"Saxon Swords" Topic

Can't seem to get an answer for this from my books. How many 9th century Saxons would carry swords? Going by most sources very few. But I'm working on the basis of modern writers such as Ryan Lavelle and Paul Hill who reject the Great Fyrd – Select Fyrd division and state that armies were primarily made up of Thegns (with possibly a few followers each) who would have been reasonably well armed, rather than lots of ill armed levies. A lot is made in the literature of the expense and rarity of pattern welded blades, which I'm sure is true. But little is mentioned of less good blades. Harrison in Osprey 'Anglo Saxon Thegn' mentions that 'less elaborate blades' could be built up in methods dating from the iron age, suggesting that not all swords were worth the price of a Porsche, or whatever comparisons have been drawn.

So, how many of my Saxon minis could carry swords? ( I know its for Saga but I still like to be accurate….)

Well from the anglo saxon chronicles we can draw that early Saxons carried lots of swords based on battle descriptions. But then again, it was essentially a book about how awesome the christianized Saxons were, after abandoning their heathen roots.
They got the name "Saxon" because of the tribal seax, a large knife that virtually every angle, Saxon, and jute carried…. I stress THIS IS NOT A SWORD.
looking further back to Tacitus, we see that very few Germans had swords at all, most if not all had javelins and spears.
This may also be a generalization to make the Germans look more barbaric.
hope this helped

well they called it a saxknife but it was as long and heaver then a sword.

link

That is very simple…
Every warrior had his own sword of different quaility. These swords were the most precions property of the person and handeld very carefully. But the real question is how many participants of an army are not warriors. The levies would only get a sword lent if they are dependiable and enough swords were in stock.

Even in the 6th century all warriors had swords.

The equipment for a adolecent was a long knife (sax) and a bow for hunting. A adult had a knife, axe for wood chopping and serveral Ger ( javelin for boar and deer) hunting. A Herr (master of warrior) had also a sword and serval axes and shields and very often a horse and a "Bruenne" of Chainmail.

The status was indicated by the trousers. Adolecent had short trousers and adults have long trousers. This tradition is already documented before Tacitus. It is resonable to belive that all German tribes had trousers and that the reports of naked babarians was just propaganda. The same propaganda as that they were bad equiped.

Please visit the Roman-Germanic central Museum in Mainz or the Landesmuseum of Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle an der Saale.

Greetings

Ignore my last post I see it's for a later period my mistake.

Thanks for responses so far – perhaps I should have specified 'Anglo Saxon' rather than native Saxon…

Much here would depend upon what type of force you are portraying with your miniatures,

Clearly a sword was high value high status object, which only the wealthiest would own, but then it's doubtful your miniatures are portraying peasant farmers, So saying significantly less than 1% of the total population doesn't necessarily narrow it down in terms of your miniatures.

Across a large army then the majority would probably have no armour and little more than spear and shield. In a royal body guard then it would probably be mail, helmets and swords all round. Also the term Anglo Saxon covers a good few hundred years of history over which metal working technology and access to iron and steel improved considerably. In the 9th century you mention my feeling is that swords would still be rare and that it would be another one or two centuries before they were common enough to hand out to a significant percentage of fighting men.

Beyond that archaeology and history really don't give much that could be interpreted as reliable evidence of what was common or normal, all we have is lots of individual bits of evidence of what has survived which we try to put into some sort of context without really knowing all that's been lost or why certain things have survived, information which would be needed to illustrate whether what has survived is in anyway representative of the normal or the rare.

Well its the usual sort of arms distribution good stuff for the elite then less good for retainers to a pointed stick for the lower orders.
If your portraying a Chieftain and his hirdmen then 100% of them would have swords probably. As the unit size gets bigger then the proportion of swords will decline as less wealthy/professional types join..
L

Leon has it right in my view.

My understanding of the English post the rise of Wessex is a very unequal society with resources pouring into the highly militarised elite.

Thegns and retainers in the 9th century would be very good, highly motivated and well equipped troops all of whom would have a sword. Just the boys for offensive action or a stubborn defence.

Once you get to the free farmers its pointy sticks with maybe swords for the lucky few. They would be happier holding a Burgh but could take the field at a push.

Below that there probably was not any military potential fit for the battle field.

A sax is a pretty nice implement for close combat if you don't have a sword. The bulk of "armies" likely were armed with shields, spears and sax.

Spearheads are very quick and easy to crank out in a forge, swords not so much.

Estimates of the armies produced by selective Fyrd service in 1066 give around 14,000 men. we might add a couple of thousand hearthtroops ofv the major nobles. An A/S chronicle item for Ethelred's wars speaks of an order to producec 10,000 mailcoats. That strikes me as a Society that has a very small proportion of its males that were expected to be available in full kit.
I would expect all of the Select, five hide, men to have swords.

