Battle axes were lighter than you think and cheaper than swords
Picture a war axe and you may imagine something huge and heavy. Real battle axes usually weighed between about half a kilo and three kilos, far lighter than a modern wood-splitting maul, because speed mattered more than bulk. They were also cheaper and easier to get than swords, which helps explain why they appear across so many cultures.
Axes have a deep past. Palaeolithic people used handheld stone axes over an immense span of time, axe heads fixed to handles emerged around 6000 BC, and Neolithic makers polished hard rock to improve them. Some cultures treated them as sacred; the so-called Battle-axe people of Scandinavia prized theirs as high-status objects. With the Copper and Bronze Ages came cast metal heads, and bronze battle axes turn up in ancient China and New Kingdom Egypt, some practical and some lavishly decorated symbols of rank.
Combat axes differed from tools, with narrower, cleaver-like blades. Lengths ranged from just over 30 centimetres to around 150, as with the long Danish axe; anything longer arguably counts as a polearm. Roman-era and medieval heads were often wrought iron with a steel edge, and handles gained metal strips called langets so an opponent could not chop through the shaft. The Franks' francisca was designed to be thrown.
Vikings made the weapon iconic between the 8th and 11th centuries. Their bearded axe had a long lower edge that added cutting power and could hook the rim of an enemy's shield and yank it down. Axes feature on the Bayeux Tapestry, and in Greek imagination the sagaris was linked to the mythical Amazons, although those were mostly ceremonial.
Medieval kings wielded them too. At the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, King Stephen of England fought with a Dane axe, though accounts disagree on whether he switched to it after his sword broke or the other way round. Victorian writers loved picturing Richard the Lionheart with a colossal axe; Charles Dickens gave its head twenty pounds of English steel, an exaggeration worthy of a national hero.
Source: Battle axe
