Information about Housecarls

Housecarls were household troops, personal warriors and equivalent to a bodyguard to Scandinavian lords and kings. The anglicized term comes from the Old Norse term huskarl or huscarl (literally, 'house man', i.e., armed man in the service of a specific house.) They were also called hirth ('household') that referred to household troops. The term later came to cover armed soldiers of the household. They were often the only professional soldiers in the kingdom, the rest of the army being made up of militia called the fyrd, peasant levy, and occasionally mercenaries. A kingdom would have fewer than 2,000 Housecarls.

The term entered the English language when Canute the Great conquered and occupied Anglo-Saxon England.

In England there may have been as many as 3,000 royal housecarls, and a special tax was levied to provide pay in coin. They were housed and fed at the king's expense. They formed a standing army of professional soldiers and also had some administrative duties in peacetime as the King's representatives. The term was often used in contrast to the non-professional fyrd.

As an army, the Huscarls were renown for their superior training and equipment, not only because they constituted a standing army (an ad hoc fighting force of professional soldiers as opposed to militia), but also due to rigorous quality control. For example, one lord passed legislature requiring that all enlistees own a sword with a gold-inlaid hilt. This assured that enlistees were of the economic standing that would permit them to train without financial hindrance and purchase good quality equipment.

While Huscarls were expected to be proficient in a variety of weapons, including the one-handed sword and the throwing axe, they were particularly renown for their unique use of the long-bearded axe, or Skeggox, the presence of which is conspicuous throughout the Bayeux Tapestry. The bearded axe is also known as the Danish axe.

Though the Bayeux tapestry is only a static panorama of the Battle of Hastings, it tells us much about the fighting style of the Huscarls. At one point it depicts them employing a tactic called the shieldwall. In this tactic the Huscarls formed a line with their shields locked, in much the same fashion as the Greek phalanx. The Saxons' traditional fighting style was, however, very aggressive in both the theory and popular technique of the day, and this tactic appears to have been used primarily in defensive situations against a superior force, particularly one using cavalry and archers, like the Norman force at the Battle of Hastings. One of the more unique confirmations of the Huscarls' tactics also comes from the Bayeux tapestry: It clearly shows them holding their axes left-handed rather than right-handed, as intuition might dictate. Using a left-handed grip would mean that they would swing toward an opponent's unguarded side (the right), requiring the average right-handed defender to shift their shield-side toward the attacking huscarl, thus entering a defensive stance and diminishing their attacking speed and ability. This also meant, however, that since the huscarl himself could not use a shield together with the oversized axe, that he must remain constantly aggressive, attacking without letup in order to keep his opponent from entering aggressive stance.

The preferred technique for dealing with mounted opponents was to cleave the horse's front legs out from under it as it passed or approached. Armed with such a heavy-handed weapon however, it is unlikely that huscarls were very choosy over their targets, and they probably struck at any opportune region. One account of the Battle of Hastings described many horses as being nearly cloven in two by the Huscarls' axes.

It is not clear whether any archers were included in a body of huscarls. It is known that Harald Hardrada died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge with an arrow through his neck, but what is not ascertainable is whether the archer was an auxiliary fyrd man, or a huscarl. Later events, such as the Battle of Hastings, lean toward the former possibility: that the archer was a fyrd man, probably armed with a hunting bow. It is clear in the accounts of the Battle of Hastings that if there were archers, their presence was insignificant. In fact, the Normans narrowly avoided disaster when they came close to running out of ammunition. This means that the Saxon huscarls were not "trading vollies" with the Norman archers. The trading of arrows is a phenomenon intrinsic to pitched battles involving archers, and it does not seem to have occurred at the Battle of Hastings, leading to the conclusion that there was no significant presence of bowmen in the Huscarl army.

The most famous army of huscarls is without a doubt the one employed by Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The reason for Harold's defeat can be partially attributed to many things, but key were the technology and military practices of the Saxons, which were very set in tradition and in some ways failed to keep up with modern armies like that of William the Conqueror. While William's knights walked to the battle leading their horses, in order to keep their mounts fresh, the Huscarls did the opposite, riding to the battle, and later dismounting to fight on foot, as was their custom. William brought mounted knights and unprecedented numbers of archers. Kept at bay by the constant vollies of arrows, the Huscarls could only assume the shieldwall and brace themselves against the repeated cavalry charges that assaulted their front line. With their traditional tactics countered so effectively, the Huscarls were suppressed and finally defeated by the waves of cavalry that repeatedly broke through the shieldwall. After the Norman Conquest, archers began to be considered an essential division in most European armies, and few commanders relied exclusively on melee forces.

The Battle of Hastings marked the demise of the Huscarls along with most of the Saxon empire. Survivors, along with King Harold's thegns, crossed to Continental Europe as mercenary troops. Some of these reached Byzantium and along with other Saxons joined the Varangian Guard. By the 12th century, the Varangian Guard contained so many Saxons that the entire unit was sometimes called "the English Guard."

See also

• Druzhina
• Yeomen of the Guard

External links

• Yeomen of the Guard
• Regia Anglorum Anglo-Saxon Huscarls