[S. Christiansen]

I'm sure there is a topic about this already, as I got more than 6000 pages with results when I searched for it. Perhaps I just don't know how to use the search engine properly.

I find it hard to find any information on the early Migration Period swords on the internet. According to Wikipedia they usually had grips of "perishable material", so I was wondering how accurate a sword similar to the Kragehul bog sword would be with a grip like any of these?

[Mike Arledge]

I don't think those look bad at all, actually pretty nice in my books.

Here is Albion's older Migration sword
http://www.myArmoury.com/review_alb_mig.html

Here is an excellent recreation of the Sutton Hoo
http://www.myArmoury.com/review_tmpl_suthoo.html

DelTin makes an excellent piece too, it is their model 2070. I won it, and its a terrific piece. I think it is quite correct that many migration pieces are known for having organic "perishable" hilt pieces.

[S. Christiansen]

Thanks, I can see how they have similarities. Do you perhaps know of any particular finds that looks like any of those in the link, other than maybe the Kragehul bog sword?

Another thing I've been wondering about is the fullers; I've seen anything from one wide to two or three narrow fullers on reconstructed Migration Period swords. What do you think would be the most accurate for a Scandinavian (or rather Danish) sword of the early Migration Period?

[Hugh Fuller]

You might wish to check out Patrick Barta's Roman Riding Sword. It is a replica of a sword pulled from the Kragehul Bog in Denmark and he dates it from the 4th -5th Centuries CE. I have one and it has five, count them, 5 narrow fullers on each side of the blade. I have no idea of its actual origin, but versions of this sword seem to be found in museum collections all over Northern Europe so I suspect that it must have been a very common style. Of course, the bronze cladding on the hilt makes this aspect more likely to survive than most swords from that era.

http://www.templ.net/english/weapons-antiquit...ding_sword

[S. Christiansen]

I can't tell how many yours have, but I counted only four on that one. It's still more than I've seen on other replicas, though.

I see either four or five narrow fullers on the blade below, so I'm guessing they had that many in the early Migration Period, while they later only had one wide.

[Darrin Hughes]

This is interesting timing as I have just recently been discussing the Kragehul swords with a couple of smiths here in the UK. My own starting point was the precursors section in Records of the Medieval Sword which covers 8 Danish bog finds and I would say that the Barta sword looks like a bit of a Frankenstein job. The hilt is of a type found at Kragehul. However, the blade looks like an earlier roman type found in the Nydam bog deposits.
Now from the people I have spoken to about actually having a sword made, the Kragehul deposits represent the earliest Scandinavian/Germanic early migration swords with no Roman material at all. Also, whilst there are a number of hilt types at Kragehul, my own favourite being the very severly waisted grip with the large pommel and guard in bronze such as Albion used on their first Gen. Kragehul sword, the blades tend to show a move away from the multiple grooves and diamond section of the Roman swords, in favour of a single wide,shallow fuller. Almost inevitably these would have been pattern-welded.

Cheers,
Darrin.

ps, if you do a google search for kragehul bog sword you should find the Albion version of the type of hilt that I mentioned above. It's a shame about the homogenous steel blade but then Albion don't do pattern-welding.

[Hugh Fuller]

[Hugh Fuller]

Better late than never, so here goes. The picture of the sword is in Plate I, following her Appendices, Footnotes, and Further References. It is sword "c" and is labelled as being from the Kragehul Bog. If you look closely at the picture, you will see not only the bronze clad hilt but the blade having multiple visible very narrow fullers on it. Now, given that Roman sword blades and even entire swords did make it into barbaricum despite laws to the contrary, is it not unreasonable to raise the possiblity that the blade could, indeed, be Roman?

[Darrin Hughes]

Hi Hugh.

Good timing. I just received my new copy of The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England today, so I now know the sword that you are looking at. There is a better picture of this sword in Records and it is from the Kragehul bog, but it is not grooved. The striated look of the blade is caused by the different effects of corrosion on the steel edge and the pattern-welded core. If you can get hold of a copy of Records of the Medieval Sword, then have a look at page 21, Precursors 4-8. The sword pictured in The sword in Anglo-Saxon England is No.4 (Behmer's Type IV,Kragehul,AD400), whereas the blade on the Barta sword looks like the one on example No.8, which has no description of type, but is from Nydam and dated AD250-350.

Now I know that there are examples of earlier swords being re-hilted in the latest fashions in the Medieval period. But I don't know if there are any examples of this during the crossover from Roman to Scandinavian in Northern Europe. To me the Barta sword still looks like the possibly Roman blade from Nydam, with the almost definitely Danish hilt from Kragehul. I'm not saying that somewhere along the line some Danish warrior didn't have a Roman blade re-hilted to his taste and maybe this was Patrick's inspiration. Just that, from the evidence available from Oakeshott and Davidson, the Barta sword doesn't exactly match anything from the Danish bog finds, but instead looks like a combination of swords from 2 different areas.

