Just playing the advocate that many have played before, but isn't it the same migration of Germanic peoples which led to both the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavian cultures? Couldn't that make it possible that the style has its origins in the Roman Empire? Therefore, couldn't it be called a Roman sword? 😂 Just having a bit of fun. Great video.
Here is the example from 9th century Great Moravia Mikulčice gave no. 280, very simple sword, but still of same style. www.sword-elgur.com/sword-type-x-from-mikulcice-grave-280/
I used to make swords for re-enactors. I remember having a long drawn out 'discussion' with an authentication officer about a sword I'd made up and was hoping to sell at the event, it looked just like the plan I hilt you showed as a generic pattern...... He banned it as it didn't look like any of the dozen or so pictures in his book, this was the same plank who insisted I couldn't use a club on field as "No ones found one". Like Vikings are the only group since before modern humans came into being that never hit someone else with a stick!
You have to love "gate keepers" like that person. Apparently he has never seen the bayuex tapestry. Also clubs where common weapons of the clergy. Supposedly they were not to spill blood. But even does not make sense because you could easily split someone's head wide open.
Also with the issue of hilting: If a Viking captured an Anglo-Saxon sword they could take it back to Norway g have it re-hilted. Since we can't always tell where a blade was made a hilt can only tell us about the hilt; where it may have been from, time period/region of decorations, etc
@@SonsOfLorgar do you have some sources for that? Not saying you are wrong & it seems logical but I've never seen any proof. I haven't looked into it much to be fair
@@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145 nope, it's pure intuitive speculation based on the percived uniformity of shape, length and quantity that from my limited point of view might be either due to inspiration/imitation or customisation of inherited captured/issued/or by other means disseminated blades out of Imperial proto-mass production stockpiles. Similiar to all the AR15 and AK-47 variants today
@@SonsOfLorgar fair enough! I definitely believe there were Roman blades remounted by others & that Romans definitely borrowed ideas from others; as they did with the gladius. I was just hoping someone did research on it & had a book or something. Regardless thank you
Hence, Matt Easton frequently wears Japanese clothing (i.e., imprinted with Japanese text) but made in China, sold in the UK. And if Matt donates his shirt to Oxfam it can end up in a bin going to East Africa. Pretty hard to define the shirt, now.
It's a bit like people calling morions "conquistador helmets", when they were in fact one of the most common helmets of the XVIth-XVIIth centuries and everybody in Europe used them.
@@ArkadiBolschek it means southern barbarians, it's stuff that the Japanese either bought or made in a foreign style, in this case European. They adopted and adapted European weapons and armor. The morion being a helmet was named Southern Barbarian style helmet.
The spatha was itself based on the Celtic La Tène swords in use far earlier. The really famous ones that had the long blades, not the short and stabby ones from Iberia and Britain.
The Celts likely got it from the Roman Spatha. The tribal "Celtic" Britons were more spearmen (and axes maybe) than swordsmen until the Romans brought tbose weapons.
@@wehrewulf not true. The Roman spatha wasn’t a thing until like after the birth of Jesus Christ. Celtic people’s had been using double edged, full tanged swords, elaborate hilted swords since the beginning of the Iron Age. The Romans even got mail from the Celts of Central Europe who been using mail since 800 BC. Even the Germanic people had iron sword production independent of the Romans, but I’m sure they gleaned off of Roman design because why not
"OLAF! Love the look! New sword?" "Ulfberth! Yes, thank you for noticing! I just got back from London Fashion Raid. These new swept hilts are all the rage with the Saxons."
This kinda feels like a 'guns, germs, and steel' situation that turned into a misinformation situation. These swords are buried primarily by Vikings thus they are found most frequently in Viking lands.
I'd really like you to cover byzantine and arab swords of this period, no one ever talks about those. In fact, even though I imagine both material and reliable iconographic sources to be particularly scarce on this topic, I'd love you to also address differences in general equipment (shields and armour) with that of western Europe.
I think for Arab swords there's actually a great deal of originals in some museums. I've had chances to buy some stuff that's not much later than that for not even that much money albeit still expensive af compared to alot of what Matt buys but far cheaper then European swords of that time would be.
In post-Soviet countries (I dont know about all of them, but in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for sure) this type of swords is known as Carolingian or Frankish.
Most iron age sword were found from Finland. Finland was unique bc of how many of those were found and how detailed they were. (Carvings of finnish gods and different symbols.) Like 50% of all iron age swords were found from finland.
