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Were hammers really even effective?
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Post by
1012446
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Post by
asakawa
I'd always got the impression that the main purpose of hammers as weapons was to crush plate armour. Although a sword might pierce plate it would likely be stopped by a chainmail shirt, a hammer-weilder wouldn't be worried about that.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
Rystrave
Hammers and maces are meant to crush the bones of your foe. It might not break the skin, but goddamn your bones will be mush.
Hitting someone with a hammer is surely going to hurt, but what if they are wearing armor?
Depending on the type of armor depends on the type of injury. I could see a mace smoking someone in the head, resulting in a severe head injury, even with a metal helm on.
Post by
Monday
People underestimate how hard a hammer hurts, even if it's a (relatively) light one. Fighting a dude wearing mail? Smash his arm with a hammer! Let's see his mail stop that!
Post by
Rystrave
My boyfriend was hammering something at his work, and a chunk of it broke off and ended up piercing his coworker through his work pants. It was like 2 inches into his thigh /shudder
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Around the 1400s, armor had reached the point where surface-hardening techniques rendered it as hard as the steel used for swords, resulting in mostly ricocheted or glancing blows. The half-sword fighting style (gripping halfway up the blade with your gloved off-hand and jabing with percision strikes at vulnerable spots) became quite common for fighting with swords, however the precision needed was often impractical in open combat. Large hammers and maces allowed one to maintain typically long reach of swords while still inflicting damage to armored opponents.
Mauls were also a sidearm of English bowmen for a while around the same time, as they were the primary tool used to hammer in their defensive stakes.
Post by
164232
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Post by
Squishalot
Don't forget the humble morning star...
Post by
193475
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Post by
134377
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Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Very effective, or else they wouldn't have been used. Remember Thor's Mjollnir? That was long before the days of plate armor, when bladed weapons were extremely expensive. Most people went viking, or fighting for their lord, carrying whatever was cheap, easy to find, and worked. If I woke to find somebody in my house, I'd rather confront them with a hammer than a knife.
There is actually virtually no historical or archaeological evidence that vikings, at least the western vikings, used any sort of maces or war hammers in battle.
Post by
134377
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Post by
Lordplatypus
medieval mauls were much the same as a modern sledge, except even bigger and meant to hammer in faces (not that a sledge can't do that).
there's also the polehammer, which was just as long as a halberd and had the same momentum as one
a one-handed warhammer looks something like a claw hammer.
All these could do some serious hurt to faces.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
So they just decided to equip a principal war god with a weapon nobody actually used? They could've just had him throw lightning.
I don't think generally is a case of anyone "deciding" on a particular myth or legend. They usually build up over many generations, told and re-told, until someone takes the time to write it all down and standardize the tale. Some people somewhere probably thought thunder sounded like a blacksmith's hammer and the legend grew from there.
Post by
134377
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Post by
Thror
Aye, you're right, but he wasn't Vulcan in his smithy, was he? Odin had a spear, as did Frey. Surt had a flaming sword, if I remember correctly. Thor was supposed to defend Asgard, Vanaheim, and Midgard against Giants (raw elemental forces). Not only did they give him a hammer, but a throwing hammer. The supernatural bit is that it returned to him like a boomerang. That very strongly suggests to me that the culture (about 0AD) that created these myths, written down later by Snorri Sturlusson, did use hammers to fight with, even if they were not hammers specially developed for combat.
You're living in the iron ages. You are rich, and have an axe. There is a local dispute, and there are only six of you with edged weapons. You are my lord, and my wealth is improved according to your favour. So me and my mates in the village have to go and back you up. Lets see. A small knife from the kitchen. A pitchfork from the barn, with wooden tines. That'd be good until someone smashed the shaft. A staff. Same problem. So I pick that up, grab my little knife, and grab a hammer. If I can't afford a hammer, or borrow one, I grab a wooden cosh, or club. I can fit one on each side of my belt, to use when my "keep them at a distance weapon" is wrecked. If I survive, and you win, and I've done a good job, you might reward me with a proper weapon, or some armor.
If you lived in the iron ages, and wanted to grab a good weapon, chances are you would end up with pitchfork and an axe. I am not sure why you attributed the axe to the rich, when it was one of the most popular weapons for the lower classes over the history. In medieval times, you had much more reasons to own an axe than you would have to own a hammer. Nails were not cheap, since they were hand-made by a special craftsman. Everybody used wood as a heat source. So yeah, if you were a poor dude wanting to help out your lord in a brawl, you would likely end up armed with your pitchfork and axe. (if you were a poor English dude, chances are you would have a bow too, but arrowheads were scarce) The correct weapon to attribute to the rich is the sword.
As for Thor, I really think the legends can not be set in stone enough to use it as an argument. There are a few things I thought of when considering Thor and his weapon choice.
The hammer was probably derived from the Blacksmiths hammer.
There is clear overlap between Thor and Hephaestus. It is possible that this similarity had an influence on the legends. Consider that most historical recordings come from Greeks and Romans.
Many gods wielded things that were actually common tools. Scythes, knives, hammers.
