Weights of historical swords: Super light Viking sword
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
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That must have been a truly beautiful weapon, both to the eye and in the hand.
Incredible sword. Light and fast, simple yet beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
You are welcome.
A general note on this comment section:
I am grateful for your interest in my videos. They are but one means of sharing the results of my research into historical combat with sword & shield with everybody who sees value in my work.
Any video reflects my knowledge at the time of making. Because I am constantly learning, older videos might be out-dated, and I will eventually unlist them. However, you can still find them on my Patreon pages: www.patreon.com/Dimicator/posts
On repeated request, I have re-opened comment sections with recent videos. So you are welcome to leave a comment if you feel you have something substantial to contribute on topic. I very much appreciate being pointed to relevant historical sources. I am not interested in hear-say and unreflected opinions. If a relevant question of yours has been left unanswered, then I might have missed it or the subject was already addressed elsewhere. I only check comments occasionally, so have some patience, please.
Personally, I feel that constructive discussion on martial arts only exists in the analogue world, in a salle or a dojo. Please consider that your own valuable personal martial or military experience is inevitably reduced to mere assertions in a comment section. That is the nature of online media. There is zero competence control. This why I tend to shy away from such discussion. I find they are prone to misunderstanding, and generally a waste of time. Time that is better spent with actual research, practice and hands-on discussion. I am always open for the latter, and anyone with a serious interest is welcome to get in touch via private channels.
Bad manners, boasting and babbling are a pest of the digital age. They have no place here.
Would you mind to present the sword collection in the background?
Well said, and thanks for showing us this specimen. As far as I understand, pattern welding started as a way to make the most of the inconsistent ores available and their limited abilities to refine those ores, but it obviously had become independently important enough just as a visual that they took the time to do this 'veneer' on a homogeneous blade. Not just that, but on an otherwise very plain sword, with 'no indication' it ever sported a pommel-pieces, as you said.
Dear Roland. I must say that freedom of speech is a very important human right.
I think that we must learn to respect that right, even if we don't always like things others might say.
Thank you very much for your content.
@MrTryAnotherOne : I may well do so at one point.
Dear Dimitri, I absolutely agree. However, apparently many people confuse freedom of speech with freedom to ignore all rules of decent conduct. Quite frankly, in general I do not feel that RUclips comment sections and comparable platforms are a great contribution to human civilisation and culture.
Its a very aesthetically pleasing sword especially to the modern eye.
Vielen Dank für diese kleine Serie von Einblicken in die Eigenschaften von originalen Fundstücken.
Zusammen mit Deiner (experimentellen) Interpretation von Schwert und Rundschild im Vergleich mit den späteren historischen Schwert & Buckler/ I.33 Techniken ist diese Arbeit und deren Dokumentation ein wahrer Segen für alle an Rekonstruktion interessierten Fechterinnen und Fechter.
Sehr gern geschehen. Freut mich, wenn meine Arbeit auf Gegenliebe stößt.
great video, as always! Thank you for sharing =) btw, great to see Jan Naujoks in the presentation, his works are a joy to behold - for anyone interested look up Swordforge: The Berggeist =D
Jan is actually considering making a training version of this particular sword.
How were the rivets attached to the pommel? Where they actually a part of the pommel or were there holes punched through both the pommel and the upper guard and riveted on both ends? This has always baffled me.
A thought on the many recent nicks:
As the fine blade edge is exposed to corrosion it does not need heavy impact to chip. Hitting a rock during deposition/re-deposition should be enough to make it later look like a mistreated sparring sword.
As pointed out the "older" nicks near the vorderen Ort/ point have been exposed long enough so that they appear somewhat smooth now (holding a nice patina, of course)
True, yet the various nicks and scratches attest to some careless misuse of this artefact. there is no doubt about it.
That was a missing link for me. Thanks for the additional information.
Hi Roland, a great example of master craftsmen work. Has any one done an analysis on the metals used in construction of the swords, to trace where or what region the metal came from ? I know the Vikings had extensive trade links, I find it interesting to see if the metal was sourced locally or traded for.
Thanks for creating these very interesting videos.
Dear Jeff, i am happy that you enjoy my videos. In regards to this sword: No, I am not aware of an according study. However, I am not sure if there methods to determine provenance of steel at all. At any rate, there is a clear Anglo-Saxon influence here, and according to one viewer's comment, most examples were found in Britain and Norway. Historically, there were close cultural and political links between Wessex and Norway in the early 10th century.