@@larsamundlarsen4628 No not 50% of iron. I meant 50% of iron swords. There isnt many videos or articles about this, and the ones that do exist are in finnish. Also vikings weren’t from Finland. Finnish tribes sometimes fought vikings. I had a phase where I was interested in iron age finland and finnish mythology, so I wached videos and read ab this stuff. Now it’s passed and I just remember some fun facts.
@@urkkipurkki5733 I understand what you mean. It's also difficult to know where the swords was made. The swords that has been digging out from graves in different places in Scandinavia show us that they had fantastisk swords, mostly from England or France. They had mutsh better steel than us, and they had learned from the Romans hundreds of years ago. It was forbidden to sell swords to the Vikings, but they stole or captured them during the fight.
Hi form Sweden! People from south (as in not Scandinavia) used plant patterns in decoration of many things - smithwork on doors, paninted on rafters, and sculpted on the capitals of pilars. Scandinavians did not do this until well into the Christian era (12 century). Scandinavians used animal patterns, snakes, wolves, horses, hounds and such. The sword you call Franksish at the start of the video certainly fits this pattern, being decorated with a plant vine motif very uncharacteristic of Scandinavia.
Metal newbie here, so maybe this is a dumb question, but what does the metallurgy suggest? I kept waiting to hear about where the iron was from. I understand with trade and looting, everything ends up everywhere, but ….
Good and interesting video as always. Here in Norway it has been found over 3500 viking era swords. So they are relativley common here. Where they are made is a good guess, but there was lots of swordmakers I have been told. The quality of the steel and iron used was normaly of lower quality than in the rest of europe. Early types have shorter blades because of this. Again, I have been told so. I dont know if this is true..🤔
Yep! that's why plaiting the iron was a common practice while forging, similar to how the japanese fold steel. And that is also why the Ulfbert swords were fancy rich guy options, because they used imported Indian crucible steel.
If I may, I’d like to clarify some of the confusion of the different Viking tribes and who went Viking where.The borders of the different Viking tribes and the modern countries are very different. The Dane’s came from todays Denmark and from todays southern Sweden. Sweden didn’t exist so within the area of todays Sweden lived four main tribes; the Swedes (east central), the Geats(south central), the Gutes (island of Gotland) and the Danes (South). The kingdoms of the swedes and the Geats later united to become Sverige (Sweden in Swedish). The southern part of Sweden where the Dane’s lived was later conquered from Denmark. In the the area of todays Norway were the Geats and the Norwegians. The Norse were however very mobile and often moved from one area to another. Many of the famous Viking kings and warriors didn’t originally come from the area or tribe they were known for. Somone known to be Norwegian might actually have been a swede and a swede might originally have been a Dane. One example is Ragnar Lothbrok, who is famously portrayed as a Dane but he was actually born in the kingdom of the swedes and was a son of the Swedish king Sigurd Ring. What makes up for this confusion is mostly due to English name translations and very different borders. The people in Sweden today are all called swedes in English and the Viking tribe are also called the swedes. But in the Scandinavian languages there is a distinction. The tribe were “Svear” but the people living in todays Sweden are “Svenskar”. Svenskar are made up of Svear(swedes), Götar(Geats), Gutar (Gutes) and Skåningar (who used to be Danes). Another contributing factor to the confusion and the factual errors is the fact that during the romance, it was common practice to slightly alter history for nationalistic reasons.
@@KurtFrederiksen Almost everything we have to go by are from the island if sagas and the Swedish rune stones, unless the Catholic Church documented it. And they were often wrong. I think you’re missing the point of my post. The swedes is not equal with Swedish Viking’s as there was no Sweden. The Swedes (not Swedish)was living in the area of todays central Sweden and gave name to the country. But if you say Vikings from Sweden you must include several tribes and include the Danes, as they lived in what now is Sweden. That’s why I say it’s a lot of confusion with the terminology. I’ve seen dozens of rune stones in Sweden telling the story of vikings from the area of todays Sweden, including central Sweden where the swedes lived, telling the story of journeys to the British islands. Unfortunately there was a lot of misconceptions and incorrect facts during the nationalistic era of the romance when people from Norway and Denmark dictated the Viking history.
Large amount of Ulfberht swords has been found from Finland but it's not known how they got here and some even have suggested that those were forged in Finland.
There are 14 found in Finland (Moilanen argues the number is 31). 17 in Sweden, 9 in Estonia, 13 in Germany and 44 in Norway. I can't understand why Finland have been suggested as the origin of the Ulfberth based on numbers, Do you have a source? Going by numbers alone, Norway would be the obvious suggestion. Out of 167 Uflberth swords, over a quarter have been found in Norway. I doubt they were made in Scandinavia, or in the Nordics, as the name Ulfberth suggest todays Germany or France.
