While playing with my Albion SL Vinlad today, I started thinking about what a Viking sword really felt like to a Viking. It occurred to me that in reality, there are few of us who would ever know. Part of the equation that establishes the "feel" of a sword is the design and careful craftsmanship of the sword. But I would think that the biggest part that constitutes "feel" is the build of the person wielding it. To put it more simply, any sword is going to feel different to the proverbial ninety pound weakling than it would to a body builder.

Vikings, and others of their era, lived a very different life than we do. It was very physically intensive. They farmed with crude instruments. They rowed across oceans in their spare time. They worked with their swords daily since youth. Their hands were probably calloused to leather from their daily routines. The weakest of these people must have had a physical superstructure that is seldom seen today.

So, in our quest to experience the true and accurate "feel" of a Viking sword it occurs to me that there are few of us today who could ever actually get that experience. Kind of depressing, huh?

Eric, can I get your dentist's phone number?

I think we tend to compare our average to the most exceptional personalities of times gone by. It can be tempting to diminish ourselves against the myths, legends and heroes passed to us. Especially when day to day we see average and the whole bell curve associated with it. Ironically, I'd imagine the epic heroes of old also looked at the people around them from time to time and also thought they were diminished from the people who came before.

As for the feel of a viking sword, I imagine you're within a standard deviation of what somebody who did not spend years training in its use would feel back in the day. With years of training, I'd venture that you could narrow the gap on anybody from the time.

I was reading de Charny a while ago and found it interesting that he implied that some knights even in his era weren't maintaining themselves physically. I suspect there were plenty of people in any era of history who were overweight and out of shape regardless of whether they were warriors or not.

IMO the biggest differences between us handling a Viking sword and an actual Viking doing it is that the Viking would have a different cultural framework which would color his experience and he'd probably be more familiar with exactly how the early swords with short grips and narrow crosses were intended to be employed in combat. Physical conditioning is definitely a part of swordsmanship and you do have to be strong to some extent but most people who've been practicing a while will run out of stamina before they run out of strength even if they don't do any other exercise besides fencing. The next bottleneck is usually mental fatigue. Raw physical strength really comes into its own when you go corps to corps with somebody, the whole purpose of a weapon is that it serves as somewhat of an equalizer.

As someone who is living in a rural country where many people do still farm with scythe's and hoes I can tell you that:

Old people are noticeably stronger than they are in sedentary cultures, because in societies where cars are rare, large loads have to be carried long distances, wood has to be chopped regularly, and there is very little in the way of medical services. So the really out of shape people you so often see in the 1st world would be limited to the upper classes or the urban segments of society. However, absolute strength, like how much can be benched, etc, wouldn't have been anything compared to 1st world athletes.

Hi guys, I did a video related to this not long ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG0Q2mzn0Ok

As a former archaeologist I have dug up people from the early to late middle ages and had to study the stats to some extent, which are well published by organisations like the Museum of London. We know that the average height of late-Saxon London men was around 5'8" (now it is 5'10") and that it reached a low point during the industrial revolution. General health seems to have been better in the early middle ages than the later middles ages and Renaissance, due to greater prevalence of good food in earlier diet and less overcrowding/better sanitation in urban settlements. Of course that's just talking about towns and cities - rural health probably didn't change much for a long period of history. We can also tell quite a lot about muscular development from skeletons.

In any case, I think this all sort of misses the point. The point - I think - is covered in my video. It is about specific physical conditioning for a specific task. It is not a matter of general fitness and strength - a modern person can certainly become as fit or strong as a person from history - we're genetically the same (though our ancestors were on average the fittest, strongest and cleverest to survive, and they were immune to the Black Death that killed a large percentage of Europe!). It is just a matter of training our bodies for that task. That involves getting the muscles and tendons used to that task and yes to some extent even things like thickening the skin of the hands or feet might play an important part. For example, in Nepal they have long distance races up mountains in shoes made of tyre rubber tied to the feet… That requires a specific set of training involving altitude training, feet toughening, balance training to traverse rocky ground as well as general endurance. Similarly, certain combat styles involve very specific training - using shields requires the left shoulder to become stronger than most combat styles are used to. Using certain sidesword, sabre and backsword systems requires the right shoulder to get stronger than for other systems. Using smallswords effectively requires very flexible and quick lunge and recover action with the legs. Take an expert in any one combat style and make them fight in another system and it will take them some time to adjust.

So I think it's mainly a matter of familiarisation. There are lots of extremely fit and hardy people in the world today, living very physical and hard lives, but that doesn't mean that they would have an advantage at Olympic javelin, sprinting, archery or fencing, without actually training in those sports enough to compete at that level. In other words, skill/practice is usually the most important thing.

The biggest difference in how stronger and less strong person would describe a feel of a certain sword would be in sword's static weight. A good sword with an appropriate mass distribution feels alive and agile in movement even if a person wielding it isn't very fit.