I was thinking about this as I contemplated about the custom hilt I'm having made for bare DT2070 blade I ordered few weeks ago. I understand that there are very few viking age hilts made of bronze or brass, out of 213 type H sword specimens found in Norway only two had hilt parts made entirely of bronze (quote: In two cases the guard and the pommel are entirely of bronze[5] (fig. 80). Likewise, the upper hilt is of bronze on sword T 1441 from Krokstad, Melhus, S.T. (fig.81), [~92] and its guard moreover has quite the same shape as the two others: tall, wide and ridged.) Most had strips of bronze, copper or silver in grooves all over the surface of hilt. Why? It is so much more work... Was bronze or copper so much more expensive than iron that all that work is more profitable than spending more material in a much simpler process?

Hi,
Frankly I don't think bronze/brass was that expensive, silver was the expensive metal. Wire inlay frankly looks better/cooler.
Now were bronze/brass much more expensive people would go with a much more difficult way that used less material, labor was incredibly cheep, raw materials were expensive.
Lastly cost would not be that big of an issue, swords were expensive and the people who used them liked to show how rich they were. It wasn't until the very end of the Viking era that swords started becoming cheaper and more common.
Z

Ian Pierce wrote in the Swords of the viking age, I think maybe even Petersen said the same, that when new these inlays looked like a more or less smooth surface so I thought there must be a price reason not to use entirely bronze hilt.
Btw, here are the two swords with entirely bronze hilts. Unfortunately the second has only the upper guard survived and the pictures are black and white.

The question may be: why bronze? The smith already has the forge going, a pile of iron ready to go, and a hammer in his hand. Why should he build a bronze foundry?

Keep in mind that bronze can be hot forged as well. My amature opinion is that steel/iron probably help up better to use then bronze would unless it was work hardened around the area where it was fitted to the blade.

Just my opinion.

It might have been the case that those who did the inlay were not the same craftsmen who forged the hilt components. Blades could well have been made by yet other craftsmen, or more or less commonly imported.

What seems practical and straight forward to us, might have been less so because of the way work was organized at the time.

There are specific grades of bronze / brass that are best suited for forging compared to other grades. What is today called "forging bronze" usually has aluminum or silicone, and no tin. A technical purist might argue that it is "unhistorical as bronze" since tin was a major historical part of the recipe for "bronze." Have you had much success forging known copper/ tin alloy bronze?

My guess as to "why use brass/ bronze was used when it was" would be in the artistic advantages of obtaining details through casting. Hot forging ornate curves and shapes into steel can be done. But, I would guess it to be easier to carve an investment from wax (or now a days even a perishable plastic.) Discarded mistakes are cheaper if one starts to account for fuels, specialized tools (drifts, swages, any others?) that other materials that would facilitate forging ornate steel pommels.

Hi all
One point against bronze for fittings on viking weapons is while copper is available in Norway as far as I am aware tin isn't which makes it far more expensive than iron which is in plentiful supply in Norway. It's use in inlay uses very little but pommels and fittings cost. I may be wrong but it could be a telling point.

Let us not forget this example....
[ Linked Image ]

I don't know the composition of the bronze that I have forged.... I know that the Bronze I forged in the US was some sort of silicon bronze, looking back in my notes I think it was 655 but I am not sure. I don't know what the bronze comp was in Germany, I know it was a huge chunk of about 2 inch square that I forged into a bird.

When I was working on a sculpture in Finland I was mainly forging steel but two of the guys were make a bronze element for the sculpture and they decided to cast the pieces from bronze. I saw the guy in charge adding a metal to the crucible as it was in the later stages of melting and I after some language barriers were crossed it was decided that the english term was tin. I asked if it could be forged and he said no but I wasn't able to find out why, I ass-u-med it was because it was cast.

Hi G
Point well made but one swallow does not a spring make and I believe my point is still valid the lack of bronze fitting on viking swords indicates that there was a preference for iron. Either cost availability or some cultural reason lost to us down history.