@@daginn896 Interesting Archeology can be misleading without primary sources to guide us i mean with the finding alone one will assume those Swords were Scandinavian, but in reality that was mostly because of the pagan burial traditions
Any pointing to them being forged in Finland are doing so for a biased reason. The general concensus is they were forged in Francia so either Germany or France by modern standards plus a little bit of other countries. The name is a frankish personal name. We'd also have to look at the Finnish swords and determine if they're even real or just era appropriate forgeries. Name spelling and a few other details matter. So do the fittings. All the highly decorated ones I know of are fakes and made of the wrong blade material. Might be some rehilted ones but none I'm aware of. But finland is the wrong area.
@@daginn896 31 found in Finland. But we don't have exact numbers. One expert does show the 14 swords he accounted for. Another mentions a total of 31 and shows some of them but doesn't go into enough detail. We also aren't sure on the exact number of real originals. And how many are actually in extant existence because there's some that may be in private collections. There's also some swords believed to be in reference to the originals that were found in Finland but not actual originals. And there's some that are in extreme states of damage from the ages that are debatable if they're even really still surviving examples.
A lot of people like some version of "spatha" for this era of sword. "Dark-Age Spatha", "Migrant Spatha" (as in short for Migration Era Spatha), "Post-Roman Spatha", "Latter Spatha", etc.
Strictly speaking a migration era spatha would precede these swords! The migration era is like 400-750 AD, the viking era 750 - 1050 AD (give or take a few decades, and depending on whom you ask - the English, for example, usually say the viking age is 793-1066). The migration era swords are actually somewhat different from the viking era swords, although there are of course a lot of similarities and some overlap. It's fine to call these 'spathas' but we should differentiate them from the migration era swords, if we want to be technical! (Personally I just call them viking era swords).
@@blakewinter1657 Shadiversity has a good idea for the name. Swert, it the Norse name for Swerd before the term sword was developed. It is still to specific, but not as nonsensically specific as a Viking Sword.
Carolingian seems better. "Spatha" has an overall different approach to the handle and blade width, and is more commonly understood to be a longer version of the Gladius.
@@PJDAltamirus0425 I don't like Sverd for these because that's still the modern Scandinavian word for sword. "Sverd" is just as valid for katanas and rapiers.
@@WritingFighter I would never call them 'carolingian,' in part because I dislike Charlemagne. Also it suffers from the same problem as 'viking,' in that most of these swords were not used by Charlemagne's people, and also, the 'viking swords' lasts from 750 to 1050, much longer than Charlemagne.
So I agree with the points here! I really do. And, as an afficionado of Viking-Era swords (particularly those that were prevalent in Sweden and Finland), this is a point that I often consider as well when I talk about swords. They are not really viking sword, but viking-era. A few types were not even very prevalent in Scandinavia (e.g. the type L shown in this video). However, I do use the term 'viking sword' a lot, because, like the term viking itself, it's gotten changed in popular language. Just as 'viking' has come to mean 'any Scandinavian from circa 750 AD to 1050 AD,' so 'viking sword' just means one of these styles of one-handed sword with a short hilt, relatively small but thick guards, etc. I think of it kind of like the term 'pirate sword.' Technically, there is no such thing as a pirate sword. Pirates didn't make swords, nor did they have any kind of sword that was exclusive to them. But people talk about 'pirate swords' anyway, just meaning 'the kinds of swords pirates used.' That seems to be the way people use the term 'viking sword.' As long as we're aware of this, I don't think it's much of an issue. By the way, I also really recommend 'Marks of Fire, Faith, and Value' by Mikko Moilanen for anyone interested in swords of this era. Although it focuses on swords found in Finland, and only on those with iron inlays in the blades, he includes so many useful measurements and things that I have not found in any other sources. So for people trying to learn what the originals were really like, it is a wonderful source. He is also a swordsmith himself, so he discusses the metallurgy and how the swords were likely made.
Hmm, the pirate analogy is sound but did Vikings/ the people of Denmark, Scandinavia, etc not make their own steel? Are they and their blacksmiths not famous for a kind of Damascus accidentally made using twisted steel bought from the Middle East? Or is this another case of we can’t be sure where the swords are from in Europe? Edit: I’m talking about UlfBerht swords which apparently indeed are not probably not “viking”.
I have to take a look at that book. I remember one Norwegian book on vikings stating that the Norse really preferred Frankish swords (or just blades) at the time, such as the famous Ulfberht swords. Not sure if this is the whole story of course.
