To my eye this looks like a blacksmith's conversion of some sort of hammer head, or maybe recycling of a piece of axle.
The handle looks like it has been forge welded to the head.
The cutting edge is quite black, so maybe we're looking at a piece of steel inserted into an iron body. Can you see a joint? Inspection under magnification can assist.
Is there an eye in the head to take a timber handle? Maybe filled with a separate piece of metal? If not, then maybe its not a hammer head conversion, but that handle does look like a forge weld to the head, so it cannot be very recent, unless its a hobbyist's work.
I don't know about a war axe, I'd say something more like a case-makers hatchet.
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