This too is due to their specific function, quickly striking with great accuracy and speed to cut relatively unarmored foes. The fighting axes to the right are substantially thinner than either of the wood axes, with long thin blades akin to a chef's knife or a culinary cleaver. A forester using a heavy maul to fell a tree would soon be exhausted or injured by the unwieldy tool. Additionally, when felling a tree the forester strikes first from above, and then from the side, hacking out wedges of wood, a goal that is facilitated by a slightly thicker axe head. This is because felling axes need to be more maneuverable as the cuts need to be carefully placed and are often struck more or less horizontally. The felling axe is the next thickest of the tool axes, occupying a middle ground between the maul and the fighting axes. Anyone who has split wood in the past knows that it can take a great deal of force to split some logs, and the heft of the axe allows gravity to assist in that endeavor. Spitting mauls are of course the heaviest of these axes, designed as they are for a simple downward strike at a stationary target. In the pictures below are displayed, from left to right, a felling axe for cutting down trees, a splitting maul for splitting wood, a relic fighting axe from the Viking period, and a modern, historically accurate reproduction of a Viking period axe, all viewed from the top to expose how they differ in terms of thickness of the blade and socket. Check out this previous blog post that examines the Nordland Axe in detail. If you could only afford one axe, then this was probably your best option. However, the lighter head limits its usefulness in certain kinds of work, while its blade geometry makes it less capable of hewing through cloth, leather, and the body of an enemy than a dedicated fighting axe (check out this blog post about cutting tatami with our Type L Fighting Axe). The blade is highly bearded, a style that developed to save expensive iron in manufacture while preserving a useful cutting edge and lightening the axe head, making it a useful weapon as well as woodworking tool. The Arms and Armor Nordland Axe is an excellent example of a dual use axe from the pre-Viking period. Such dual use axes, however, involved compromises in design that made them widely versatile, but perhaps less finely optimized than their more specialized brethren. In fact, one of the primary benefits of many axes was that they could be used for building your house and for defending it. It is also not to imply that axes were only ever for either work or for fighting. Though, as we will see, this is complicated by the case of later axes designed for use against heavily armored foes. In general this means that fighting axes tend to be lighter, thinner, and much more maneuverable than axes intended for use as tools. In fact, just as in the case of wood axes, the forms of fighting axes relates to their intended function. Neither of these conclusions stands up to the historical record. This attribute of axes designed for strongly hewing stationary pieces of wood has led many people to the conclusion that fighting axes must be an unwieldy weapon, or that warriors utilizing axes must have been some kind of super-men.
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