The Complete Guide to Viking Battles and Raids Part One: How Did They Fight?
The Vikings are an incredibly misunderstood people. So much so that we use the wrong word to describe them.
To ‘go Viking’ is a verb in Norse that translates to something along the lines of ‘go pirating’. As a result, the people would have probably described themselves simply as ‘Norse’. That said, the Vikings did have warriors and did go raiding, though how and where they fought might be a little different than you’d imagine.
Pop culture would have you believe they were a race of thoughtless barbarians, maliciously pillaging the coast in a crusade of aimless, bloodthirsty violence where no man, woman or child was safe. In reality, their raids were often meticulously planned, and part of a broader strategy of exploration and expansion.
No matter whether you’ve learned about the Vikings on TV, discovered them in books or you’re just looking to learn more about how they lived their lives and battled others, this guide will teach you everything you need to know about how Vikings conducted their battles and raids, including the weapons they used, the armour they wore and popular misconceptions about Viking battles.
What Weapons Did the Vikings Use?
Vikings would use an array of different weaponry. This changed dramatically depending on the context the Viking in question was fighting in. A professional soldier, who knew he would be fighting on land, would turn up to battle with some assortment of spear, sidearm and long knife, almost always accompanied by a shield.
Battlefield soldiers were usually trained to fight in shield wall formations. They used spears to poke through the gaps between shields, which served as a defence against the arrows that would almost certainly be raining down from their opponents.
If you’re looking for a good approximation of what this would have looked like, be sure to check out the Bayeux Tapestry. Whilst it depicts Harold Godwinson leading Saxons against William the Conqueror’s Norman forces, Harold Hardrada’s force of Vikings, fought by Godwinson earlier the same year, would have been similarly armed.
The design and composition of a Viking spear would have varied very little from spears throughout history. Much like the great white shark, the spear is so elegantly simple in its design, it rarely had to evolve. Pointy metal on the end of a long pole is a very effective weapon, no matter the historical period.
The iconic Viking shields were another matter. The average Viking shield would have been round or a slight oblong, wide enough to cover most of the body, with a metal umbo, or boss, in the centre to protect the hand. The shield would also be gripped and manipulated by a handle inside the boss.
A common mistake is to think of shields as purely defensive. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they were used as ramming weapons, with the boss serving as a knuckle duster. They could even be turned sideways so that their rim could be used as a bludgeoning weapon, although this was rarer as it opened the body up to attack.
Should their primary weapon be lost or broken during combat, the Viking soldier would then turn to their sidearm. This would usually be a Viking axe or, far less commonly, a sword. Axes were cheap, easy to produce and readily available. Their use as tools meant they could serve a double purpose, splitting heads or wood with equal ease, which was incredibly useful for saving space on board a ship.
Axes designed for battle usually had smaller, more compact heads, so they could be used more nimbly than those used for splitting wood. Even the heads of the mighty, double-handed Dane axes were not much bigger than an average man’s hand (their average cutting edge was 8-12 inches).
Meanwhile, Viking swords were usually one-handed with a slim guard that offered little in the way of hand protection. They were very rare amongst the ranks of Viking warriors as they were astronomically expensive. A sword required a large amount of high-quality steel and iron to make, often pattern welded together to create a strong, springy core with hardened edges. There were some high-quality swords made that were all steel (like the Ulfberht swords), but these were incredibly rare and would almost certainly have belonged to nobility or kings.
At range, the Vikings would have used bows, usually compact, for storage on a ship, but larger war bows would have been available for use if they were called into battle. These war bows would have been comparable in size to the longbows used by the English in the medieval period, although they would have usually been drawn to the chest rather than the ear.
Finally, as a last resort, Vikings often carried a Seax. These were long, forward-weighted knives, usually without a hand guard. They could vary in size massively depending on what they were intended to be used for. The Seax was the most likely weapon in the Viking arsenal to be used both as a weapon and a tool, even more so than axes. Their applications were incredibly varied, though they would most commonly have served as the equivalent of a dagger on the battlefield, albeit with a greater focus on slashing rather than stabbing. This would have been a last resort due to their comparatively small range, and they would almost certainly have been used in conjunction with a shield or other weapon if possible.
Overall, the variation in Viking weaponry was huge, and made all the more diverse by the breathtaking size of their trade networks. More exotic weaponry was used by the Vikings, but these examples are rarer and usually one-off instances. The Vikings were adaptable and practical in their weapon choice and tactics, which can be seen both in their weapons and armour.
What did Vikings Wear in Battle?
Viking armour would again vary massively depending on the task it was being used for and the time period it was being worn in. We can see, from sources like the Bayeux Tapestry, that the Vikings were wearing chainmail towards the early medieval period and thus probably would have been able to create or buy chain shirts even before their invasion of England from 855 AD to 1066 AD. It’s important to stress here that chainmail wasn’t a new technology. We have examples of chain shirts used as standard issue armour by the Romans before then.
