| Johan S. Moen wrote: | ||
What I wonder is, from when? I've seen quite a lot of pinned heads from 1100 A.D and upwards, but few before 1000 A.D. I suppose it depends on the size of the socket and the haft. My spearhead is quite small, best suited for stabbing, and the shaft is quite thin. Does anyone have any sources for pinned spearheads during the migration/viking era? Johan Schubert Moen |
Well... Out of boredom, I walked the 40 meters from the university cafeteria over to the historic museum to have a look...
They have a small but nice collection of viking swords and spearheads.
Most of these had holes for pins. One of them even had four.
As for shaft thickness, most of them where about 2 cm... I believe the sticks they where displayed on where 25mm, and most of them had been sharpened to fit the spearheads
They do however have one hewing spear head, which had a roughly 3 cm opening, more like we are familiar with from reenactment spears.
The axes also varied greatly in shaft size. Some had pretty decent shaft holes, other very narrow ones, to be fitted on narrow shafts.
I guess the objections to pinning the spearheads in place are modern metal-smith's common sense.
Another major argument is that a glued spearhead can be a living hell to get of the stick if it breaks. A friend of mine once spent hours carving the remains of his 38 mm glaive shaft out of the socket...