Social Class and Warriors
The society of 1007 is dominated by social class. War is no exception. Only free men are warriors. The unfree classes are forbidden to bear arms — serfs are only found armed if they are outlaws, or when directly defending their own village (and perhaps not even then!). Warriors are divided into types based on social class. The reason for this is strictly economic — the most effective warriors have the most expensive equipment, and so are drawn from the upper classes. In Christendom, knights are drawn from the upper classes only — warhorses are possibly the most expensive thing on the battlefield. It takes a village — the entire output of a small village, at least — to equip a knight (apologies to Hillary Clinton). Armor and weapons are also expensive; warriors from higher social strata will be more heavily armored than poorer freemen, and more likely to wield high-quality swords instead of low-quality axes and spears. More cheaply equipped warriors, such as archers, are drawn from the lower ranks of the freemen.
In pagan Europe, the situation is almost identical. Pagans in general do not field cavalry — the rugged terrain of their homelands, and the oceans they have to cross to get to their enemies, make horses impractical. As a result, all pagan warriors can be lumped together as “vikings,” but there are still vast differences between vikings of different social classes. Upper class vikings are heavily armored, with high quality weapons. Lower class vikings are likely to be lightly armored or unarmored, and armed only with axes and spears. Pagan Europe has a much larger underclass of poor freemen who act as warriors than does Christendom. Thralls, like serfs, do not travel to war. Thralls, however, definitely take up arms in defense of their own homelands; folk stories are told of thralls who won their freedom with heroics in defense of their masters.