[E. Storesund]

Hello, I'm doing some research for my late vendel kit and in relation to this I am looking for source material regarding Frankish single edged blades in the 8th century. Though beautiful, I'm a bit tired of the "broken back" types, and feel I rarely see much of other blades apart from the early single edgers of the Viking Age.

Any info on books or articles written about the subject would be helpful. Also, pictures are more than welcome if people have any.

[Andreas Becht]

Here's my 8th century sax found in Sarstedt, Germany.

[Peter O Zwart]

Andreas, that's a beautiful sax. I saw some images from a museum recently that showed similar saxes in various lengths, though they seemed to be fairly long. I should have taken a closer look but I will try to track them down. However this post is really just to bring it back to the top as I am interested in this as well.

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Here's a lecture I did earlier this year on saxes:

http://1501bc.com/files/saxes/lecture_saxes_final.ppt

It's a nice summary of the archeological data that I've been able to find. Regarding literature, there's not much published specifically on saxes. One of the best sources of data for Frankish saxes are the German catalogs from graveyard excavations. Some examples:
"Das frühmittelalterliche Gräberfeld bei Weingarten I"; "Die Alamannen im Zollernalbkreis"; "Frühmittelalterliche Gräberfeld von Altheim". Next to that there are a few documents worth getting your hands on:

"Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek, jaargang 42 1996-97", which contains an article on longsaxes from the Netherlands "Untersuchungen an Langsaxen aus niederländischen Sammlungen"

And there is:

"Franken oder Sachsen? Untersuchungen an frühmittelalterlichen Waffen".

And finally I also recommend looking through the many photo pages from the link in my signature

[Peter O Zwart]

Wow! That is amazing Jeroen, thanks so much for the pictures.
I found the pictures that I was referring to on the blade forum, with a good bit of info on them as well:

http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php?showtopic=15743

The more I read about these the more interested I get...