There is also a Great Fyrd concept. If five peasant households are theoretically expected to club together to equip one man well then that implies that the other four families also have duty upon them. Of course I know cits not as simple as one family in five, but the idea of shared burden is the key item.
One family of three brothers split their father's land and held the military burden in sequence, if A could not come them B would. I'd rather expect that, if the hit the fan locally, A,B and C could all turn up.
Similarly there is the duty to repair and garrison burns. If not some forem of universal free male duty then what is the compulsion to turn up and garrison a town, similarly what right has the king to demand that a man rows or crews a boat on his behalf?
So, whatever modern revisionists say there is a concept of all free men owing a duty to serve. When they do few would have expensive swords, they would carry two or more spears. On the Bayeux tapestry a bundle of javelins is shown and Harold's conversion of his men to light infantry in Wales in 1063 clearly involves equipping with javelins rather than axes.

So a ninth century Saxon army will have a core of the king's or earl's household, then the select troops, often thegns and then backing bthem up local free men with spear and javelin.
The king's and earl's chaps might form separate units, as might the thegns from outside the immediate area, but it is inherently likely that the locals who fought as part of a 'Great Fyrd' obligation would be fronted by their selected men/thegns. Some of these would provide archers and slingers.

When the army played away it was an all mounted force so only the sect men and kings men would go, plus their servants. Thus they would have mostly men with swords.
Roy

Their presence in Scandinavian graves runs at about 10% of warrior burials (the rest having the ubiquitous spear). I think a smaller sample of Danish warrior burials had a frequency of around 20%.

Everything suggests that swords are rare prestige items carried by high status warriors, whilst the rest had a knife (which could still be a substantial thing – think a good farmer's tool rather than something for eating with) and a spear.

I just don't buy this Great Fyrd / Select Fyrd difference. There was just "the Fyrd" or levy which as has been stated above called on roughly one equipped warrior from every 5 hides (varying greatly from shire to shire). These are not peasants given a spear and told to wave it at the enemy. They are a tough semi-professional army which regularly beat the Vikings. It doesn't seem conceivable to me that the military obligation would be passed from individual to individual on a rota. One man would be the designated warrior, and he would hone his skills with each call-out of the Fyrd. His equipment and victuals were provided by the 5 hide unit – it was his "career" and he would be well versed in the art of war.
Ethelraed did not fashion a vast kingdom or Edgar subjugate all the others on this island with an army of bumpkins!

Read the A-S Chronicle – despite having the advantage of surprise and an army already concentrated and ready for battle, how many times did Viking raids end up with them besieged in their camp and having to give hostages?

A-S England was very rich – that was why the Vikings came. To think that such a society could not produce swords to equip its army is bizarre. Yes, the finest blades were in the hands of the nobility, but are we seriously arguing that such a society was less advanced than the Gauls that faced Caesar or the Spanish that faced Scipio Africanus. Very, very few examples of a gladius exist – do we believe that the Romans had no swords?

As regards forming up for battle – it seems obvious that the best equipped would form the front ranks and the least well equipped the rear. All were free men. No military obligation fell on slaves. A thegn was no more than a rich ceorl.

The less well equipped warriors at Hastings were whoever could be gathered to fight from the surrounding shire/shires. Harold did not have time to call all the southern Fyrd to him before giving battle, so he fought with those who rode down with him from Stamford Bridge and those he could gather on the way.

If he had waited to rendezvous with all the southern Fyrd, Hastings would certainly have ended differently.

Even reading things like Beowulf, and egil's saga, we see Saxons using swords. But only nobles, or excellent warriors would have the privelage of swords.
As stated above, they would form the front ranks, and then your standard levy with their spears and javelins would form the back ranks, then your peasants with farm tools would form the very back.

I would say that about 1 in 15 men would have swords like true straight swords. Then 1 in 5 should have spears or a sax.

This is just my opinion based on battle descriptions from the Anglo Saxon chronicles, egil's saga, Beowulf, and other minor sagas relating to the Anglo Saxons.
so here is the conclusion I draw: early invasion heathen Saxons used 75% spears and other tools 20% swords 5% bows and special cavalry etc

Middle Saxons 50% spears 40% swords 10% bows and cavalry etc.

Late Saxons 45% swords 45% spears 10% bows cavalry etc.

The trend of swords elevates as the wealth of the Saxons elevates.

Just my conclusions.
I'm probably a little off on my numbers.