Ulfberht is Saxon for wolf bright. Yes, Ulfberht, or +ulfberh+t to be correct, was Saxon make, not Frankish. The Franks spoke vulgar Latin at the time, and if they were indeed monastery made, they would have been in Latin, not Saxon. I and a team of people from around the globe researched this for many years. The ONLY language Ulfberht is contemporary with, and is found in, is Saxon.
I actually have a sword of that type from Windlass, it's based off of a find from Finland, it's got a pattern welded blade and the guard and pommel are unusually shaped, it's labeled as Damascus Viking sword in their catalogue
We have the Saxon Hoard on display at the city museum, split between our museum and Birmingham. Its very uniquely Saxon in ornamentatiom but the bare bones of how the swords and armour are shaped and styled show the huge influence of the Roman Legions. The swords are just like Roman cavalry swords which is unsurprising as the Germanic tribes fought for the Legions, often as cavalry. Then there is the Romano British influence as well. I am fairly certain its why European swords all have the same flavour.
There's also the fact that the culture of covering most of Europe at this point was Germanic so it really shouldn't be that surprising that most of tye weapons across Europe looked similar with eachother
Great video, i was just thinking about this topic last night. To my understanding most franks would have known these swords just as spatha, as they used latin terms for the military, for example lorica insted of mail.
Some modern Danish historians claim that the Vikings never existed. It is a literary invention from the 1800s. The Viking expansion is just a Nordic Iron Age expansion...
Pretty sure Vikings also used Turkish/Arabian style swords... atleast some of the Varangians that served as guards for the emperor in Konstantinopel/Mikklagard (todays Istanbul). The Vikings used what they liked and could get their hands on. Some they made, some they bought, some they stole and some they looted from the dead. A good sword is a good sword and that is valuable.
Interestingly enough. If I remember it correctly, the Varangians were offered swords along with the rest of their battle gear by the Byzantines but said they'd rather use their own swords. I'm not sure what the reasoning was, but I imagine the designs being too different from what they were used to might be a part of it?
@@ReasonAboveEverything Yup. I don't know why they made that choice to be honest. I just know that it was specifically mentioned at some point that they didn't want the Byzantine swords.
@@anarchclown I'd quess it's because the swords they used were already custom made or at least the hilt was custom made for the each warrior. Plus possible magical bonds they might have with the sword.
So, sorry if this is a stupid question, but with the single-edged sword at 19:20, which side is sharp? Is this type of sword like a Falchion and the more curved edge is sharp, or is it like a Seax where the straighter edge is sharp?
@@Meevious No, it's a sword that is used for viking. I wasn't referring to a sword owned by a vikingr, but one being used for the purpose of viking. A cutting sword isn't a sword that is itself a cutting. It is a sword that is used for the purpose of cutting.
as much i know, there are no metal ore mines here in iceland, but the ore is bound in certain types of moss and had to be melted out, the quality was of course very fragile and the blades had to be imported from france and the local blacksmiths only mounted the handles on them and the sword was finished... fun fact, the "vikings" stole so much silver if you could find all this today and put it on the market the price of silver would fall by half - according to studies from sweden from the early 2000's
This actually ties very closely to what I was going to post. We have amazing examples of the Saxon "three core" swords and numerous depictions of them in Anglo-Saxon art, that predate the "Viking Age." Later examples of art, in my opinion, clearly show Norse using swords strikingly like the Anglo-Saxon "three core" swords. As a smith, this makes a good deal of sense to me. Bog iron being the primary source of "hardenable" material in the most of the Scandinavian countries, produces significantly lower quality steel and is excessively labor intensive, while the British Isles, Frankia, Spain, the German Principalities and the imported steel from northern India / Pakistan was of significantly greater quality. Why wouldn't a raider / trader either take the raw billets or even better, the finished product home with them? And if the form was equated with function, as well as the material, it would make sense to reproduce the designs you know work, but add a little personal flair.
@@bjornronaldson6017 Do you have a source for the lower quality of metal produced from bog iron? Because all I can find suggests that it actually has less impurities than most orea, meaning it should produce better metal. As far as I understand, the reason for European pattern welding was the fact that bloomery smelting produces very impure ingots with non-homogenous carbon content. Which means that you can pick out the high-carbon steel pieces to use as edges, pattern weld the rest into as strong a blade as possible and weld the edges to that. That process would have been the same for any bloomery smelted iron though, not just bog iron.
