W. Britain sell this figure as either a Saxon or a Viking, and that is not a manufacturing shortcut. By the eleventh century the two peoples had run together to a degree that shows up in the most intimate place a language can be altered. Old English and Old Norse were related to begin with, and to some extent mutually intelligible. Then came the settlement — the Danelaw, dense enough that the place-names of northern and eastern England still end in -by, -thorp, -thwaite and -toft. And English did not merely pick up a handful of words for ships and weapons. It took law, and outlaw, and bylaw, and hustings, and the ridings of Yorkshire. It took sky and window and skill and happy and wrong. It took husband and sister — which are not words you learn from raiders, but from neighbours and in-laws. And it took they, them and their: pronouns, the load-bearing grammar of a language, which almost never pass between tongues at all. That happens when two peoples stop being two.

The name is the same joke in miniature. A carl in Norse and a ceorl in Old English are the same word for the same man — an ordinary free commoner, the rank that a wergild valued at two hundred shillings. W. Britain give him a quilted coat, leg wraps, a knife at the belt and an axe held level across the body in both hands, waiting rather than swinging, with nothing about him that commits to a nationality. Use him accordingly: he falls in beside "Torgny" Viking Attacking with Axe or beside "Grindan" Saxon Attacking with Axe with equal conviction, and he will stand in either line — behind "Svend" or behind "Bestanden". Buy two and put one on each side.

Model: 62117 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set