Bretwalda, I worry that you are setting up your own straw man when you say that you don't buy the idea of a Great Fyrd and then proceed to tell us that 'these are not peasants'. They are often peasants, but peasants who owe a military duty. To be called for sevice you would have to be be pretty well off, they arepeasants in the same way that English longbowmen are in the 14th century.
Given that England, which was much larger and richer than say Denmark, could not hold off Viking conquest in the early eleventh century and struggled against the ninth century invasions there is a point in querying how good the English forces were
That aside the argument for a two stage fyrd is :
There was once an obligation to serve on all free men.
As more professional armies are required there is a move to selective service that provides fewer but better equipped and probably mounted men
All free men have obligations to the king to provide services on bridges, roads and importantly the building and manning of burh forts.

Alfred's strategy looks to be that personal service and selectivevservicecwill provide him with a mobile army. Meanwhile those free men not called up selectively will still be guarding the forts. That, to me, is an example of 'Great Fyrd' . It is a short step from there to seeing the Great Fyrd as turning up at battles which are on their own turf . Who at Hastings are the A/S archers and the men shown with stones tied to shafts that they fling over the Saxon line into the Normans? Who at Hastings are the Saxons with spear and shield but no armour. If these are Members of the Select Fyrd then they are singularly poorly equipped.

As to the Great Fyrd packing in at the back of the line. That has a logic, but makes more sens if they do this with the Select Fyrd that come from their area because these are the people that they know. The implications for a wargame are that the A/S have three qualities of unit; the hearth troops of kings and earls, the Select Fyrd that have travelled some distance and the local Selct Fyrd backed by local free men who have turned up. Like you, I
think that complete units of less we equipped and trained men would be a weak point in the line so I cannot see them in the front line without being tipped with better men.
Whilst five hide select service was not done on a rota basis the evidence that we have is that arrangements were made that if person A could not attend then person B would come to the host and, if not B then C would set off to join the army.
Actually it is just logical that the system would provide replacements for dead , wounded, sick or absent soldiers because the king was owed attendance by one man from every five hides. That in itself argues for an active obligation on all free men.

The 'Army of Thegns ' concept is interesting. It begs the question of what basis the Thegns serve under? I are they turning up because they are the sworn men or do they serve for land that they hold? The relationship appears to be land based. Perhaps it was originally personal as the original 'invaders' conquered territory and allocated land to leaders and followers., but in the end it becomes a matter of service for land. Then the king becomes selective because the area of land and population controlled has grown and he needs quality rather than numbers. As the richest men with most military experience the Thegns are best placed to become those who perform selective service, but it is a moot point as to whether being a Thegns automatically makes you liable for service,

Interesting debate, gentlemen. I've just going by what I take to be up to date credible explanations of this issue. Paul Hill in ‘The Anglo Saxons at War' (2012) says this:
'…the nature of recruitment on the eve of the Viking invasions at the end of the eighth century was fairly straightforward. The armies of Anglo-Saxon England ranged from small warbands of local thegns to larger more territorial units commanded by earldormen…Above this was the royal host called out by the king himself which in effect was made up of numerous groups of thegns, earldormen and their retinues. All of the constituent parts of these forces came to the battlefield through the duties imposed upon them by lordship ties bound by a mixture of gift giving and land tenure'.
This suggests a reasonably well equipped bunch. Maybe the ‘warbands' of the local thegns would not all have had armour or swords, but better off thegns would?

My other query was whether pattern welded swords were the only type used and whether cheaper swords were available to less wealthy thegns and their followers. Bretwalda, you make a good point about the technology and the fact that non pattern welded swords had been made for centuries. Presumably there is no archaeological evidence of this kind of blade from the Saxon period, which is why it is believed that the only swords were deluxe, high status weapons? I suppose this could be correct in that a sword went with wealth and there was no point trying to use a cheaply made blade against a man with a better made sword…but perhaps there are other historical examples of people going into battle with an inferior hand weapon rather than nothing? Or was a pattern-welded sax the poorer thegn's sword?

I am fairly sure that by the ninth century many swords are not pattern welded. Our main record of swords is grave deposition in pagan graves and they stop in the seventh century. For that period we have swords from high status graves , quite possibly from families that possessed enough swords to be ble to put one in a grave. So by the hath century, no graves with swords and no doubt lots of cheap non pattern welded swords.

The Anglo-Saxon Fyrd 878 – 1066 A. D., Ben Levick, Regia Anglorum Publications 1995. "In addition, the heriot, that is the death duty paid to a lord when a thegn dies, was set at four horses (two with saddles), two swords and a coat of mail. Since the heriot represented the return of the gifts of a lord to his retainer, we can see that this was the equipment a thegn would be expected to possess. That the thegns did possess this equipment is borne out by the fact that, although it was possible to commute this payment to cash, the payment was almost always made in the form of these arms."

