Ygritte's Bow - Meare Heath Replica

Have you ever wondered what type of bow Ygritte is using during 4th season of "Game of Thrones"?

Well here is your answer.

It is a recurved replica of the Meare Heath flatbow found in a bog south of Wales, and is carbon dated circa 2690 BC.

So yeah. Roughly 4700 years ago someone lost their bow in a bog, the bog preserved most of the bow, and it was later discovered and then reconstructed by archaeologists.

Many different people have made their own replicas of the Meare Heath bow, using the original pieces of the bow and drawings made by people who have studied the bow to get an idea of how to design and build it. Below is a diagram showing the original shape of the bow.

The Meare Heath bow is one of the possible designs of the famed Welsh Bow (of which no surviving examples exist). The Welsh Bow was said to be extremely powerful, but since no examples exist we have to rely on samples of bows that might have been similar. Some people believe the Welsh Bow was more like an English longbow, others believe it was like the Meare Heath. Others believe it was cable backed. Nobody knows with absolute certainty because there aren't any Welsh Bows to study and any drawings, paintings or artwork of them look to be too stylized by the artist to tell what their precise shape was.

If you want to learn more about the Meare Heath bow I recommend reading "Ancient European Bows", a chapter in Volume 2 of The Traditional Bowyer's Bible.