The use of the sword:

A variation on my original idea is that the use of hand armor might have altered the way one grips a sword. I like early medieval swords with short-handled grips and wide flat pommels because they work well with a hanshake grip, or rather easily transition between handshake and hammer grip. But this requires alot of tactile feedback from the hand. Perhaps this is somewhat lost with a mailed fist, even if the palm side is less encumbered. In that event there might best to just stick with the hammer grip, in which case the advantage of those older style grips is lost - why not take a longer grip and a wheel pommel?

Again I'm only speculating from lack of experience, and although I'm pushing this hand-armor point for the sake of argument, I do believe that weapon developments were shaped by multiple factors including those mentioned by others above. What interests me is the way weapons and armor might interact in un-obvious ways. It might be something warriors didn't even think about - they just assembled their kit and went with what felt comfortable.

Its up to us arm-chair academics to look back and try to analyze why they did what they did.

The issue is mostly that know development of sword types does not match the adoption of mail, then plate gauntlets. So where as you idea could be plausible there is no direct or indirect evidence behind it and the chronology of both their development does not fit. Some places have been using s longer grip at the same time these shorter grips were in use but without gauntlets so even surrounding regions do not follow such a trend. As far as I can tell there is really no change in grip size that seem to be linked to this during the period plate gauntlets move in over mail mittens. So why try making something work that does not really have any historical backing? Seems worse than an up hill battle but near a vertical cliffside.

RPM