@@gustavchambert7072 it's less that the bog iron is inherently poor quality and more that the billet steel coming out of Northern India was of abnormally high quality at the beginning of the Viking Age. I believe the Brotish Royal Museum did a metallurgical study of several swords from the period and I know there have been several private experiences done with both processes, though we no longer have access to the naturally occurring raw material from those veins.
@@bjornronaldson6017 sure, I know about the north-indian steel but you seemed to say that the distinction was between bog iron and mined ore in general, as you mentioned the indian steel in the same sentence as a bunch of european mines. You actually state flat out that bog iron is more labour intensive and of lower quality than all the european, mined sources you mentioned. To my knowledge, none of those places made crucible steel or similar until much later in history, meaning the only real difference would have come from the source of the material.
@@gustavchambert7072 ah, I see what you are getting at. Here is one interesting study on bloomery steel from the Medevail period, www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_c/articles/2015_thiele_bloomery_steel_tests.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiD2Na-sb75AhVPpIkEHRwlAJIQFnoECAcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1fuDsRTGRmiaUOsq7PMCe0 And here is a decent description of smelting process for bloomery steel, with links to comparisons between modern and period bloomery steel. Still sifting through my library for my information on bog iron. It's not something I work with regularly, so I believe it may be in a box somewhere and since it is 5am here and my roommates are asleep, I am not going to risk waking them. I will try to find the texts and get you the info.
I'm glad he brought the single edge Norwegian swords because that the first thing I though of as a specifically viking sword. One in five swords discovered in Norway is single edged.
Thank you so much for this, Matt! I was always convinced that "Viking sword" or "Anglo-Saxon sword" are, by and large, marketing terms for what should be referred to as an "early medieval (northern) European sword". Given the scarcity of findings and the, erm, mobility of property associated with every aspect of what we retrospectively call "Viking culture" today, there simply is no honest way of being sure that a sword ending up in e.g. a Scandinavian tomb actually originated in the area. Likewise, how do we know that a sword found, say, amidst the remains of a longship on the bottom of the river Thames, didn't travel across the continent with its previous owner? I wouldn't even be surprised at them wielding handed-down gladii from the 5th century. Anyway, enough of me nerding out. It's just nice that I can finally LARP a pre-Norman-conquest Anglo-Saxon warrior sporting a "Viking sword"... 🍻👍
There are definitely decorative styles that are primarily Scandinavian and can quite confidently point to a particular sword having been made in Scandinavia. It’s the more generic, pan-European style swords that are hard to place as made in a specific region of Europe. And of course, some sword types are clearly Anglo-Saxon or Frankish, for instance. While swords definitely could be passed down the generations, I’ve never heard of a 5th century (Migration Era!) sword found in a Viking Age context. If it happened, it must have been exceedingly rare. I’ve never heard of a 7th century sword found in a Viking Age context either. Maybe you could find some blades from the Vendel Period still in use in the 9th or 10th century if you went looking for them, but if that were the case they were all re-hilted in contemporary styles.
A Viking sword is one with a horned helmet on the pommel, a biker leather hilt and a horsehair plume that's side-shaved and braided. Usually kept in a woolen chainmail scabbard.
My fellow history nerds (of aficionados, whichever) I'm going to Europe for the first time to visit Belgium and several German cities. What battlefields, sites, and museums do I need to go to? I'm already planning on going to Waterloo and Bastogne, and might be able to make it out to Teutoburg. But other than that I could use some advice.
In the same vein, it really annoys me, when someone says "Early Medieval sword". It should be Early Medieval *Era* sword! I'm kidding. People are lazy. "Medieval Era" will become simply "Medieval", every single time, and it doesn't annoy me. Similarly, "Viking Era" will become "Viking". That's potentially confusing to people who know nothing about history and historical weapons, but we have no choice, other than to live with that. For referring specifically to swords made in Scandinavia, or by Scandinavians, I suggest saying _Norse swords._ The Norse raided, traded, settled, crafted, conquered, manufactured, explored, captured, oppressed, killed, were killed, ruled, extorted, fought as mercenaries, and generally did everything else that people did back then. They were just a bit more eager than average, when it came to some of those things. Matt has a chip on his shoulder about the Vikings behaving badly in England, and has very nearly accused English Viking reenactors of treason. It hardly matters which side in what part of English history one reenacts, though. If it's after the Roman occupation ended, one will be a traitor, by that standard. At that point, everyone in England was an invader or a descendant of an invader. Yes, Matt, even you. The Vikings weren't special in what they did, just in how successfully they did it, how many places they did it, and for how long they kept doing it. Oh, and they considered getting killed a success, which, I guess, does set them apart a bit, but not by nearly as much as one would think. Winning 50% of pitched battles is pretty good for an invader arriving by sea, by the way. The rule of thumb is that an invading force needs to outnumber the defenders 2:1, in order to be successful. Arriving by sea, the Vikings had nothing close to that kind of numbers. Combining matching the English in pitched battles with guerrilla tactics, the Vikings were very successful. An invader being better than the locals in guerrilla tactics is also pretty unusual.
