A single-bit axe with a crescent head, cut from MDF and painted black with a grey stripe worked along the cutting edge so it reads as sharpened metal from across a room. The haft is a long pale wooden shaft, tapered and slightly waisted toward the butt, and it is pinned to the head with a single visible rivet.

The proportions are the point: the head is deep and the haft is long, which is what a Norse axe looks like and what a hardware-store hatchet does not. At 179 grams the whole thing is light enough to swing one-handed.

If you want something smaller and softer, we also carry a mini foam axe in blue. Kalidinteriors makes them by hand in Vic, outside Barcelona.