[Jamie Fellrath]

Hi all,

On a medieval history board I frequent, a member was talking about a "Celtic Rapier" type weapon that I'd never heard of. Here's his reference for it (as well as a rough picture).

[Sean Flynt]

Hey, Jamie! I vaguely recall Oakeshott using the term in The Archaeology of Weapons to refer to an ancient blade form. It's been years since I read it, so I may misremember. Anyway, you might find something there...

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

Reviving the post after 20 years because this shouldn't be left unanswered.

There's a real lack of English material on Knollenknaufschwert (the "celtic rapiers" all feature bubbles on the pommel that made the German Historians call the sword this way), mostly because they only appear in the territory of France, Switzerland and Southern Germany, so the literature about it was either German or French, but lack of interest prevented translations or divulgation to English (which is the universal language for studying swords today). If you want papers, Dr. Fabrice Cognot have some pdfs, I haven't seen him in myArmoury these years but he's still active in Facebook and often talk to me there.

Because such Iron Age Celtic Swords are not the general interest of sword studies, there wasnt really an effort to publish stuff about it, which is also the case for 400-550 AD spathae, which has an actual typology that explains the developments we see in the Viking Era: Western Europe developed Germanic types of Late Spathae, which were shorter, wider and for strong cuts; Balkan/Byzantine Swords developed mainly from Asiatic Types, which were slimmer and longer, like cavalry swords. There's even a Russian/Eurasian case which some have interpreted to be two-handed spathae. In any case, there's translation and divulgation work to be done in that respect.
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For the Knollenknaufschwert itself: the main type is a triangular section blade that goes up to 93-103cm overall length (thus some 83-93cm long). Some examples feature ridges (though the only one which I have seen its actual section has ridges on both sides, I posted it bellow) and at least one, the shortest, has a diamond section (I don't know if it's thick enough to qualify as square section), more similar to the most known thrusting shortswords of Celtic Antiquity


https://www.trommer-archaeotechnik.de/Repliken_Schwerter.html



Neues museum, Germany.



https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_a/advanced/ta_1_1c.html#Knollenknaufschwerter


So, it seems the approach the Celts in nowadays Germany and France solved the limitations in metalurgy and iron purity were much similar to what Europeans did through Middle Ages and Renaissance. It should be noted, however, that these swords had better material than your general Celtic Iron Sword.

Due to lack of written sources and rarity of these types, there's a debate about if these were only cerimonial or religious items, or if they were actual martial weapons (either for duels or actual war). I have a bias towards the later, but the good quality materials has been noted in support for that martial thesis. Something that I should notice is that most of them have actual or possible battle damage. Tips are often broken in findings such as this:



https://www.leo-bw.de/en/detail-gis/-/Detail/details/DOKUMENT/lmw_museumsobjekte/19484/Eisernes+Knollenknaufschwert+mit+Resten+der+Scheide+%5BQuelle+Landesmuseum+W%C3%BCrttemberg%5D

https://bawue.museum-digital.de/object/19484

Triangular section apparently, OAL 105cm. Blade length of perhaps 87cm.

The shortsword with a diamond section I posted has assymmetric edges: this generally happens when you have edge damage and later take material off the blade, thus making a type XVIII edge turn into a type XV edge. This happened to one edge of the XVIIIc Alexandria Longsword at the MET and Oakeshott mentioned a few possible cases in his Records.

German Wikipedia:

[Sean Manning]

Gioal Canestrelli talks about the knobbed-pommel swords in his book for Pen & Sword Military https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Celtic-Warfare-Hardback/p/21705

There are also early iron swords from the Aegean with thick diamond cross-sections.