Atgeir Atgeir An atgeir, sometimes called a "mail-piercer" or "hewing-spear," was a type of polearm in use in Viking Age Scandinavia and Norse colonies in the British Isles and Iceland. It is usually translated in English as "halberd", but most likely closer resembled a bill or glaive during the Viking age. Another view is that the term had no association with a specific weapon until it is used as an anachronism in saga literature to lend weight to accounts of special weapons. Later the word was used for typical European halberds, and even later multipurpose staves with spearheads were called "atgeirsstafir".
Glaive Glaive A glaive (or glave) is a European polearm, consisting of a single-edged blade on the end of a pole. It is similar to the Japanese naginata, the Chinese guandao and pudao, Russian sovnya and Siberian . Typically, the blade is around long, on the end of a pole long, and the blade is affixed in a socket-shaft configuration similar to an axe head, rather than having a tang like a sword or naginata. Occasionally, glaive blades were created with a small hook on the reverse side to better catch riders. Such blades are called glaive-guisarmes. According to the 1599