Viking manual?

[Nathan Dexter]

Hello again...
I have been looking around, and I know quite a bit about the vikings, and know that there were not many things written down. Besides all that, I was wondering if there is much described about the viking style of fighting.
Also, were there any Scandinavian renaissance masters.

[Allen Johnson]

The best clues we have for viking fighting methods come from period iconography and the viking sagas. Of course these things are always subject to exageration and myth. All we can do is try what they talk about and see if it martially sound and then tag it with a "maybe".

I remember somewhere there was some Swedish material from the 16th century or something?

[Stacy Clifford]

Viking Fighting Notes from 23 Sagas

[Nathan Dexter]

Yea,
the vikings were known to stretch the truth and incorporate mythology in their sagas. and since most of them were illiterate, their are not many sagas anyway.
But anyway, thanks

[M Wallgren]

I contest the illiterate statment! Resentresearch shows that many knew runes (at least in the fighting upperklasses) and that the so called illittrate mass continued this practis into the 17th c.

On topic though just myth and sagas is left to us so the reconstruction here is much harder. One way could be to use what we know of later weapons and try to test what is possible to do with earlier ones.

Martin