Læwatan; a Wælseax inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard
“þa gen sylf cyninggeweold his gewitte, wællseaxe gebrædbiter ond beaduscearp, þæt he on byrnan wæg; forwrat Wedra helm wyrm on middan.”
‘The king himself nowtook command of his wits, reached for the slaughter-sax of keenest battle-sharpness, that he carried in his harness;the Geats’ Protector hewed the wyrm in twain’
One of the most striking objects in the Hoard is the solid gold hilt-plate k567. This piece, finely decorated with interwoven Salin Style-II biting beasts, is of a lozenge shape that would be expected to adorn the hilt of a sword, yet its triangular slot clearly indicates it once adorned a single-edged killing knife or "waelseax". Such seax fittings are rare, and it is not clear how such a piece would be integrated into a seax handle-design.
What would such a weapon have looked like, what length would the blade have been, and how would the handle have functioned?
To answer these questions, I embarked on a project to produce a feasible reconstruction of this seax.
With the Seax now complete, attention could be given to the sheath that would protect it, and the selection of a suitable name. The sheath, as much as the seax itself, provided an opportunity to showcase the evolution of Anglo-Saxon artistic styles, while the name opens discussion of language and mythology. 
