[Sam Arwas]

I'm trying to get a sense of how common acute sword points were in Northern/Western Europe from about the late 8th century to late 10th century but blades from this period tend to be severely corroded so I'm struggling.

[Andrew Gill]

The book "Swords of the viking age" shows a few where the overall corrosion damage seems minimal, or at least good enough to give a good idea of point geometry. From memory, I'm fairly certain that most of the well-preserved examples had at least a slightly rounded rather than an acute point, although there are definitely examples of the latter type (i.e. sharp and pointy) as well. That's assuming, of course, that none were modified later; one or two of the pointy variety look decidedly odd in profile, if I remember correctly. Also note that the rounded points are usually of a sufficiently small radius as to probably still be very effective for stabbing (at least by appearance) - we're not talking about katzbalger-style spatulate tips.

[Sam Arwas]