Slitherine

I'm a bit confused about this term, and which men or class it is supposed to refer to, and at which time and from which culture. Hirdmen are the superior Anglo-Saxon spearmen in-game, as contrasted with huscarls on the Viking list, until the late Anglo-Saxon list where both sides have huscarls.

From wikipedia (I know not the best source, but just to get started here) I'm getting:

The hird, in Scandinavian history, was originally an informal retinue of personal armed companions,[1] hirdmen or housecarls...The term comes from Old Norse hirð, again from either Old English hir(e)d 'household, family, retinue, court'[3] or perhaps the old German cognate heirat 'marriage', both of which can mean "body of men" or more directly linked to the term for hearthguard, or men of one's own home and hearth.

So, maybe it actually means hearthguard? Or, huscarl, hird, and hearthguard are the same thing? Some wargaming lists appear to use hirdmen as like the mid to high level viking units, lower tier than huscarls, like RavenFeast, and then Hearthguard for the elite Anglo-Saxons:

Anglo-Saxon List:



Viking List:



Where Hearthguard are the same as Huscarls, and a bit better than Hirdmen. Does anyone know the historical or gameplay justification for what these units should be called? Are the cultures similar enough that these are all related, and somewhat interchangeable terms, and a game just has to pick one for purposes of distinguishing units? Are there yet other terms for these and similar Northern European mid-high to very high tier "units" or warriors?

Thanks for any help.

terms like gesith, hirdmen, hearthguard/hearthweru and huscarl are all relatively similar dark ages to early medieval Scandinavian and Anglo terms for the household or otherwise close retainers or bodyguard of a king, lord, etc...perhaps Viking lists could go from using hirdmen to huscarls over that time period, and Anglo-Saxon lists from gesith to hearthweru, and later to thanes/thegns perhaps, but you could probably just pick one to assign to one or the other faction as evidently Old Norse and Old Anglo-Saxon were semi mutually intelligible.