Nicko Persilion Hi Nick, I never heard or seen the doco in question. I like Viking history and know they had very large trade links. I know gold, silver, copper was traded and I assumed iron/steel also. I am particularly interested in the metallurgy of the blades wether if there was a source of iron/steel that was regarded as superior and sort after ( regardless if it was or not ) than locally made material.
@@jeffpurcell7035
Pattern welded stuff would be the most highly valued iron product. The vast majority of viking iron was produced domestically by reducing bog iron nodules in low furnaces. The vikings would know which bog produced the best iron ore, and therefore which "iron farm" produced the best steel.
Actually the entire viking world revolved around bog iron exploitation and smelting, everything snowballed from that.
As you know, some parts a bloom produced by a low furnace are always more carburized than others and can be set aside as edge material. Then the pattern welding method can further purify and carburize that material. It is a question of case hardening thin strips of low or mild carbon steel, then fire weld a bunch of hardened strips together to get a mild or high carbon steel bar.
Nicko Persilion thanks for the information, I didn’t know about the bog iron aspect, I will have to find out more regarding that interesting iron source.
Man, I Hope it was either deposited or lost in combat. I would feel awful if I was as silly as being on a nice viking river cruise, and Someone leaned over the deck wrong, or lost their balance while cleaning the sword and and if fell into the river. Poor guy.
Roland, did you identify the point of balance? I don't think I heard anything about that other than the comment that the weapon was 'top heavy.' Fascinating reports, BTW. Looking forward to the next one.
I am glad that you enjoy my videos. POB is 20cm from the lower guard with this example.
@@swordandshield thanks.
You are welcome.
@@swordandshield is it normal to add an aftermarket pummel? Since the sword is super light it must have changed it a lot
@Angry Guy: Sorry, I do not fully comprehend the question.
Have there been any quality reproductions of this sword yet?
I do not know.
hi roland! love your stuff! how much would you estimate has a blade like this lost due to the corrosion? 10-15%?
Hard to say. But I am sure the weapon actually lost more material during its life due to repeated sharpening. Swordmaker Craig Johnson from the Oakeshott Institute once told me that he feels that in general losses caused by corrosion were over-rated. However, that would always depend on the state of an individual sword, of course. With this one, I would be surprised if we lost more than 5%, probably even less. But this is a guess only.
@@swordandshield thank you for the swift answer. i'll asume your educated guess is way better than mine :)
Hi can I ask where you buy your reproduction swords please. Many thanks
0:05
YES!!!! I finally know how his name is pronounced!!!!
THE QUESTION OF THIS GOOD MAN'S FAMILY NAME HAUNTED MY DREAMS FOR TO MANY NIGHTS UNTIL THIS DAY!
I wonder if that sword had a decorative pommel cap of some kind of organic material, just attached with glue.
Interesting idea. However, none has been found with a comparable sword from England which survived in its scabbard. Yet no remains of an organic pommel cap.
Is the upper guard slightly twisted on this sword? Like on some other swords from this period
Good question. No, the upper guard is parallel to the lower guard. There is no need for a twist due to the design of hilt fittings. A twist is usually only required with pommels that have a rectangular cross section, which means they are relatively thick at the edges. This upper guard tapers in cross section, plus there is no pommel cap in the first place.
Roland is there in your opinion a reasonable hope in trying to reconstruct any Classical age sword and shield tecniques been guided by the shape of the weapons themselves? In your opinion a HEMA basis could compromise this effort or au contraire give some solid comparative system?
Well, my partner in crime, archaeologist Ingo Petri, is currently working at a museum that focuses on Roman/Germanic warfare of the first century. So we have started to at least experiment with even earlier shields. However, I could not possibly list up all the problems involved with reconstructing classic combat in an appropriate manner here. but at least we started looking into it …
@@swordandshield best wishes!
@Roland Warzecha is there a shallow fuller or is it flat sided and what are the widths and thicknesses of the blade at the hilt and where the blade stops tapering for the point
Very shallow fuller indeed. You can feel it, but it is hard to capture on video.
The idea of having a metal veneer as decoration is interesting, is that common or is it unique to this particular sword?
Quite common. There are various ways of constructing an early medieval blade. This is but one of them.
@@swordandshield Cheers, thanks for the information.
I do think the weight analysis of these weapons is underestimating the material lost to corrosion. on such a thin sectioned blade even losing 0.2 or 0.3mm would be a large % of the blade weight. I have seen videos where swords with quite a pitted surface have been weighed and then that given as 'the weight' and that irks me. sure, they are lighter than everyone thinks, but river finds are i think not as representative as some beleive.
