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Prior to the Viking Age, Germanic tribes sometimes celebrated victories over foes by throwing their defeated enemies' captured weapons and gear into lakes or bogs as an offering to their gods. One such offering -- a ship filled with weapons and sunk in a bog as a votive offering to the gods, dating from the third century AD -- was discovered at Nydam, near the southern end of the Jutland peninsula. The Nydam ship provided a particularly rich archeological find from a history of archery standpoint, for it contained a total of thirty-six partial and complete bows. Most were classically proportioned longbows, some over six feet long, made of different woods, including yew. The limbs of a few of the longbows were tipped with sharpened iron nocks, apparently to allow the bow to be used as a close range stabbing weapon if an enemy closed with the archer.

Two bows found in Viking era burials provide archeological evidence of the types of bows actually used by Viking warriors. Both are large, classically shaped and proportioned longbows made of yew. One, found at Ballinderry in Ireland, was six feet one inch long. The other, found in a burial at Hedeby in southern Denmark, was six feet three and one-half inches long. This latter bow was sufficiently well preserved to allow estimation, from its size and proportions, that its draw weight was probably around one hundred pounds -- a powerful bow, indeed.