[Jim Adelsen]

Thanks for the info. I will have to do some research. Do you know when these laws date to?

[Ville Vinje]

They date from different periods, generally early medieval. They are not vikingage (as the vikings did not write down much of their laws), but the laws probably derived from earlier verbal laws. I have tried to find reference in english on the net for you guys but have only found articles in swedish. The ones you are looking fore are: Skånelagen, Gutalagen, Södermannalagen, Hälsingelagen, Dalalagen, Västmannalagen, Östgötalagen, Upplandslagen.

The key word here is "Ledung".

/Ville

[Chase S-R]

In a book titled The Vikings, it is by Osprey but is a collaborative work and is well over 1000 pages it mentions this law but states that every free man should have " an axe or a sword"
I have been to many viking museums and I have been to see some lower class burials done just in the ground with a small fing of stones or even just in the earth. There were over a hundered lower class free man burials there were many seaxes and axes and spears but only one sword-like weapon that was single edged, like a langsax with an albion berserker blade, but that was it. One sword in over a hundered graves. I have read this law but i believe it was meaning an axe or a sword if it can be afforded. If swords were cheap than why were they held with such reverence and so highly inlayed and gilded? I believe a jarl or huscarl or hersir would buy a sword, but I dont think every free man owned one, the axe is still a good weapon.

[Chad Arnow]

[Chase S-R]

I believe there are lots of munitions grades swords in museums, I have never seen or heard of munitions grade weapons in the viking era. Cheap swords were later inventions it seems to me. Look at how much work goes in to producing a patternwelded blade, that cannot be a cheap item. Also if the viking swords were so cheap why are there almost none in the burials of the less wealthy, and why would you hand a sword down if you could just buy a new one.
I dont think swords were uncommon, i just dont believe evey free man could afford one.

[M. Eversberg II]

I would also like to bring up that not every free man may have had access to one. Compared to how long it takes to make a sword, and the number of people who can make working ones, how many more axe heads can be made, and by how many more?

M.

[Tomas Kringen]

[Elling Polden]

By the time Pettersen wrote his book (1919) there where more than a thousand swords found from the viking ages.
Of these, the most common was the Type H, wich is a rather simple triangular pommel design.
The second most common was the type M, which is a extremely simple crossbar design.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Some of the comments in this thread are ... kind of amazing considering this is a site where people typically more educated on these kinds of matters.

A little reality check.

First of all, the Vikings weren't just low brow Bikers stealing chickens on raids- they actually conquered almost all of England (Canute the Great ruled over more territory in the British Isles than the Romans did), Scotland, the Orkneys, Normandy, Frisia, Ireland, much of the Baltic coast and most of what is now Russia and the Ukraine. They defeated the Khazari Empire, smashed multiple Saxon kingdoms, and pillaged northern Germany almost out of existence, sacking Antwerp, Dorstad, Ghent, Maastricht, Liège, Cologne, and Koblenz among other towns, and conquered numerous ferocious tribes of the Eastern Steppes. They tore down London bridge and besieged Paris, extracted vast fortunes in protection money from almost every major kingdom and trading city in Northern Europe, and even raided Moorish Spain and Italy. They in fact fought and won many pitched battles were fought including the early ones in which they defeated every kingdom in England other than Wessex, and that a near run thing.

I haven't seen the National Geographic documentary so I won't comment on it, but I have seen some stuff they did on some other subjects (Hurricane Katrina) which were riddled with basic research errors. The organization is prestigious and their name sounds respectable but I am not very convinced that they still have the considerable expertise it would take to do a meaningful sample of Viking swords.

That said I agree with the other posters that the Vikings chief strength was not in their hand weapons. The initial raiders in the 8th Century were in many cases the kind of riff raff other people have described, and quite indifferently armed - few of them would have had swords at all. By the middle period of the 9th Century larger armies and more respectable people were involved, by the 10th centuries major invasion forces with hundreds equipped with expensive mail armor and swords were routine. So it's wise when discussing "The Vikings" to keep in mind it's a period of time from around 780 AD to at least 1066, and both Norse society and those they raided changed radically in this period, largely due to the viking raids themselves.

Their principle advantage in fighting was obvious, they had more people capable of fighting. The Norse in the late 8th Century were essentially an Iron Age tribe with the vast majority of their population armed free men. The rest of Europe was a post- Roman feudal society in which the common people were being disarmed and pushed down into poverty and serfdom, with a tiny proportion of the society under arms, and another small administrative class (the church) running the show. This left them extremely vulnerable to even relatively small numbers of raiders from a still feral Iron age warrior society.

Their chief technological advantage were of course their ships which allowed them to penetrate around coastlines and (especially) far into rivers which allowed them to project the force they had in the most effective place they could find, almost at will thanks to their effective naval superiority, at least in Northern Europe, until the arrival of the Cog and the Hulk and other more advanced ships in the 11th century.

As for the swords...

