Housecarl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Housecarls were household troops, personal warriors and equivalent to a royal bodyguard to Scandinavian 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, peasant levy, and occasionally mercenaries. They were usually armed with long Danish axe. A kingdom would have fewer than 2000 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 3000 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 Kings representatives. The term was often used in contrast to the non-professional fyrd.

Certainly the vast majority of English housecarls died at the Battle of Hastings. 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."