James, of course we do not know. Yet if a patina to protect the steel underneath does not evolve quickly once the sword ended up in a river, the blade would corrode completely. The finest parts are the edges and they would go first. So with this sword still being sharp, I do not think we lost much material.
@@swordandshieldOf course i did not see this sword like you did (jealous) but at 1.13 it appears the edge is corroded away almost completely. any ferrous item, be it a sword or just part of a wreck or machinery of some sort, that has a tapered edge can and often will still be sharp even when even heavily corroded. As the material on the slope is eaten away on the taper it will naturally leave quite a sharp edge. It would be fascinating to examine such a sword as this and i hate to make a guess from the screen but i would be very surprised if that surface had lost on average less than 0.5mm of material judging from 1.15 were the deep valleys between forge welded layers are visible. its possible the truth is more or less but i think that is a reasonable estimate. I see that the thickness is 3.5mm at the centre and 2 towards the edges. so, if it has lost 0.5mm then that is around 15-20% of its mass. that might seem extreme because it still looks so great, but that amount of mass loss evenly distributed would not be totally visible. The wavy and pitted edge i think shows clear areas where a 1mm thick part has totally gone. but this is all terrible guesstimate from a video, it could be 0.25mm but i would be willing to bet quite heavily it falls within that range. There is also the issue of the patina actually adding thickness compared to original corroded surface etc. etc. but thats getting too picky. I wouldn't be surprised if this was as much as a 0.9kg sword when new.
So this seem to be a local north german style?
Probably not. There is a clear Anglo-Saxon influence here regarding design, and according to one viewer's comment, most examples were found in Britain and Norway. Historically, there were close cultural and political links between Wessex and Norway in the early 10th century. My current guess is that it is Norwegian.
@@swordandshield But how would a north German sword look like? In the viking era of course.
Indeed, Roland and myself had a chat about these via email, as there are many of them in NW Britain, mostly outside of the Anglo-Saxon area. My feeling is that these are actually British Isles products, but not Anglo-Saxon products, as I feel the who curved hilt form in the late 9th-early 10th is quite strong in the British Isles, and then throughout the tenth it seems to spread. We have many many pommeless L types in Wales, Cumbria, the Isle of Man, and Scotland.
How much hase the Sword Weight in the Old Days .The grip Wrap is rotten Away I gues The wood would hase the weight around 60 grams if leather Around This meen around this would make around 45 grams and When string around the grip that i gues around 50 grams .Than the Total Grip wrap would weigt around 105-110 Grams The Sword Weigt 730 grams Grip Wrap and Sword 835 -840 Grams . but there is Iron lost from the sword i dont hase a Idea how much i dont know maybe under 60 grams than The Total Weigt in the Old Days maybe 900 Grams ?
At the max. I actually think this sword lost more material due to repeated sharpening than to corrosion. But that is just a guess.
@@swordandshield to Grind with Scharpenig weight away is not so easy ibut i hase only try with a Tungsten Carbid scharpener (wolfram Carbid Schärfer ) or (Acu Scharp ) i hase avery Hevy cutlass i hase tried to make it lighter with scharpening is not so easy. For the first. when i Scharpenig i use forthe rough grind Tungsten Carbid and for the smoth grind i use Ceramic Scharpener mostly From Kyocera and a Normal ceramic Scharpener i am to un Skilled to Scharpenig Sword conservative way.
@@swordandshield would be (850 -860 ) more Plausibel then is the sword super light
@@swordandshield what weight hase a Medival one Handed Sword some thing Betwen (over 800 gram and 2 Kilo gram ) i think this is a very big Difference i gues ?
@ Killer kraut: there are always outliers, but 2kg for a one-handed sword would be ridiculously heavy. Between 800 g to 1200 g would be standard, if such generalisation is legitimate at all. There a lot of factors that impact a weapon's handling characteristics, weight is but one of them.
Are you polish?
As the tong is so big were there ever a wooden handle attached to it or did they just leather wrap the tong as is?
I assume there was a wooden handle originally.
Modern damage? Was it done by 19th century people sparring with it?
Ekk, I was thinking the curator meant stone damage to a degrading edge while in the river, but the old nicks being use damage (most probably). Very simple yet beautiful sword I must say.
We do not know what caused the modern nicks in the edges. Could have been the finders or pretty much anybody who handled the sword after its recovery. Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence.
Avant-garde Student , in general, yes. However, with this one we do not have to guess: It was discovered in a river.