Viking chainmail, known as brynja, was used throughout the Viking world, but, in much the same way as swords, was expensive to make and cumbersome to put on. It also required regular oiling and maintenance to prevent it from rusting, which would have been a nightmare aboard ship. So, whilst Viking soldiers would have had chainmail, full shirts would have been a sign of great wealth and usually reserved for elites and kings. It would also be unusual to see a raider or sailor wearing it due to the space it would take up on a ship and the maintenance it would require.
In general, there’s little evidence that the Vikings bothered much with other types of armour. There are a few surviving pieces of leather armour, although anything made of leather holds out terribly as archaeological evidence. We do have evidence that they used leather for bracers and there is some evidence that a few Vikings wore leather jackets into battle, but for the most part Viking soldiers trusted their round shields to protect them.
Perhaps the most notable exception to this trend is helmets. Whilst still expensive, helmets were smaller and thus required less metal to make. Head protection also didn’t have to be fully made of metal, so costs could be kept down by using other materials. The few remaining pieces we have, such as the Coppergate Helmet in York, show that Viking helmets intended for battle were relatively plain. Adornments and decorations added weight, which was the last thing you wanted attached to your neck in battle.
Helmets and head protection were incredibly important parts of any set of armour, and it would have been unthinkable for a soldier who could afford to protect his head to forego that added safety. Whilst it is a common trend amongst television shows to have a stalwart king leading his troops towards the enemy, his golden locks flowing in the breeze, in reality no king in his right mind would have taken that risk. As can be seen, once again, in the Bayeux Tapestry, even if you were wearing a helmet, you were never totally safe from archers.
The final item of clothing the Vikings were never seen without in battle was good old trusty trousers. The Vikings, much like the Gauls, preferred them long (possibly because they hailed from the north of Europe and bare legs are a terrible idea in those temperatures). Trousers also offered the Vikings a modicum of leg protection, particularly useful when jumping from the splinter-filled side of a boat. In addition, they would also have had access to strong leather boots.
The dress code of piratical raiding Vikings and professional Norse soldiery would have been very different but is held together by a few key things. Both would have carried shields and (if they could afford them) helmets. The elite or wealthy soldiers would have worn chainmail, but both could easily have worn cloth or leather and used their round shield as their main defensive tool. The axe was the most common sidearm, with swords an expensive status symbol and spears a common weapon mainly on battlefield troops rather than raiders.
The variation in different types of Viking weapons and armour hide more than a few interesting little quirks in their history.
Interesting Facts (and Misconceptions) about Viking Weapons and Armour
The first thing that nearly everybody knows these days is that Vikings never had horns in their helmets. It would have been ludicrous to walk into combat wearing something that guided blows into the centre of your head.
Less commonly known is where that myth is believed to come from. There are a variety of different potential sources. For example, some ceremonial Bronze Age helmets had horns on them. Similarly, Vikings are also depicted with horns in Medieval illuminated manuscripts due to them being seen as agents of the devil by the church.
One thing we do know is that the greatest force for popularising the idea came from a costume designer called Carl Emil Doepler, who made horned helmets for the 1876 Bayreuth production of Wagner’s ‘The Ring Cycle’, the same opera that ‘Flight of the Valkyries’ comes from.
Before long, everyone started to believe Vikings had horns in their helmets, including Victorian historians, who had developed a real habit of just making stuff up by this point. They loved the dramatic idea of Vikings as fierce warriors and merciless raiders and did their best to make sure that was all we thought of them.
Despite this reputation, the Vikings were mostly farmers and traders. Thus, most of their arms and armour were designed for use by their raiding parties on board ships or to be easily portable. Shields were often deployed along the outside of ships to act as a guard against arrows during ship-to-ship combat. Viking clothes and armour were designed to protect them both from Northern European temperatures and the cold and wet of the open sea. Most weapons were designed to serve a dual purpose to save space.
This practical approach to seafaring meant that the Viking trade network could stretch from Newfoundland on the shores of modern-day Canada, all the way out to the east. Russia takes its name from the Viking Rus tribe, and the steel that was used to forge the Ulfberht swords is believed to have been forged in Central Asia. Viking armour and weaponry could come from all over the world.
The supply of quality iron and steel from this trade network caused the extinction of one of their most mechanically interesting and aesthetically pleasing weapon-making techniques, pattern welding. Born out of a necessity caused by a supply of impure iron and brittle steel, this technique seeks to solve a problem similar to that suffered by Japanese sword makers.
The idea was to combine the two metals together to create a more durable sword. Where Japanese sword makers folded their iron repeatedly in layers, Viking swordsmiths effectively wove rods of the metal together into a braid, which they then hammered out flat. This combined the steel and iron to create the beautiful wave-like patterns you can usually see on the steel of Viking swords. This practice produced the sharpest and most durable swords until their trade network began to deliver higher-quality steel into their hands. It gradually fell out of favour and use until history left it behind.
That’s everything you need to know about the Vikings and how they prepared for battles and raids, as well as some popular misconceptions and urban myths that have prevailed over the years. Got an interesting fact about Viking history and weaponry? Let us know in the comments below. Plus, be sure to keep an eye out for the second part of our Complete Guide to Viking Battles and Raids series, where we examine their raids in Britain and beyond.