I do wonder if the heriot was used to equip the thegn's successor on the strength. If it was his son and heir the actual kit may not have moved back and forth.

Swords were expensive weapons. I would only give them to noble warriors.

My other query was whether pattern welded swords were the only type used and whether cheaper swords were available to less wealthy thegns and their followers.

I think there is somewhat of a common misconception about pattern welded swords here. I've done a little pattern welding myself, and was recently at an archaeological conference where the metallurgy of pattern welded swords was under discussion. I think because they can look pretty people assume they are for the wealthy. Pattern welding was initially a technological solution to a lack of good steel. If you were wealthy enough to have access to enough good steel you didn't need a pattern welded blade. Though they did continue in "fashion" as purely decorative surface finishes long after they were structurally "pattern welded"

So Aidan, why the fuss in almost every (non-specialist) book I've read? I got the impression that they were stronger and simply 'better' than earlier swords?

Now comes the big question…how 'expensive' was a sword in 870 AD? So many man hours to make that they were only weapons for the wealthy? Or was there more wealth (and metalworkers) than some people think? Staffordshire hoard suggests some pretty wealthy warriors…

The thing about a term like "better" is that there will always be things that are better just as there will always be things that are worse. A pattern welded blade will be more durable and hold a sharper edge than a soft or "pure" iron blade, so in that respect it is "better", but then a soft iron blade will be better than wood. Once much "better" becomes available there comes a point that "worse" options cease to be viable. Almost all period construction utilised soft iron for the bulk of the blade and a little steel for the cutting edges, so in some respect there is the question what are the other types of swords in question? I think what is in discussion is the degree to which the iron and steel were worked together both structurally and decoratively, as almost all blades utilised welded construction.

In terms of time taken, I made my fist pattern welded knife on the second day of a beginners blacksmithing course having only previously read about them and with no prior smithing skills. I also know of a third generation blacksmith who specialises in Viking experimental archaeology who can set up a bloomery forge early in the morning and using only period tools and techniques have turned that iron ore into a pattern welded seax before going to bed. Undoubtedly a sword would take longer but it puts into question all those academic theories about just how much work went into a pattern welded sword. I know that Helen Geake the Cambridge Uni Saxon expert(of Time Team fame if you are from the UK) went away from the conference I mentioned earlier having to radically rethink her views about pattern welded swords status.

Access to the steel (and the amount of carbon in the steel) was the main issue, if you had to carborise iron to make it yourself it was used very sparingly in the form of welding steel cutting edges onto softer blades, if you could import it from places like Afghanistan (which Europe was doing during the "dark ages") then you may potentially be wealthy enough to just make the whole blade out of steel. I personally don't think time/skilled labour was the issue, iron was expensive to extract from local ore, steel much more expensive to make or import, so that governed how much you used and what you prioritised it's use for.

This is what is so good about TMP – really knowledgeable contributions from a host of enthusiasts. So what Aidan seems to be saying is that the conventional wisdom of the sword as an ultra- luxury item sported by the precious few may well be wrong, at least in terms of its worth in man hours. The price of iron is the main factor here.

This would then have also affecedt things like spearheads and shield bosses which are considered to be easily available, at least by most authors. Do simple helmets (although presumably taking longer to and make) use up much more iron than a shield boss,grip and spearhead – the 'basic' weapon set of the dark age warrior? Could more helmets have been used than is sometimes suggested?

In terms of what was and wasn't common, that becomes much more speculative, we can comment upon the numbers of things that have survived archaeologically but have no way of judging that against what hasn't survived to say if the evidence is in anyway representative of the norm. Evidence is always going to biased in favour of the wealthy elite and elaborate goods, they tend to be made or more durable materials and always attract more funding for publishing.

I do think that a sword would be "special" because of the value of the metal, particularly the amount of steel needed to make a long thin blade strong, An axe head may use the same weight of metal but being chunky with a shorter cutting edge, more could be soft iron, so could be "cheaper" to make. Access to iron ore would have been plentiful, the "cost" would be in the hours of labour processing it and making tons of charcoal to extract the iron. You'd then need masses more charcoal to work the iron into steel. If you could present a period smith with a bag of pre-crushed iron ore and many more bags of charcoal, they could pretty quickly turn it all into something useful. The man hours of work were there but in early stages of less skilled work, crushing rock, and making charcoal.

