the blade. These are the rare type that on occasion has metal fittings, in the form of a simple guard and buttcap. The guards are typically oval or tear-drop shaped, and the buttcaps are often, but not at all always, 2 piece construction not unlike the swords of the time, but smaller, and simpler. There seem to be a few different variations to this basic type, but I haven't quite nailed them down yet.

 

Then there is the Norwegian sax. These tend to have a straight back, with the edge curving up to meet it. Most are either knife sized or sword sized, with very few falling into the middle lengths. These are the ones that eventually became full fledged swords with fittings just like the double edged swords. I also believe these are the ones that evolved into the modern pukko.

 

Then there is the brokenback style, the one most of us are familiar with. These seem to have been restricted to Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, for the most part. With these the edge is mostly straight, with a curving or 'breaking' back that meets the edge below the centerline of the blade. Often the blade widens to some extent, then becomes narrower towards the handle, but these are further divided into thier own catagory by most. To the best of my knowledge, none of these have been found with metal fittings, at least not sword fittings (the sax attributed to Charlemange is the only one I know of with the handle intact, and it has a silver or bronze cap/ferrel over the end of the handle). These often look alot like a guardless, riccaso-less bowie knife, with no sign of a false edge. They run the full size range, from just over 3" long to over 3 feet in length.

 

Many sax have very long tangs, and on the Frankish style we see pienned ends indicating some tended to have very long handles indeed. This is very different than the 2-edged swords of the same time period, which had decidedly short handles. I suspect a very different fighting style was used with the saxes that may very well have involved 2-handed use, but there's no way to really know why they were made so differently than swords. It might be interesting to note that it did not seem to be because of economics, because we have very highly decorated sax blades with no signs of metal fittings, either. Bone is the most commonly surviving handle material. Bone and antler seem to survive the years much better than wood or horn, but just because we have several with surviving bone handles does not indicate bone was the most common material used. It just indicates it survives better than most other organic materials. I suspect wood was by far the most common material used for handles. I've yet to see one with surviving antler handles, and antler survives well, so I suspect it was used rarely if at all. Full tangs were very rare but not unheard of.

 

Saxes were almost always flat ground to the back of the blade. I've heard rumor of saber grinds, but have been unable to track them down so far. Slight convexing can be seen in some cases. They are often quite thick at the back, slightly over 3/8ths" in at least one case. Distal taper was, as far as I know, an alien concept to the sax makers, although it is seen on 2-edged swords from the same time period (yet again, a very different design philosophy was going on between swords and sax). I've yet to see a single double-edged blade under 2 foot in length from this time period. Apparently 2 edges were reserved for swords and spears exclusively.

 

That's all I've got.

[J.Arthur Loose]

The exception to this is the sax evolution in Norway and Sweden, where it does evolve into a true sword with fittings just like the ones used on double-edged swords. However, these are just referred to as single edged swords, not saxes. So lets call anything longer than 10" with a single edge, not mounted like a sword, and with a servicable point a sax.

 

Nai... gotta disagree since the final "langsax," is the one with the same fittings as the usual two-edged, fullered sword.

 

Here's a pretty decent generalized breakdown: "FROM RAPIER TO LANGSAX, Sword Structure in the British Isles in the Bronze and Iron Ages."

by Niko Silvester, Vikingsword.com: http://www.vikingsword.com/smithy/seax.html

 

"Another kind of sword, perhaps better described as a long knife, was the scramasax [also called sax, or seax]. The term 'scramasax' has generally been used to refer to the whole class of single-edged swords, but these can actually be divided up into "sax (short sword), langsax (one-edged long sword), and scramasax (dagger)" [Davidson 1962:40]."

 

Although, for sure, there's no solid rule of thumb.

[Doug Lester]

I think what we have here is a problem with the impresice nature of language. Granted, languages are pretty uniform and convey meaning quite well, however, it varies from time and place. If I say the work "knife", which is what seax or sax translates as, the picture in my mind is probably diffenent to to picture that you form in your mind related to that word. For the most part, the picture in my mind and in your mind are close enough in detail that we can agree that both are knives. Now we introduce place and time. Four or five hundred years ago in German speaking countries we run into the grossemesser and the kriegsmesser which translate into big knife and war knife. Just about anyone now who looks at these weapons, however, would consider them to be swords but at the time they were used they were knives and different things than swords.

 

If we could go back to the 9th or 10th century Norway we could no doubt find someone who could explain why a weapon with a 30 inch single edge blade and a sword hilt is called a seax and could also give us the lowdown on how the various sizes and styles of seax broke down linguistically but we can't do that and these fine linguistic distintions are lost to us. The result, confusion and arguements as to what bladed instruments fall under the word "seax".

 

Doug Lester

Edited February 10, 2008 by Doug Lester

[Al Massey]

I believe Adlai has it right. Just like to us the word "Kilic" or ""kilij" means a specific style of Turkish sabre, to the Turks it's just their generic word for sword. (Learned that in the Topkapi museum.) Or the Chinese Dao or Do- to most martial arts practicioners it means specifically the Chinese single-edged sword but it refers to any single-edged blade, knife or sword- in fact the legendary halberd, the Kwando, literally means "Knife of General Kwan".

[Beau Erwin]

Still can't ever download that sax file.

Anyone able to upload it to one of those sites where it could be downloaded...like Rapidshare or something to that effect.

I'd like to look through the files.

[Adlai Stein]

Hey Beau,

PM me your snail mail addy and I'll burn it to CD for you.

[Jeff Pringle]

Check out this sax from Viking period Birka:

http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/include_i....asp?uid=301348

http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/include_i....asp?uid=301349