Viking halberd a drooping "beard". The name is from Old Norse "skegg", "beard" and "øx", "axe". The term "Viking halberd" was used to describe a find in North America in the 1995 book "Early Vikings of the New World", but it was later demonstrated to be a tobacco cutter. There has currently been, in fact, no clearly identified Viking halberd or bill found. Spears are the only type of polearms found in Viking graves. It is possible that halberds and bills were not part of Viking funerary customs, as opposed to other weapons that have been found in graves. Bills have been
Altarpiece of the Halberd Altarpiece of the Halberd The Altarpiece of the Halberd is a painting from around 1539 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto. It is housed in the Pinacoteca civica Francesco Podesti of Ancona, central Italy. The work was seen by the art biographer Giorgio Vasari in the church of Sant'Agostino in Ancona, where Lotto had fled in reply to the hostility received in Venice. It was later moved to the church of Santa Maria della Piazza and, after other locations, the current one. The painting dates to a few years after the coup by which Ancona had been restored