MTW Pocket Mod: Units, Buildings and Unit Stats

[naut]

Well, that really depends. The axe was the weapon favoured in Scandinavia well into the 12th century, and there was no specified "dressing code" for hirdmän, so it's equally possible that a hirdman wielded a sword or an axe.

Yes, I was just generalising (it is called the Dane axe or Viking axe for a reason )

It was quite common that hirds worked as small dragoon units, riding to the battle but fighting on foot.

Yeah, a tactic also used alot by German(ic) peoples of the Era.

Hirds were small bodies of men, used as personal protection to a certain person. Hirdmän/hirdmen were mostly sons of some nobleman, but who were the third or fourth son in line, preventing them from gaining any profitable heritage, or making them "unmarriable". They could of course be bastards (frillosöner) but that wasn't really a disadvantage untill the 13th or 14th century, when christianty had finally rooted properly.
Anyway, these sons or heirs tended to join a hird for some nobleman (mostly a friend or relative to their own family). There were juridical limitations of how big a hird was allowed to be, depending on the class of the person "owning" the hird. For example, the bishop of Skara was allowed to have a 12 men strong hird, but this of course varied from time to time. The biggest hirds were in the hundred or something, IIRC.

That fills in the gaps of my knowledge. IIRC there were possibly never more than 2000 Hirds across Scandinavia, but I'm not entirely sure of this.

Huscarles perhaps only in scalable 20 man units

For gameplay reasons it sounds like a good idea.