Since a god wielding a "common tool" might not sound threatening, it is quite reasonable to make up legends about how magical and lethal that common tool actually is. "Oh, your god uses a hammer? Pfffh, my god has six arms and wields a sabre in each!" "Oh yeah? Well my gods hammer is not just your every day blacksmith's hammer! It is forged of stars, weighs as much as a mountain, and it always returns back to Thor after he throws it! Oh yeah, did I mention he can throw it around like a volleyball?" (actual historical dialogue, recorded by Herodotos, on an iPhone, lolno)
I find it odd that nobody has pointed out one clear discrepancy between the fantasy warmauls (like the ones paladins use in WoW), and the actual war hammers used IRL... they do not have a beak. The beak is the pointed side of the war hammer. It was used to pierce plate armour. With the heavy hammer head, and a strong wielder, the war hammer was one of the few weapons capable of punching a hole in plate. The beak was actually used a lot more than the "blunt" side of the hammer (Against plate wearers, that is. Your every day normal medieval enemy would often not be wearing plate armour, in which case the blunt side was very effective too.).
Post by
Skreeran
I find it odd that nobody has pointed out one clear discrepancy between the fantasy warmauls (like the ones paladins use in WoW), and the actual war hammers used IRL... they do not have a beak. The beak is the pointed side of the war hammer. It was used to pierce plate armour. With the heavy hammer head, and a strong wielder, the war hammer was one of the few weapons capable of punching a hole in plate. The beak was actually used a lot more than the "blunt" side of the hammer (Against plate wearers, that is. Your every day normal medieval enemy would often not be wearing plate armour, in which case the blunt side was very effective too.).That's actually why I really like
LotRO's hammers
.
Post by
Rankkor
But what about the hammer? Hitting someone with a hammer is surely going to hurt,
but what if they are wearing armor?
You might only break a bone, in which case a swords might cut/stab a vital organ or artery - essentially rendering your opponent useless.
Unarmored foes? Yeah you could probably bludgeon them to death easily, but the same applies to a sword, less armor, more vital openings.
Your take on this?
That is exactly where the hammer trumps the sword. Now my explanation is gonna sound shoddy, that's cuz I'm not entirely sure how to say it in english so bear with me.
Swords are sharp and are made for stabbing, and cutting. Getting them to pierce thick plate armor is hard enough, but piercing chain mail? not gonna happen. Swords have a small hilt, thus build low momentum whereas Hammers have a long hilt, allowing you to put more strength in the blow. (Same goes for Axes).
Have you ever noticed that if you use a tiny crowbar to pry open a box you have to put A LOT of strength into it? whereas if you use a very long crowbar, the amount of strength required diminishes? That is the principle of a lever. Hammers make use of this to make their hits extra hard. Since their handle is WAY longer than that of a sword, it acts as a lever to propell force faster and with lesser effort.
And because the momentum of the hit has to be transmitted somewhere, even if you are decked in full plate armor, or chainmail, the hammer will still break your bones, or cause concussions, or knock you down. In other words, Warhammers could damage without penetrating the armor. In particular, they transmitted the impact through even the thickest helmet and caused concussions. (Do you have any idea how heavy medieval armor was? getting up after being knocked down was NOT easy). These are all advantages that swords don't have. The only way to counter a hammer hit is to have inner padding on your armor, but then that would make your armor even heavier, causing you to tire faster in combat, and not to mention making getting up way harder.
War hammers were developed as a consequence of the ever more prevalent surface-hardened steel surfacing of wrought iron armors of the late medieval battlefields during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The surface of the armor was now as hard as the edge of a blade, so a blade tended to ricochet. Swords, or the blade of a battleaxe, were likely only to give a glancing blow, losing much of the impact, especially on the high curvature of the helmet. The war hammer could deliver the full force to the target.
The main advantage of a sword is that if the hit connects, it has a very high kill ratio, because if the stab/slash doesn't kill you, the infection that would come off the wound definetly will. Whereas foes quickly rescued from a hammer blow can have t heir bones mended in time.
This is why IMO the Axe was one of the best medieval melee weapons, since it mixes the best of both worlds, sharpness and cutting power of a sword, with the thrust and lever mechanics of a mace.
(This is all my own uneducated opinion BTW :P I've never been an expert in medieval warfare)
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Swords have a small hilt, thus build low Momentum whereas Hammers have a long hilt, allowing you to put more strength in the blow. (Same goes for Axes).
Have you ever noticed that if you use a tiny crowbar to pry open a box you have to put A LOT of strength into it? whereas if you use a very long crowbar, the amount of strength required diminishes? That is the principle of a lever. Hammers make use of this to make their hits extra hard. Since their handle is WAY longer than that of a sword, it acts as a lever to propell force faster and with lesser effort.
That's not an accurate assessment. The length of the hilt is meaningless. It's the length from the fulcrum (where you're hand is) to the end that matters. And for a sword and hammer of the same length, that will generally be exactly the same. Consider swinging a spear of equal length. There you have a long hilt, but you would get the same force as a sword. In all these cases, the acceleration of the end of the weapon is pretty much the same.
The benefits you are describing come from the hammer head being heavier than the sword or spear tip. Force equals mass times acceleration, and with the acceleration being constant, increasing the mass of the end proportionally increases the force of the blow.
Post by
134377
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