This sword started out its life as an ArmArt budget knightly sword. The original owner was Rob Oxley (not sure if he is a member here). He had it sent to John Lundemo to see what he could do with the fuller which ArmArt leaves in an unground state. Here is the sword before.

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And here is what John did with the sword afterwards! Polished the crossguard and pommel, ground the fuller out and then added dye and wax to the leather grip. The edge was also straightened in areas, and the entire sword recieved a polish.

It looks like a completely different sword. Any good sword needs a scabbard so I set out to make one. Although the fuller is more of a type XII variety, I decided to present it as more of a viking style blade. The scabbard is made from poplar wood and stained a dark walnut color. The chape and throat are vegetable tanned leather which i gave a worn appearence too. After a bit I decided to make some minor changes to the scabbard and I also decided to add a weathered appearence to the hilt of the sword.

The balance is about 6 inches from the hilt, but the sword itself only weighs about 2.5 pounds. The blade is a bit under 2 inches wide at the hilt (around 1.8 or so) and the thickness is about 1/4 of an inch at the base. It has a progressive distal taper, it looks to be around a 60% decrease in thickness towards the tip.

In all I am very pleased with this sword and suprised my scabbard came out so well. I am no craftsman by a long shot but I think I did a decent job.

-edited for numerous spelling errors, gotta get some coffee-

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Nice. The viking redesign is plausible - not only are there several Type X/Xa viking swords with very similar hilts, but there are also several Type XII viking blades. I think you could sell this as a sword from the year 1100, as we have several surviving examples of both varieties.

Question: do the runes have any meaning?
What I'm making out there is
"R - K - EI - N"
"S - H - G - W"

Well since it would appear that in some cases Viking/Frankish/Whatever smiths put random (at least so far as we know) combinations of letters on their blades you are in good company... :)