Pirate's Axe

[Victrix]

Originally Posted by kronckew

yes, who in their right minds would decorate a battle axe haft or blade?

your 'undecorated' ones prove your point nicely. just like these below:

(sailors especially have lots of time on their hands and can decorate the undecoratable. or noblemen, and officers who had underlings to do it for them)

I must confess to have no idea where the axe comes from. I was just pointing out that it's a fairly crude weapon akin to the bardiche. These were typically not very decorated and were presumably used by the less wealthy warriors. It seems to me that more Western European war axes/hammers had metal hafts whereas in E.Europe wooden hafts seemed more common, although of course it's difficult to generalize. The E.European wooden war axes/hammers that I saw often have undecorated hafts, although they are usually probably later replacements so difficult to know what the originals looked like! I'm not sure the axe in the post above is comparable to the Norwegian farmers's axes, although the bardiche as a weapon allegedly had Scandinavian origins. The decoration of the axe haft posted above does not seem particularly Scandinavian to me and, if anything, looks more Gothic in style. True, sailors seem to have a penchant for decoration so possible the axe was decorated by a bored one!