simple burried with the dead, used as currency or simply melted down or cut down to be repurposed. the gold for example is probably part of someones old ring or necklace that were handed down in the family... (if i had been less lazy today id call my uncle up and ask for a picture of a family ring thats been in family for almost 800years)
I think the books from Osprey, man at arms, ellite, created zome of that question, it points out your point but mentioned the pommel styles made a differences. And yes a big arms trade amd taking a dead warriors. But love new information about the subject❤
Wasn't there a time when the Franks put the death penalty on selling sword blades to northmen? A lot of the blades the vikings used were probably bought (or looted) elsewhere since mining iron wasn't a huge thing in Scandinavia during the viking age. Better use the bog iron for tools and smaller weapons like spear points or axe heads.
Sorry for the dumb question. I am interested in Portuguese history. Outwardly, say in 1000 AD, a norse warrior and a Christian warrior would be nearly identical in their kit? ( Armour and weapons) Thank you
Is there nothing in the metallurgy, proportions of alloying elements or even isotopic composition, of the steels that can be related to ores in various regions? Obviously this would only tell you where ore was mined rather than definitively where the sword originated but I would expect a correlation between ore origin and sword origin. Unless an awful lot of steel was traded long distance instead of locally produced...
Has anyone undertaken isotope analysis on any of these period swords that could definitively identify the source of the original material? It wouldn't conclusively prove a particular provenance since the raw materials could have been exported or imported to a region but it would certainly give more certainty as to their source..
I just had a thought whilst watching. It’d be really cool to have a virtual SG workshop with all your weapons on the walls beautifully rendered and videos about/related to them and weapon information on a virtual museum plaque.
Brilliant video and also thanks for the disambiguation of what is viking, scandinavian, frankish both in terms of swords and culture/ ethnicity. However, I´d quote you at 4:46 "..Francia, the land of the franks, what we generically call France these days.." Well, you shouldn´t because Francia/ France or frankish/ french is not synonymous at all. Albeit it is true that most of Roman Gaul had fallen under Frankish rule by the 8th century (conquered and accordingly named "Neustria" (New Realm) by Merowingian king Clovis/ Chlodwig I), the Frankish heartland "Austrasia" was located to the (then germanic) east. The clue is both in the name and the geography, Austrasia most likely being a latinisation of *oster rike, meaning "eastern realm", centered on the Middle Rhine, including the basins of the Moselle, Main, and Meuse rivers, most of which are located in modern Germany, Holland and Belgium, to a far lesser extent in modern France. Given the fact that both the metallurgic fingerprints and the "brand name" of the infamous Ulfberth swords (clearly falling into the overall stylistic patterns of the so called "Viking swords") these most likely originate from the Rhineland in modern Germany. Interestingly enough, that´s also where a good deal of suitable iron ore deposits during the middle ages were found. There´s an interesting source (downloadable as pfd.-file in English) about Ulfberth swords: "Anne Stalsberg, Herstellung und Verbreitung der Vlfberht-Schwertklingen. Eine Neubewertung, Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 36, 2008, 89-118". So, the whole lot of this type of sword to my understanding is neither Viking, nor French, or "European" for that matter. It´s rather a "Carolingian Spatha", or an "Early Medieval German Sword"... which admittedly is a bit of a mouthful. Here´s an interesting video about making a copy of a Merovingian sword (spatha), literally from ore to blade. Although it´s in German, you´d easily get the gist: ua-cam.com/video/fkzxYojj3cI/v-deo.html
Two things that I feel strongly should be considered here is how developed was metallurgy in Scandinavia at the time and how much and of what quality ore they had access to. If both lesser than western and southern parts of Europe, then it would be logical for Vikings to have kept better quality swords (and consider them better to the level of choosing them as sidearms for final journey - burial). The fact that more straightforward swords were in fashion longer there seems to back that up. However all that is just my rambling, I have no idea. Great video, thanks Matt!
Wait a minute. That Clontarf has a Squire Line mark (the original version) on the blade (visible at 9:54)! Is that actually a Squire Line Viking hilted as a Clontarf? My brain is hurting, now.