What I tell the guys in my re-enactment group (Regia Anglorum) is that anything made of metal is generally expensive, very expensive at the start of the "dark ages", by the end when Vikings become dominant still "expensive" but less so. It wasn't too much before this period that iron bars were used as a form of currency for trade because it was so versatile and in such demand. Professional warriors were really wealthy guys who by and large didn't have to worry about the cost of their equipment so what would be normal for them would be very different to normal for the rest of society which brings me back to the point I made earlier in this thread about what sort of troops your miniatures portray.

Spear and shield were undoubtedly the most common arms/armour as they were mainly wood. Very few metal helmets survive which may or may not tell us something about how common they were. Something like the Benty grange helmet used a frame work of very thin bands of iron to hold together flattened plates of cattle horn.

In terms of illustrating the value of metal if you reckon on a modern anvil using about 100-300kg of iron with a steel face, then in this period the suggestion is that most anvils were made of granite, those iron ones that have been found are often smaller than most hammers and weight only a few kg. Though we musn't discount the possibility that larger ones may have existed and were recycled in antiquity because of the value of the metal.

Roy, you should know better…

By the 9th C I assume we are talking Saxons in Britain. Army org pre Alfred and post Alfred is pretty different.

Looking at pre Alfred..

#1 Fyrd means 'army' not 'levy'

#2 The fyrd could be called up at two levels.
The King or an Eoarl could call out the 'mounted war band'. these were rich men, bodyguards, landlords etc, they developed from the earlier Gedriht. Typically armed with spear, shield and sword. With armour, helmet and horse. They typicaly fought dismounted but moved around on horseback.
They could also call out the shieldwall, made up of Coerls. Free men with their own farm, animals, family, servants and slaves (the hyde, was defined as a unit of land sufficient to support such a man). They fought with spear, shield and seax or knife.
When the full fyrd (mounted warband and shieldwall) was mustered, servants, youths etc often provided overhead missile fire as support.

Having 5 hydes of land made you a theign and you served in the mounted warband.

The 5 hyde system was where men who had less than a hyde of land clumped together to pay for one man equipped as a theign to serve in the mounted warband. this seems to start late 7th C. It became the basis of Alfred's reforms.

Alfred divvied the land up into 300 hyde packets. These produced 60 man units commanded by an assigned eoarl or churchman. These would then man ships (with small crews) provided by the towns and ports.

Weapon wise

100% spears + other weapons as per rank.

