Seaxes and skalms: Single-edged weapon in the Old Icelandic texts

Abstract

The article examines the problem of the use in combat conditions and classification of single-edged short-bladed weapons of the Germanic and neighboring peoples of Europe in the early Middle Ages — combat knives seaxes. The authors consider the numerous existing archaeological finds in the context of terms used in modern Scandinavian languages, and also turn to the analysis of options for using the terms “seax” and “skalm” in archaic texts. A contextual analysis of the use of these terms in the poetic texts of songs from the Elder Edda and the prose of Icelandic sagas belonging to various subtypes is presented. According to the authors, the term “skalm” had a very specific purpose and fell out of everyday use — as a designation for a real type of weapon — long before the Viking Age. In the texts describing the Viking Age, it is not people who are consistently armed with skalms, but the dark and negative characters opposing them — trolls, jotuns, etc. However, in the heroic epic tradition, skalms, on the contrary, are used by heroes; It was the skalms that became part of the poetic formulas describing the equipment of the heroes of the epic. There is reason to believe that this term comes from ancient times and by the Viking Age it became an anachronism, acquiring new connotations and negative meaning.