Hi all,

For my next purchase I am considering buying the Hanwei Irish Viking sword. I like the asthetics and most importantly it looks to be quite light, which is great as my Albion viking sword is far too heavy for me to use. My main concern is that the sword looks quite short at only 28 1/4 inches blade length.

I wondered if this was historical so started flicking through my books and eventually while reading through "Records of the medieval sword" I noticed that a sword looked extremely similar and I saw that the blade length was the same, which further reinforced my suspicions that this is the sword than Hanwei copied.

Now my problem is that the sword in the Oakeshott book has a broken tip. I don't know if the blade measurement includes this or extrapolates the length of the blade as it should had been. I suspect that the 28 inch blade length does not take into account the missing tip.

It seems quite crazy that Hanwei in copying this sword would not make the sword the correct length, it is quite easy to see how long the sword should had been as the missing section is slight.

I could however be wrong as Hanwei say that the sword is copied from a sword found in Ireland, while the sword I found in the book was discovered in Norfolk England.


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At the Hanwei pricerange I think it's fine to have to do some adjustments to them to make them perfect. Difficult to make the blade longer though.
I haven't found the irish sword Hanwei used either, but havíng looked recently at several swords in the Historiska Museet here in Stockholm there are all sorts of vking age sword lenghts there, from very long 1 meter swords to "child size" perhaps 20-25" total length. So this lenght is at least credible for the time period.

Very attractive looking sword though. Hanwei is really stepping up their line with this one and the Crecy. I just wish they'd make the scabbards to the same level, I guess they're getting there eventually.

Is this sword available in the US? I have checked Kult of Athena and Hanwei's web site, but have not found this one. Where can I get one?

It is an exclusive only to the Hanwei re-sellers.

In the US its edgefair, here is their website. http://cascollectorsclub.com/

I believe that for people outside the US, there are various services through which you can purchase goods that are only available in the US and have them shipped to you. It'll cost you a bit, though. Should be able to Google them... afraid I don't have any off the top of my head, considering I already live here :P

You can get it from the UK dealer too. Probably all the hanwei dealers in the various countries will have the exclusive.. anyways its going a bit off topic.

I'm liking this sword a bunch. I've added it to my list of swords to buy when the holidays are over here in the states. If your intending on buying one soon then check out This Thread.

KOA has it but you have to e-mail them first and they will send you a link to checkout