I don't quite understand what you mean Tom.
The Fyrd in common useage is a levy. It is opaque to us quite how the Anglo Saxons called up an army. Hater all, it is a force of more than 35 men so an army could be the force permanently around a senior chap or it could result from different levels of call out. Great Fyrd and Select Fyrd have modern meanings which differentiate between general call out and summoning those men who were supported by their neighbours and thus a better quality, better armed and rumoured levy.
Even there, though this is not some absolute system because the evidence we have is not good enough to say that hides are equal or that the burden of service is somehow equally assessed on them. It is like Alfred's laws which ought to be a systematic review and updating of the law code, but they are not, they are contradictory (IIRC) . That is the nature of Mediaeval administration, it is not systematic, it is based upon negotiation and concession.
I'd love to know where you get 'the shield wall' of ceorls from? Is there evidence that one man was called from each hide under this system. I think it is a levy that could call upon all free men.
Similarly the five hide system or whichever different system is used in whichever area of the country is not where men having less than a hide of land combine to produce one man, it is where mean who own land less than five hides are grouped together to provide one select man from the five hide unit..
A hide is a unit of tax assessment and thus variable in size according to productivity and thus might contain more than one free man or head of a free household depending upon productivity.
Alfred grouped hides together to provide ships and crews, but not all hides were so assessed . The sixty pared ships were NOT small, they were bigger than the Viking ships and had problems dealing with them in shallow estuaries.
Lastly a thegn is NOT a man who had five hides of land. It is a description of a personal tie to the king or to a lord. It is like being a member of a social class. Because a thegn had to support a lifestyle he would have or be given land, but there is no systematic amount. By a law of Alfred the Great a free nan who had five hides or more (and other qualifications) was to be called a thegn. p,ease note Tom that it is not only the landholding that is necessary and that this is in all probability an attempt to force a military obligation on landholders who were evading it. You could be a thegn with more or less than five hides or quite possibly with no land. It's a bit like being a knight in post Norman England, you would hope or even expect to get land, but you did not necessarily have it. In later Mediaeval times there are strenuous Royal efforts to get gentry with land to take up the burden of being a knight and providing military service whereas the landowners preferred not to be so honoured. It is a reminder that Mediaeval kings like Alfred constantly strove to mobilise the resources of the their kingdom for war.
It might be better ground to define a thegn as someone who owes a heriot on his death and is thus provided with arms and armour by the king or a lord. That expresses a relationship which does not have to be denied by land, but by a personal tie.
RoyI don't quite understand what you mean Tom.
The Fyrd in common useage is a levy. It is opaque to us quite how the Anglo Saxons called up an army. Hater all, it is a force of more than 35 men so an army could be the force permanently around a senior chap or it could result from different levels of call out. Great Fyrd and Select Fyrd have modern meanings which differentiate between general call out and summoning those men who were supported by their neighbours and thus a better quality, better armed and rumoured levy.
Even there, though this is not some absolute system because the evidence we have is not good enough to say that hides are equal or that the burden of service is somehow equally assessed on them. It is like Alfred's laws which ought to be a systematic review and updating of the law code, but they are not, they are contradictory (IIRC) . That is the nature of Mediaeval administration, it is not systematic, it is based upon negotiation and concession.
I'd love to know where you get 'the shield wall' of ceorls from? Is there evidence that one man was called from each hide under this system. I think it is a levy that could call upon all free men.
Similarly the five hide system or whichever different system is used in whichever area of the country is not where men having less than a hide of land combine to produce one man, it is where mean who own land less than five hides are grouped together to provide one select man from the five hide unit..
A hide is a unit of tax assessment and thus variable in size according to productivity and thus might contain more than one free man or head of a free household depending upon productivity.
Alfred grouped hides together to provide ships and crews, but not all hides were so assessed . The sixty pared ships were NOT small, they were bigger than the Viking ships and had problems dealing with them in shallow estuaries.
Lastly a thegn is NOT a man who had five hides of land. It is a description of a personal tie to the king or to a lord. It is like being a member of a social class. Because a thegn had to support a lifestyle he would have or be given land, but there is no systematic amount. By a law of Alfred the Great a free nan who had five hides or more (and other qualifications) was to be called a thegn. p,ease note Tom that it is not only the landholding that is necessary and that this is in all probability an attempt to force a military obligation on landholders who were evading it. You could be a thegn with more or less than five hides or quite possibly with no land. It's a bit like being a knight in post Norman England, you would hope or even expect to get land, but you did not necessarily have it. In later Mediaeval times there are strenuous Royal efforts to get gentry with land to take up the burden of being a knight and providing military service whereas the landowners preferred not to be so honoured. It is a reminder that Mediaeval kings like Alfred constantly strove to mobilise the resources of the their kingdom for war.
It might be better ground to define a thegn as someone who owes a heriot on his death and is thus provided with arms and armour by the king or a lord. That expresses a relationship which does not have to be denied by land, but by a personal tie.
Roy

Apologies for the double post, the consequence of my attempts at the edit system….just read the top half!
R

In terms of the "hide" it was defined as the amount of land needed to support a household, so as mentioned the actual area varied based upon the productivity of the land. How many people constitutes a household is open to debate but it would certainly be more than the modern family unit. With extended family, slaves and servants it could well be more than twenty folk.

A hundred was an administrative district of, unsurprisingly one hundred hides. I'm afraid I don't recall which early saxon source I read this (my primary interest is period crafts not period law), but there was some legislation that stated each hundred was responsible for providing one man, armed with a spear, shield and helmet to man the standing fyrd. In terms of numbers this seem somewhat lower than the five hides mentioned above, though as that referred to one man owning more than five hides, that could be a separate obligation on the wealthy.

There does seem to be a definate diference pre and post Alfred. My thinking goes like this and is open to correction.

Asser in his life of Alfred says that the latter had difficulties in getting many of the nobles of Wessex to fulfill their military requirements.

Alfred deals with that and solves the problem – presumably by means of increasing the royal grip on land tenure and therefore diminishing the grip of,at least some,others.

The new Wessex model is born and rolls out with Wessex's expansion. It creates a better military system but increases inequality at the bottom.

The beneficaries of the new system owe their good fortune to the king and that is the personal tie Roy mentions but ultimatley it must have been expressed in land at some stage. Either to support unlanded retainers or endowing the same.

I found Michael Wood's Domesday interesting on this social reorganisation.

The result though would have been enough professionals to face the Great Army and a defensive role for the free farmers.

The downside is if you are unlucky enough to lose your professionals you cannot expect too much from what is left.

