T(though I think the revival of the
longbow for recreation & sport is fairly recent here).
I wouldn't agree that it is recent, although I guess that depends on your definition of recent..
But the numbers certainly do seem to be growing.
I've read that the English
longbow originated in Wales in the 11th c. but don't know where the Viking's version of the longbow fits into the picture. Did Viking raiders bring the longbow back to Scandinavia from the British Isles? or did the Welsh borrow the idea from the Vikings? Can anyone shed any light on this one?
The Holmegaard is a flat bow and is made of Elm. However, the Hedby bows are Yew bows, made from the heartwood and sapwood the same as the English longbow. Its profile though is quite different. It tends to be rounder in section in the handle area and takes more of a shallow ?D? towards the ends of the limbs.
The limbs of the bows however bend back towards the belly of the bow. They have side nocks and the top limb has an iron nail in it that acts as a string stop, to stop it sliding down the bow.
Hedeby was the largest Nordic city during the Viking Age and used to be the oldest city in Denmark. Denmark lost the territory on which Hedeby was located to Austria and Prussia in 1864 in the Second Schleswig War. As a result of these border movements, the site is now located in the province of Schleswig-Holstein in the extreme north of Germany. The name 'Hedeby' means the "town on the heath". Abandoned almost a thousand years ago,
Hedeby became a principal marketplace because of its geographical location on the major trade routes between the Frankish Empire and Scandinavia (north-south), and between the Baltic and the North Sea (east-west). Between 800 and 1000 the growing economic power of the Vikings led to its dramatic expansion as a major trading centre.
Hedeby is now by far the most important archaeological site in Schleswig-Holstein. A museum was opened next to the site in 1985.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ark_vikings_3.jpg/300px-Denmark_vikings_3.jpg
As you say Russ, it is hard to know if they were an adaption taken from Britain, or brought to it. However, Hedeby bows were used at the battle between the Saxon forces of Edmund and those of the Vikings under Ubbe Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless in 869 near Thetford in Norfolk. The Danes won the day and the story goes that Edmund refused to renounce Christ and so the heathens shot him to death with their bows and arras. We also know that the Vikings were raiding into Wales in around 865. I'll leave you to work out for yourself how much that predates the 11th C...
There is more info on the bows here.
1
All the best
jb