THE AXES OF THE VARANGIANS

. . . were cricket-bat size

by Michael O’Rourke
Canberra, Australia.
September 2009.
mjor (at) velocitynet (dot) com (dot) au

This short article deals with the Varangians’ emblematic

weapon, the two-handed axe. The key point we make is that
fighting axes were medium length and lightweight rather than
long and heavy. The axe-head was about the same breadth
(width and height) as that of a present-day wood-chopping axe,
but distinctly thinner, as it was designed to cleave human flesh
and bones.

The Varangian Guard - Greek βαραγγοι or Varangoi* - was the elite heavy infantry
regiment of the Roman (‘Byzantine’) Empire from AD 988 through to around AD 1404.
Their distinctive weapon, mentioned, for example, by Psellus, fl. AD 1067; Anna
Comnena, fl. 1133; and Kinnamos, fl. 1180 was the axe (Parani p.136).
Originally recruited from the Rus’, the ethnic Scandinavian peoples living in what is
now Russia and the Ukraine, by the 1200s or earlier the Varangians were nearly all
Englishmen: ‘Anglo-Varangians’, Greek Engklinobarangoi (Bartusis pp. 273, 275). For
several centuries the Varangians served as both palace guards and field troops who fought
in expeditionary armies; later they became the household guards of the emperor in
Constantinople and no longer went out on campaign.

(*) In medieval and modern Greek, the sound “v” is rendered using the letter beta (β). Cf
Gk basileus, ‘sovereign, emperor’: pronounced “vasilefs”.

Describing the 1081 Battle of Dyrrakhion, the Italo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey

Malaterra (III.17) says that the elite infantry on the Byzantine side were “Angli vero,
quos Waringos appelant” – “Englishmen in fact, who they call Varingians [sic]” – and
they carried “caudatis bipennibus”, i.e. axes.
J France, p.70, notes, citing William of Poitiers and the Bayeaux Tapestry, that the
effectiveness of the Anglo-Scandinavian two-handed axe had been well displayed at the
Battle of Hastings in 1066. One account of Hastings describes many horses being nearly
cloven in two by the English axes. Specifically, William says that the axes were “easily
able to cut a way through [penetrate without difficulty] shields or other [pieces of]
armour [defences]” (s. 118: quoted in Morillo p.222; wording from several alternative

1
translations).

In Malaterra the wording means literally ‘having battle-axes with long-handles’.** Latin:
bipennis, ‘battle axe’, so bipennibus ‘with axes’ + cauda ‘tail’, ‘end’, ‘handle’, so
caudatis, ‘tailed’ or ‘handled’. In Greek ‘axe’ is pelekus or pelekys; hence the familiar
phrases for the Varangian Guard: pelekyphoros phroura, ‘the axe-bearing guard’, and
pelekyphoroi, ‘axe-bearers’ (Bartusis loc. cit.).

(**) Perhaps better: ‘medium-long’, the haft being around 100 cm in length. For
comparison, Viking Age swords were around 95 cm long or less (80 cm in the case of
Oakeshott’s Type X: Peirce et al. 2004), while today’s regulation cricket bat can be no
longer than 96.5 cm or 38 inches.

On the Bayeux tapestry, ca. 1075, the axes of the English are consistently depicted as
about half the height of a man or a little more, which if we allow for the shorter stature of
medieval men, may translate to 70-80 cm. On the other hand, a possibly Byzantine ivory
from around AD 1,000 in the Schnütgen Museum, Cologne, shows an axe as tall as a
man: say 175 cm; but this seems much too big.
Nicolle, cited by D’Amato p. 42, proposes that Varangian axes were somewhat longer
than implied by the Bayeux Tapestry: about 120-140 cm.
According to Bachrach, the haft of the Danish axe is generally agreed by
archaeologists to have been approximately “42 inches” (3 ft 6 inches: 3.5 feet) or 107 cm
in length, which happens to be the same as the maximum allowed length of a modern
baseball bat.
Compared to a modern wood-splitting axe, Viking and Varangian battle axes were
light and thin-bladed, as they were designed to cut bones and flesh, not hardwood.
Various websites (2009) assert that medieval Danish axe-blades could be as thin as 2 mm,
which seems quite unlikely: at home, my own favourite meat-cleaver, quite slender, is 5
mm thick. In any event the axes of the Varangians were not heavy, sledgehammer-like
slamming-wedges but relatively delicate and powerful choppers. We perhaps should think
of them as long-handled meat-cleavers!
The US Forestry Service Ax Manual notes that the single-bit felling ax, or ‘American
ax’, weighs from 3 to 6 pounds or around 2 kg; but at 32 inches it is distinctly shorter
than the medieval Danish axe. For comparison, one modern reproduction of a 42-inch
long Danish axe weighs just 1.73 kg (or 3 lbs 13 oz: MyArmoury website). Cf discussion
at the Hurstwic Group website, and in Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Danish axe’ and ‘Battle
axe’. This was somewhat heavier than cricket bats which can weigh up to 1.36 kg.
D’Amato, p. 42, proposes that the Varangian axe-head was about 18 cm (seven inches)
wide from back to blade, and about 17 cm high, which is to say from point to point across
the blade. The Hurstwic Group concurs, saying that the cutting edge was 15-22 cm or 6-9
inches long. For comparison, Australian axes (“racing axes”) used in the sport of
woodchopping are likewise 16-18 cm wide at the blade-edge.

* * *

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References

Bernard Bachrach, ‘Caballus et Caballarius in Medieval Warfare’, 1988, republished at

http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/bachrach3.htm: for the size of axes he cites
R. E. Oakeshott, The Archaeology of Weapons. New York, 1969, pp. 154, 177-78; T.
Wise, 1066: Year of Destiny, London, 1979, pp. 59-60, 80-82; R. E. Oakeshott, A Knight
and His Weapons, London, 1964, pp. 37-39; and J. Mann, "Arms and Armour," The
Bayeux Tapestry, ed. F. M. Stenton et al. London, 1957, p. 66.

Mark Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society 1210-1453, University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Raffaele D’Amato, A Prôtospatharios, Magistros, and Strategos Autokrator of 11th cent.,

a monograph on the equipment of Maniakes and his army in 1038-43, at
www.porphyra.it/supplemento4.pdf. Published 2005; accessed 2009.

Hurstwic Group: ‘The Viking Axe’: accessed 2009, at

http://www.valhs.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_axe.htm.

John France, ‘Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade’, Reading Medieval
Studies v. 10 (1984).

Stephen Morillo, The Battle of Hastings: sources and interpretations, Boydell Press,
1996.

MyArmoury: at http://www.myarmoury.com/review_em_beardaxe.html; accessed 2009.

David Nicolle, Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050-1350, 2 vols., New York:
Kraus International Publications, 1988; repr. London, 1999.

Maria G. Parani, Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and
Religious Iconography, 11th - 15th Centuries, Brill, 2003.

Ian G. Peirce & Ewart Oakeshott, Swords of the Viking Age, Boydell Press, 2004.

US Forestry Service Ax Manual, 2009:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/Fspubs/99232823/page06.htm#fel).

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