Can we all agree that there are different measurements for hides around the country and different systems e.g. in the Danelaw. I think at one point Staffordshire has 500 hides and Northamptonshire has 3,200. That may be because these are in effect value judgements made by the royal finance officer . If Staffs had been ravaged or if it was already paying to face a threat from say Dublin that would make sense of assessing it low. northants was very rich and when Tostig is made Earl of Northumbria and the Northumbrians do not like it he is made Earl of Northants as well because this rich county can support a hearth troop of huscarls so that Tostig can hold York down!
My reading of Alfred is that he uses an existing Wessex system to levy men in Wessex and in the reclaimed parts of Mercia and a similar system is used everywhere else, but not quite the same, as the king extracts as OB says tax and military service for land.
Something like this model is mentioned by Bede so it is not likely an innovation. Given that the A/S worked in the old Germasn way of hundreds grouped together a selective levy of 20 from the 100 will have made sense. After all, if you are the king of say Essex, yo might want to call everyone out or only a select few and there has to be an agreed way of calling a lesser number.
Post Roman regimes all have this problem of how to stipulate the military contribution that they want and all end up with numbers and equipment lists of one sort or another. The big question is that military emergencies are sudden and the landowners need to know what they are responsible for providing (and the king what he is getting). After all the penalties for not providing troops were severe.
If we parallel the A/S conquest with the Norman Conquest William has the same difficulty. What troops can he expect from the landowners that have military contribution laid on them as a duty.
Let us all accept that something like the five hide system appertains everywhere in England. This tells county authorities what they have to provide in two situations. One is Select Levy and the other general levy (all free men) . There might be an intermediate one per hide .
As OB says the problem that Alfred is dealing with is that the Danes are good, well equipped and very mobile (the horsing of the Danes) and so he needs mail clad warriors so he calls out the select levy and expects each hundred to contribute 20 good men.
As I understand it the burden is really laid on the superior landowner to provide the men under penalty. The king has no mechanism for raising the men directly from his relationship with them . The five hide thing enables him to target the nobility with numbers to achieve and he probably doesn't care quite how it is done. If you are the noble concerned it makes sense for the selected five hide man to have a deputy or deputies because it won't look good if you are due to provide say 20 and five are off trading abroad or ill.

I think a hide, leaving aside the Danelaw for a moment, is a measurement of land productivity rather than a strict spacial measurement. After all 5 hides of upland moor are not as productive as 5 hides of bottom land. So what can be extracted will be different too. Royal assessors must have worked with that reality.

Superior land owners must have supplied the bulk of the fighting men as no one else has the resources to do so.

Some questions come to mind.

How much land did the king hold directly was he the largest of the superior landowners?

When nobles defaulted and were punished did 'new men' get their lands?

When nobles died in battle leaving an heir in minority who fulfilled their military obligations?

Interesting questions

I think the lanholders holding book land from the king contracted with the king even if they were small landowners. Larger landholders were to supply the troops that the hidage that they held or was held from them.

The size of the king's landholding depended a bit on who he was. I can only recall Ed the Confessor and I think that his holdings were dwarfed by the Godwinsons. Land obviously changed lords as Earl Godwin's father started small in Sussex and held quite large holdings by his death. If the king was not alienating royal land he must have had a supply of land and that must come from confiscations for rebellion and from intestate deaths.

Nobles were definitely punished and New Men got their lands.

I wonder if with heirs another member of the family took on use of the land and the threefold obligation if the heir was a minor. There was presumably a difference between land that you gained as an Earl and land that you owned as a family. Although they had the same obligations on them the land as an Earl looks to have been more easily transferrable by the king.
R

This is getting very erudite – but seemingly inconclusive – perhaps the 'answer' is contigent on how you read the evidence.

But to get back to the wargaming aspect- say for example we are in Wessex, pre Alfred's reforms – perhaps before his reign – and a large raiding force appears. They ravage the coast a bit, then move inland for some major raiding. How fast could the response be? Who gets called out first in defence? Presumably the local Earldorman…with thegns. But with peasant levies as well?

I would say the local Eorldorman with thegns and the free farmers or peasants if you prefer. The latter being in the majority.

Post Alfred's reforms a better equipped response.

Yes to Ob, You would look at
local Eorldorman plus household
local noteable or bishop plus household
Both units experienced warriors, horses,helmet mailcoats, swordstwo spears each 20%
Select Warriors, not as experienced, not all mailcoats , helmets, swords two spears 30 %

General levy two spears shield , no mail, no helmet , no sword, maybe a hand axe or a knife, but not experienced or trained 50%
Local hunters with bows.. a few
shepherds with slings.. a few
lads with javelins, a few. These would pack into the back of the foot formation or come out and skirmish
Total skirmish types 5-10% depending how hilly and foresred it is.

I would be happy to use that list Roy.

Here's a thought.

Before the Great Army I think there is good reason to think the free farmers would have been quite happy to go on expedition with their social superiors.

It would be a break in the monotony of hard graft, they got to demonstrate their important arms bearing free status, they might pick up some loot, mostly they would be fighting their equivelant from over the border and a good performance got you well in with the boss. All good motivating reasons.

