shield wall

plural shield walls · alternative shieldwall · alternative shield-wall

1. historicalA defensive formation, used from antiquity through the early Middle Ages, in which soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder with their shields overlapping, creating a continuous barrier against enemy attack.
2. otherwise archaicA barrier.
3. figurativelyAn impenetrable barrier.

   Their spears protruded from the chinks in this formation that was known as the ‘shieldwall’ or ‘war hedge’.

   1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 154

   1 more example

   Still, in spite of the sensation of being caught between a ‘shield-wall’ of opaque references and a ‘word-hoard’ that is old and strange, such readers are also bound to feel a certain ‘shock of the new’.

   1999, Seamus Heaney, “Introduction”, in Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page xii