There was a TT show on a hoard of posh hilts and such with no blades. One would assume that the blades were reused, perhaps several times. Metalurgy shows blades were made in many places and exported from early Roman times.
The whole term "viking" should just simply be abandoned in academic context. It's been way overused in recent years due to media popularity and a lot of hype from fans of tv shows and movies. Great presentation btw!
Helmetless Hollywood viking: Rah!!! Hjalmar Helmetbro: Well, Sven... It looks like you forgot your helmet again. You wouldn't want your wife to be a widow and the jarl to get fined for an Osha violation
What we know about these "vikings" its mostly product of westerners imaginations to make them some kind of pioneers (germanocentrisation and germanophilia of world history) of culture - they even called this "viking age" - the exaggeration of importance of these pirates is unbelievable. It's like they came from different planets and gave us savages light be cause they were sailing around europe and robbing other nations. Such a wonderful achievement to humanity. No one have ever done that in history, right?
but then we could also get into semantics and ask what's a viking? becuase Saxons(and the rest of the germanic world and the whole of Europe to a greater extant) were doing viking things a lot earlier than "the vikings"
Excellent Vídeo. For a long time I tried to figure out the differences between anglo-saxon and viking swords. You have shown slight differences on pomels and crossguards, but what about the actual mailing of the sword? Are there metalurgical differences? I heard about a high quality viking blade made by a certain blade smith that even engraved his mark on its swords!
Also what type of swords were they using in the medieval Rus at the same time? Same kind of swords. All medieval Russian nobility and warriors were portrayed with the same kind of swords.
The Danes that invaded/raided then-England were mostly Jutes and to this very day, Danes from Jutland are still called Jutes. As far as I know the Danes were predominantly a tribe/clan(?) from Zealand. I might be wrong.
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Just playing the advocate that many have played before, but isn't it the same migration of Germanic peoples which led to both the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavian cultures? Couldn't that make it possible that the style has its origins in the Roman Empire? Therefore, couldn't it be called a Roman sword? 😂
Just having a bit of fun. Great video.
The West African Tokouba is identical to the “Viking” swords.
Here is the example from 9th century Great Moravia Mikulčice gave no. 280, very simple sword, but still of same style.
www.sword-elgur.com/sword-type-x-from-mikulcice-grave-280/
Will you do a review of the 2022 movie ‘The Northman’? There is a single edged sword in it, I’m not sure how accurate it is.
@@jordanthomas4379 ua-cam.com/video/sm_IYVftXEI/v-deo.html
From the point of view of a viking, _every_ sword is a viking sword. Their owners just aren't always aware of the fact.
😆
Bruh, every sword is a gladius as well. Duh.
Good point
As a decendant of vikings, i aprove this message
@@justinpyle3415 As a descendant of Attila, bababooey.
I used to make swords for re-enactors. I remember having a long drawn out 'discussion' with an authentication officer about a sword I'd made up and was hoping to sell at the event, it looked just like the plan I hilt you showed as a generic pattern...... He banned it as it didn't look like any of the dozen or so pictures in his book, this was the same plank who insisted I couldn't use a club on field as "No ones found one". Like Vikings are the only group since before modern humans came into being that never hit someone else with a stick!
1. I'm pretty sure there is mention of people hitting each other with sticks in the sagas. 2. I think this guy was just an asshole drunk with power.
Normans in Bayeux Tapestry carry big sticks with the leaves on.
You have to love "gate keepers" like that person. Apparently he has never seen the bayuex tapestry. Also clubs where common weapons of the clergy. Supposedly they were not to spill blood. But even does not make sense because you could easily split someone's head wide open.
Apparently, the man is afflicted by dungeon mastery. A terrible, terrible affliction...
Hitting people with a stick, you say? That's brilliant! Why didn't the vikings think of that?
Also with the issue of hilting:
If a Viking captured an Anglo-Saxon sword they could take it back to Norway g have it re-hilted. Since we can't always tell where a blade was made a hilt can only tell us about the hilt; where it may have been from, time period/region of decorations, etc
Hot take: most early 'viking' swords were re-hilted Roman Spatha ;)
@@SonsOfLorgar do you have some sources for that? Not saying you are wrong & it seems logical but I've never seen any proof. I haven't looked into it much to be fair
@@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145 nope, it's pure intuitive speculation based on the percived uniformity of shape, length and quantity that from my limited point of view might be either due to inspiration/imitation or customisation of inherited captured/issued/or by other means disseminated blades out of Imperial proto-mass production stockpiles.
