<SAX" A\I) "FHAKKI." 1 ." 



Mini boards of no substance daubed over with paint. Their 

 first rank was to a certain extent armed with pikes, the rest had 

 only stakes burnt at the ends or short darts." 1 



Now compare these descriptions with the magnificent 

 archaeology of the North of that period as seen in these 

 volumes from which we learn that the tribes who inhabited 

 the shores of the Baltic and the present Scandinavia had at 

 the time the above was written reached a high degree of civili- 

 sation. We find in their graves and hoards, coins of the early 

 Eoman Empire not in isolated instances, but constantly and 

 in large numbers, and deposited side by side with such objects 

 as coats of mail, damascened swords and other examples of 

 articles of highly artistic workmanship. 



Three kinds of swords are often mentioned by the Northmen 

 the moekir, the sverd, and the sax, while among the spears 

 there is one called frakki, or frakka. 



The double-edged sword was the one that was in use among 

 the Romans, and they, seeing bodies of men carrying a weapon 

 unlike theirs single-edged, and called Sax may have named 

 them after it, and the Franks, in like manner, may have been 

 called after their favourite weapon, the Frakki ; but we see 

 that neither the sax nor the frakki was confined to one tribe 

 in the North. There is a Saxland in the Sagas a small 

 country situated east of the peninsula of Jutland, about the 

 present Holstein a land tributary to the Danish or Swedish 

 Kings from the earliest times, but far from possessing the 

 war-like archeology of the North, it appears to have held an 

 insignificant place among the neighbouring tribes. 



In the Bayeux tapestry the followers of William the Con- 

 queror were called Franci, and they always have been recognised 

 as coming from the North. 



The very early finds prove that the Sax was not rare, for it 

 occurs in different parts of the North and islands of the Baltic. 

 The different swords and spears used were so common and so 



1 " Nee enim immensa barbarorum 

 scuta, enormes hastas, inter truucos ar- 

 horum et enata humo virofulta 



mano, non galeani, ne scuta quidem t'errw 

 nervo ve finnata, sed vimiuum textus vcl 

 tennes furatas colore tabulas, primatu ut- 



haheri quam pila et gladins rt hserentia ctmque adem hastatam, caeteris procenata 

 rnriniri tefmina .... nnn loricam (it-r- ant lirevia tela " (Tacitus Annals, ii. 14). 



