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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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 Posted: Fri 16 Jan, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Hadrian Coffin wrote: |
I agree, it does look Roman. However it is Viking. The knife comes from a grave find in Norway. I will have to find the name of the place, because I cannot remember. I remember thinking at the time it looked more like a roman knife but it is not. The grave was in a field of graves most of which date to the viking period, the knife in question was found in a "ship-shaped" grave in conjunction with a few other viking age artifacts (including an urnes styled pin). |
That's quite interesting. I've never seen examples of this type of knife from outside the Roman period. I wouldn't relate it to the (anglo)saxon broken back sax though, just because it they also have a broken back style blade. Though naturally it's possible they were influenced by eachother.
| Quote: | | The only possibility for it being Roman would be a viking using an antique knife. The purpose of the ring on this knife is assumed to be a "pull" to make the knife easier to draw from a scabbard. |
I've been thinking of the purpose of such rings on earlier period knives, and I think it's rather just a pommel variant. There's a lot of ring hilted knives from the bronze age up to the Roman period. But the size of the ring varies a lot (some as small as 1cm outside diameter), and alongside ring shaped pommels there are also other shapes. However I would agree that if the ring is large enough to stick your finger in it could be useful for getting the knife out of the scabbard as well.
Jeroen Zuiderwijk
- Bronze age living history in the Netherlands
- Barbarian metalworking
- Museum photos
- Zip-file with information about saxes
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Hadrian Coffin
Industry Professional
Location: Oxford, England Joined: 03 Apr 2008
Posts: 404
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| Posted: Sat 17 Jan, 2009 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Interesting that it's Norwegian. |
Just because it was found in Norway does not mean it is Norwegian.  People traveled all over the place, just because something was found somewhere does not mean it was from there. Items were traded and taken on voyages and it is often impossible to determine the original place of manufacture. If you start finding many items of the same style in the same general area you can begin to say that something is from a certian place. I would hesitate though to say it was like an anglo-saxon style broken back seax because the shape is quite different.
I believe that the reason that it was considered a "pull" as opposed to a pomel was that the ring is movable, the size was inbetween an american quarter and an american half dollar.
Best
Hadrian:)
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Michael Pearce
Industry Professional
Location: Seattle, Wa. Joined: 21 Feb 2004
Posts: 365
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| Posted: Sat 07 Jul, 2012 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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This whole thread is a good reminder that we need to keep an open mind with regards to having too narrow a definition of what constitutes 'period' with regard not only to items as ubiquitous as saexes but other common artifacts as well. I knew one researcher that swore a certain type of shoe- sole wasn't period for a certain time. It turned out that it wasn't 'period' to the particular villages he was researching but was common fifty miles away; probably whoever made shoes for that region just liked that style or it was simply a local tradition.
Michael 'Tinker' Pearce
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Then one night, as my car was going backwards through a cornfield at 90mph, I had an epiphany...
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