This is one of my all-time favorites, and while some of you may have seen it before if you frequented the vikingsword.com forums a few years back, I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere, and thought that it might be of interest to some of you.

The sword was found in a Bavarian lake in 2002 by a man named Wolfgang Pfau, who took it to the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection for authentication. They apparently confirmed its authenticity and dated it to the late 8th century. Sadly, that's about it for my information at this point in time. I haven't been able to locate the finder, and I'm currently waiting to hear back from the Archaeological Collection. If anyone has any information or any suggestions, I'd be interested to hear them.

The most remarkable feature of the sword would seem to be the extensive inlays in the fuller. Patrick Bárta, whose opinion is obviously far better informed then my own, concluded from these photographs that the blade was not pattern-welded, and that the inlays appear to be of the same construction as the later Ulfberht examples. If this is so, the sword would either seem to have been mis-dated or an exceptionally early example of a "smith inlay" ...although the pattern itself does not appear to contain any text.

The blade appears to be somewhere between a Geibig type 1 and type 2, the edges being nearly parallel as in the type 1 and the fuller and point resembling a type 2. This would place it at home in the late 8th or early 9th century. It is, however, quite short. Assuming that the grip is of the usual size, which it appears to be, I would estimate the blade to be in the area of 23-24 inches, with a length of about 30 inches overall. There is a type M of about this length in Peirce's Swords of the Viking Age, though the blade of that weapon has a very strong taper to it.

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I would, at any rate, be very grateful for your thoughts/comments, especially as this particular sword would seem to fall somewhat outside of the norm.

-C.L.Miller

C.L.,
Any more on this blade?

Ric

my sentiment precisely .
there is some interesting stuff going on in there .
thanks for posting.....
are there any higher resolution pictures of it anywhere ?

The older thread at Viking Sword is here.

http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000064.html

The original photos zoom pretty well but not exactly macro.

Cheers

GC

Looks almost like a cousin of this one in the Drenthe Provincial Museum in Assen (Inv.Nr. H 1923-270)
OAL: 102,2 cm; Blade Length: 88,8 cm; Hilt: 13,4 cm; Grip: 9,3 cm.
Pommel: maximal 3,05 x 5,8 x 3,4 cm.
Cross: maximal 0,9/0,7 x 15,0 x 2,5/3,0 cm.
Blade: largest width ± 6,4 cm largest thickness 0,55 cm.
Fuller: width: ± 2,6 cm; depth: 0,1 cm.

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