myArmoury.com - Seems like there have been some good discoveries of late!

In pretty bad shape, and without the pommel. By the blade and guard shape and width I'd say early medieval - 9 - 10th century? But the tang is almost 14 cm long, so it seems way too long for that era sword?

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Medieval sword discovered in Sempeter in the Savinja Valley during the construction of a roundabout

On Friday, August 29, 2025, workers from the company VOC Celje, and a representative of the contractor Roman Meh s.p. discovered a sword during earthworks and immediately notified the Celje regional unit of the ZVKDS about the find.

On the same day, an operation was launched to verify the circumstances of the discovery, the authenticity of the find and the archaeological potential of the area, which otherwise lies outside protected cultural heritage areas.
The circumstances of the discovery indicate a sporadic archaeological find, as no other archaeological remains were discovered in the wider area where the sword was discovered.

The iron sword, 95 cm long, with a blade 3.5 to 4.8 cm wide, with a 8.5 cm wide guard, preliminarily dated to the Middle Ages, was appropriately protected and handed over for safekeeping to the Celje Regional Museum.

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Victor R.

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Posts: 371 Location: Klein, Texas

Wed 10 Sep, 2025 1:29 pm

Re: New sword find in Slovenia

Blaz Berlec wrote:

In pretty bad shape, and without the pommel. By the blade and guard shape and width I'd say early medieval - 9 - 10th century? But the tang is almost 14 cm long, so it seems way too long for that era sword?

Quote:

Medieval sword discovered in Sempeter in the Savinja Valley during the construction of a roundabout

On Friday, August 29, 2025, workers from the company VOC Celje, and a representative of the contractor Roman Meh s.p. discovered a sword during earthworks and immediately notified the Celje regional unit of the ZVKDS about the find.

On the same day, an operation was launched to verify the circumstances of the discovery, the authenticity of the find and the archaeological potential of the area, which otherwise lies outside protected cultural heritage areas.
The circumstances of the discovery indicate a sporadic archaeological find, as no other archaeological remains were discovered in the wider area where the sword was discovered.

The iron sword, 95 cm long, with a blade 3.5 to 4.8 cm wide, with a 8.5 cm wide guard, preliminarily dated to the Middle Ages, was appropriately protected and handed over for safekeeping to the Celje Regional Museum.

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Looks like the peen may have been sheared off and the pommel lost, or maybe never had one and it was an incomplete piece. That length gives plenty of room for a good sized pommel for what seems to be a reasonably hefty blade. If you look at the OAL of the Albion Type X and Type Xa swords (most easily found references with OAL), they fall into this range. Their Type X blank is 37.25", or just under 95cm. If you're assuming part of the tang is missing, then, yes, that's a pretty long tang, but it doesn't appear broken, so I suspect sheared/lost, never affixed, or even removed to be repaired/altered/regripped, to be more likely. Perhaps additional information will come out once greater research has been done.

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Blaz Berlec

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Posts: 422 Location: Podgorje, Kamnik, Slovenia, Europe

Thu 11 Sep, 2025 1:27 am

Yeah, on second thought I don't know why I assumed it would be a two piece Viking age pommel, with tang only passing through a thin lower piece, still leaving longer grio than usual.

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Victor R.

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Posts: 371 Location: Klein, Texas

Thu 11 Sep, 2025 3:02 pm

Blaz Berlec wrote:

Yeah, on second thought I don't know why I assumed it would be a two piece Viking age pommel, with tang only passing through a thin lower piece, still leaving longer grio than usual.

Depending upon the type/size of pommel, I'd only expect 3.5 - 4 inches of grip when starting with about 5.5 inches of tang.

My smallest wheel-type pommel is 1.75 inches, largest that isn't on the extra large "Cluny" based sword, is 2.25 inches. With that guard, I'd expect a pommel style from the Peterson typology group though, and many of those seem to fit that dimension range, with a few being larger (though I'm having problems finding charts or even production sword data that gives measurements). With the typical grip of the era running close to 10cm, or just under 4 inches, that leaves 4cm of tang for the pommel, or 1.6 inches. A 5cm pommel (just under 2 inches) would leave 9cm of grip (3.5 inches). So, again, this tang doesn't look "long" based on those average dimensions.

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Iagoba Ferreira

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Posts: 193

Sun 23 Nov, 2025 4:32 am

Several Renaissance armour pieces found inside a well in Spain:

https://comunicacion.jcyl.es/web/jcyl/Comunicacion/es/Plantilla100Detalle/1281372051501/NotaPrensa/1285580173159/Comunicacion

More photos on instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRFBZ03jP38/?img_index=8

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