The number of Viking swords remaining which are in relatively decent condition are probably less than the number of weapons in some of the larger personal collections of people on this site. Considering thousands of semi-professional warriors were under arms at the height of the Viking age I'm not sure we even have a good survey sample even available. I seriously, seriously doubt National Geographic has but I'll have more to say on that after I watch their show. I'm glad they are showing serious interest in this time period anyway.

The real point is though that we know Vikings were capable of great metalurgy rivaling anywhere else in the World in their own time, just as they were capable of making some of the greatest ships on the seven seas. Did every Viking have his very own drakkar or skeid the quality of something like the Oseburg ship-burial? I don't think so. Not every one had a fantastic sword either, but they had enough to prove a nearly unstoppable force to all the powers of Europe and much of Central Asia for two centuries, until they were transformed into the ways of the very societies they preyed upon, and went through the sea-change that took away that wild gleam from their eyes.

J

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Luka Borscak]

...have no idea were this researche come from. As Elling pointed out, there are laws in Norway (and in sweden) that say that every free man should own a sword. With every free man you mean everyone not being a slave, hence lots of people. In the documentary above prof Stausberg says that they have more than one thousend swords in that museum only, all of wich are found in middle Norway. Add the rest of Norway and scandinavia and you will get several thousend swords.

Laws say that a free man should have a shield, spear and axe OR a sword. Having a spear and axe is quite enough for most warriors.

[Tomas Kringen]

[Luka Borscak]

[Elling Polden]

The Gulating law has the Leidang Shield-spear-hand weapon requirement, and dates to the 9th century.

And, a couple of thousand swords is actually a LOT, compare to later periods. Simply because they where put in graves, the viking swords in for instance norwegian colections wastly outnumber the medevial ones.

Making a sword isn't all that hard. A man that dedicated some time to it would soon be able to make functional weapons. Making a GOOD sword might be difficult though. To simply meet demand, one could make them out of localy produced bog iron, with some lamination. Smiths had status in norse society, so a wealthy man could very well spend his time making blades while his thralls worked the land, or a less wealthy man could make blades in winter to make ends meet.

Rich men would buy frankish or german high qualty blades, like the ULFBHRT or Passau examples that are often found.

It would seem that blades where often rehilted. In the sagas "He was hilting his swords" is a way to say someone is preparing for times of strife.
Posibly one would aquire a blade, and then rehilt it as one saw fit. My personal notion is that the Type M, and similar very simple forms could have been "placeholder" grips, on swords that where not in use, or new.

[Tim May]

[M. Eversberg II]

From what I've picked up here, medieval era swords where made by smiths (probably a minority of all smiths actually made them), then sold as blades to cutlers, who actually hilted them. Was this not true in Nordic lands, if we know?

As for the less wealthy man "making ends meet" by blade making, how can he afford to buy raw iron to make them? Is bog iron a very common resource?

M.

[Blaz Berlec]

I attended the lecture by Alan Williams here in Ljubljana, Slovenia yesterday, topic was "Metalurgical Analysis of Antique and Medieval weapons".

Alan Williams is an author of huge reference book "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" (2003), but I haven't had the chance to read it yet. Some of his statements on this lecture really surprised me. I hope I remembered it at least partially correctly.


There's really lots and lots of weapons that don't show any usable heat treatment, from Celtic, Roman, early medieval, high medieval and even some from late medieval samples.

Only about 13% celtic iron swords show any usable heat treatment, most of them are softer than bronze equivalents. Some have too low carbon content, other have quite high carbon content but structure shows no quenching and tempering. But not many swords were tested.

Roman swords have better percentage at about 50% of swords which could be called "heat treated steel", and knives and daggers are even better. But again very small number of items tested.

Dr. Alan Williams analysed quite a lot of +ULFBERH+T swords (and similar spellings), and found out that swords spelled "correctly" (+ULFBERH+T) all have around 1.2% carbon content and are very hard compared to other swords at that time, and very uniform steel. He concludes that material must have been imported from somewhere near Black Sea ("one of those *stans"), that was nearest crucible steel production centre. All the swords with different spelling show typical softer center and hard edges forge welded, and much more slag content.

Swords form "dark ages" are even worse than Roman material, even less than 50% fall in the category of "heat treated steel". And after the real +ULFBERH+T swords stop being made, there is very slow progress from 11th century to 14th century, when most blades can be classified as steel. But even in 15th century you can find swords which are relatively soft and show no heat treatment attempt or a failed one.

Armour is even worse, most of it is plain iron even in 15th century, first heat treated products from German centres arrive only late in 15.th century, almost a century after the Italian successes. But funny thing is, in 16th century when gilded armour comes into fashion, Italian production centres stop making heat treated armour (not compatible with their gilding techniques), but German armour remains heat treated, even gilded one.

I don't know what to think. Were arms and armour really that bad? Alan was quite convincing, a lot of his analysis is supported not only by some non destructive Vickers hardness tests, he made metalographical analyses of steel structures, sometimes at various parts of blade or harness. I really have to read that "Knight and the Blast Furnace"...

Sorry for the spelling(s).