Facing the Great Army would be a different matter. The foe is more skilled and better equpped, the sort of chaps the boss should be fighting. It became a riskier and less lucrative business. I'm sure they were still willing to fight but they might not have been as keen.

I wonder if that informed Alfred's defensive strategy?

That's a good point ad fits well with the problem that the English had of beating the Danes, but not really winning so that the Danes would pop up again and need another battle. The danes are never really crushed. Whereas English kingdoms get crushed when they lose a battle.
Roy

So a 'historically plausible' SAxon SAGA warband (and I know its not really supposed to be a 'historical' game) might be Warlord, 1 point Hearthguard,(4 figures) 3 points warriors,(24 figures) 3 points Levies (36 figures…) Haven't played it yet – just about to start the Saxons, having done 6 points of Vikings. I could get into a discussion about those, but I decided that levy types were not much suited to Viking raiders, recruited from slightly higher up the social scale…now someone will probably put me right on this issue…

Agree Hob, though you might have two hearth guards if that is allowed to depict other major lords.
As to Vikings , it seems that their armies are not based upon levies in the UK, but upon personal followings. They I'd have levies , but it is likely that they were from guys who owned farms and thus stayed in Scandinavia.

Being designed for ship fighting the Vikings would have had more archers than the A/S appear to have because archers are useful in naval warfare. Similarly their infantry had a lot of javelins as these are useful in naval warfare. That's partly because ships might spend some time at a distance and partly because to board an enemy ship you need to clear a pace for the sword or axe rmed warriors at the front to grip the bulwark and leap aboard the opposing ship. As they cross they are vulnerable so the missile men are there to keep the enemy crew back.
Viking bands had the advantage of fighting more frequently than an A/S select levy and probably through having more young men because younger sons would go across the sea.
Roy

Sorry for the delay in responding. (this work stuff keeps getting in the way)

Sorry Roy I wasn't meaning to get at you…

Fyrd isn't levy. It's clear from both chronicles and poetry that it means army, force or similar. By the 9th C heer was more commonly used and by the 11th C fyrd had fallen out of use.

The notion of a 30 or 35 man army (yes fyrd used in one of these and heer in the other) comes from legal definitions of who killed/wounded who and what weregeld had to be paid. Not from any tactical definition.

There was a lot of variation on organisation, certain areas used Scandinavian models with local headmen and tax collectors (a surprisingly common presence in Norse records) leading men from a given area. Other areas had troops raised by small towns/villages let by churchmen, land owners or a man of a noted family. Once the country was united senior figures (earls or similar) ruled large areas in the name of the King. Ship troops remained key (they were normally better equipped and a crew was a cohesive unit) be they English, Scots, Manx, Irish, Flemish, Norwegian, Danish etc…

I'm no longer subscribing to the "only the rich few" had or could possess swords. 150 smelting furnaces have been found in Poland. So, not the same scale say as a Late Roman Fabricae but still a significant consideration.

Good debate by the way and very informative…..

According to Bosworth Tollef (A/S dictionary) both Gedriht and Fyrd mean an army. Lately there has been a fashion to call the comitatus of Early Anglo Saxon leaders Gedriht, but I doubt that the A/S had quite the same meaning for the word. In fact I doubt that they had technical terms for their military classes in quite the way we would like them to have. Fyrd might mean Army. But even that is a loaded term because we have perceptions of what an army is that are not relevant to them.. Fyrd has a respectable history of being used by historians to mean a levy or call up of men for service.
No Anglo Saxon would recognise the terms Great fyrd or Select Fyrd but that is a convenient way for us to describe the difference between a levy designed to produce a few well equipped troops rather than a less well kitted but more numerous band of men such as that which guarded burg walls.
Of course Alfred called troops out in rotation. I wonder if there was a way of describing such a levy and rotation . Or is it a rotational call out of an already select force. As you so rightly say Tom there are diffent systems operating in different areas of the country, but presumably with the same objective..to produce a select levy.
I use levy advisedly because it is a term loaded with perceptions. However, it does fairly express the difference between those men who fought because they were the bodyguards and close dependent s of a lord and those who fought on the basis of territorial obligation (and surprise surprise there is a crossover between the two as the landowner has a duty to provide men according to a Territorial obligation and some of those may well be his permanent warriors and some permanent warriors will have been given land and thus have taken on the military obligation of that land.

Unfortunately the Anglo Saxons , indeed any Early Mediaeval state, didn't have the administrative and terminological exactitude that we require, but they could raise taxes and armies.

There is an interesting article here on the role of Anglo Saxon client kings in enabling the establishment of the Danelaw.

link