I would like to say that the Barta sword does look a very nice piece, unlike some of his more elaborate pieces which are sometimes a bit much for my taste. I just think that to label it as a Roman sword from Kragehul is to go against the available evidence.

BTW,as it was Mr. Christanson who started this thread with a question about grips, I would say that the hilts on the swords in the link all look pretty good for early Norse, but that some of the earlier grips,such as the one at the top of the link, actually had pommels and guards made of solid bronze. This is the type of sword that I've been talking about having made.

Cheers,
Darrin.

[Hugh Fuller]

Well, as the number on it implies, the sword is one of Patrick's earliest efforts and mine may be one of the very first of his swords to appear in the States (I ordered it in 09/01 and received it in 03/02). I do know that, when I ordered it, almost nobody had heard of him or of his work, only that he had done some work with ArmArt before he went independent (good timing, that) and that they thought highly of him. As soon as I got mine, I started to receive emails and PMs from all around wanting to know what I thought of his work. I thought that it was so good that I immediately began saving for one of his rather more expensive swords and I now have his # 118 Abingdon sword on order for delivery in the spring of 2009. My, how the wait has grown!

As I said in an earlier post, Patrick's web site initially said that the sword was based upon one from the Nydam Bog and he only changed that to the Kragehul Bog in the past couple of years, so I am led to wonder just exactly what the history is. In any case, it is a damned fine sword for my purposes as it is beautifully made and looks sufficiently Roman to work in a very late Roman personna of ca. 400 CE and sufficiently Teutonic for my Migration Age Anglo-Saxon personna of 500 CE - 800 CE. I have a tri-lobed "Viking" sword to carry me up until 1066 CE and, when it cmes, I will have that Abingdon sword for a similar period. The difference between the two latter ones is that the first can and is used for re-enactment of shield wall battles while the second is too damed expensive for that sort of foolishness and is a sharp, in any case. I should imagine that it would not be welcomed in any combat re-enactment or I should hope not.

[Hugh Fuller]

Mr. Christiansen, to answer your question directly, the sword replica which fits your description best isthe one that Albion once made but no longer makes. It is the one reviewed here: http://www.myArmoury.com/review_alb_mig.html and it is a quite handsome piece. I have seen any number of pictures of swords in museums around Europe that were obviously made with hilts of that type where the organic material has rotted away. Some also have rings attached to the pommels, our understanding of the use of which is rather confused. I rather prefer the sandwiched design to the metal-clad designs, but the Albion was 2.5 times the cost of my Barta sword and that was before I added their optional scabbard intot the cost whereas Patrick provided one in the price that he asked. That was one of the basic decision points that led me to buy his model over the Albion one, even though I prefered the esthetics of Albion's. I have learned since to appreciate Patrick's sword for other things as well as its price. By the way, he no longer has such a pronounced price advantage but his current price of 800 Euros for that Roman Riding Sword is stiill a reasonable one, just not the steal that it used to be.

[Kirk Lee Spencer]

Here are some swords published in Engelhardt's "Nydam Mosefund"


ks

[Darrin Hughes]

I've caught up on a bit of reading and it would seem that it was the hilt type which crossed over from the Roman to the Danish swords, rather than the blade. This would mean that the hilt on the Barta sword would have been perfectly feasible with that type of grooved blade; but also explains why they are found on migration swords from a century-and-a-half later. It also explains this type of hilt being found at Kragehul on a pattern-welded blade, along-side others with strictly Northern European hilt types such as the Type 3 that Albion put on their Kragehul sword.

The Type 4 hilt, like the one on the Sutton Hoo sword, appeared quite late on by comparison. This seems to be the last type of hilt attributed specifically to the Migration swords before people start thinking in terms of Viking and/or Anglo-Saxon. Incidentally, this is the type of hilt on the pattern-welded sword that I should be picking up this weekend from Paul Binns. This was scheduled to be done towards the end of last year, but it got pushed back a couple of months. The next project will hopefully be another pattern-welded blade, with a Type 3 hilt, specifically to represent the earlier post-roman period.

I hope this is of some help,
Cheers,
Darrin.

ps, the sword at the top of the picture that Kirk has posted is the one that I was refering to from Records.. the Nydam sword from the 3rd century. As you can see, this sword has a hilt that looks like a cross between a Type 1 and a Type 3, so it would seem that there was a certain amount of mix and match as swords evolved through the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries AD.