Similiar to all the AR15 and AK-47 variants today
@@trolltalwar mid 8th-early 9th century?
@@SonsOfLorgar fair enough! I definitely believe there were Roman blades remounted by others & that Romans definitely borrowed ideas from others; as they did with the gladius.
I was just hoping someone did research on it & had a book or something.
Regardless thank you
Hence, Matt Easton frequently wears Japanese clothing (i.e., imprinted with Japanese text) but made in China, sold in the UK. And if Matt donates his shirt to Oxfam it can end up in a bin going to East Africa. Pretty hard to define the shirt, now.
It is now a Matt Easton relic.
thats a good analogy
And clothing enthusiasts in the future will be having a hissy fit trying to convince people that East Africans would not have worn these shirts.
@@SirThomasMontacute 500 years from now, films set in the 2000s will show everyone dressed in t shirts and jeans.
Lol SuperDry is a British brand. Not a Japanese one.
It's a bit like people calling morions "conquistador helmets", when they were in fact one of the most common helmets of the XVIth-XVIIth centuries and everybody in Europe used them.
People do call them that. I knew about them as Nanban Kabuto, before I knew them as European.
@@yokaiou5848 Interesting. And what does "nanban" mean in this context?
@@ArkadiBolschek it means southern barbarians, it's stuff that the Japanese either bought or made in a foreign style, in this case European. They adopted and adapted European weapons and armor.
The morion being a helmet was named
Southern Barbarian style helmet.
@@yokaiou5848 googled "japanese morion" and it was exactly what I thought it would be:
a morion helmet but with a mask and a lamelar neck guard
They were apparently quite popularly used during the English Civil War
The hilt style with the curved crossguard and pommel is very reminiscent of older celtic weapons.
And also the Roman Imperial Spatha
The spatha was itself based on the Celtic La Tène swords in use far earlier. The really famous ones that had the long blades, not the short and stabby ones from Iberia and Britain.
The Celts likely got it from the Roman Spatha. The tribal "Celtic" Britons were more spearmen (and axes maybe) than swordsmen until the Romans brought tbose weapons.
@@wehrewulf not true. The Roman spatha wasn’t a thing until like after the birth of Jesus Christ. Celtic people’s had been using double edged, full tanged swords, elaborate hilted swords since the beginning of the Iron Age. The Romans even got mail from the Celts of Central Europe who been using mail since 800 BC. Even the Germanic people had iron sword production independent of the Romans, but I’m sure they gleaned off of Roman design because why not
"OLAF! Love the look! New sword?"
"Ulfberth! Yes, thank you for noticing! I just got back from London Fashion Raid. These new swept hilts are all the rage with the Saxons."
This kinda feels like a 'guns, germs, and steel' situation that turned into a misinformation situation. These swords are buried primarily by Vikings thus they are found most frequently in Viking lands.
Did they remember where they buried them all if they need them in war?
I'd really like you to cover byzantine and arab swords of this period, no one ever talks about those. In fact, even though I imagine both material and reliable iconographic sources to be particularly scarce on this topic, I'd love you to also address differences in general equipment (shields and armour) with that of western Europe.
HECK YES
That would be really cool! I know it's not Matt's area of expertise, but I'd love to hear his thoughts. There's so much iconography to look at.
I think for Arab swords there's actually a great deal of originals in some museums. I've had chances to buy some stuff that's not much later than that for not even that much money albeit still expensive af compared to alot of what Matt buys but far cheaper then European swords of that time would be.
I support this!
In post-Soviet countries (I dont know about all of them, but in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for sure) this type of swords is known as Carolingian or Frankish.
Most iron age sword were found from Finland. Finland was unique bc of how many of those were found and how detailed they were. (Carvings of finnish gods and different symbols.) Like 50% of all iron age swords were found from finland.
That was brand new news for me. 50% of all iron came from Finland? I have never read about vikings from Finland?
@@larsamundlarsen4628 No not 50% of iron. I meant 50% of iron swords. There isnt many videos or articles about this, and the ones that do exist are in finnish. Also vikings weren’t from Finland. Finnish tribes sometimes fought vikings. I had a phase where I was interested in iron age finland and finnish mythology, so I wached videos and read ab this stuff. Now it’s passed and I just remember some fun facts.
@@urkkipurkki5733 I understand what you mean. It's also difficult to know where the swords was made. The swords that has been digging out from graves in different places in Scandinavia show us that they had fantastisk swords, mostly from England or France. They had mutsh better steel than us, and they had learned from the Romans hundreds of years ago. It was forbidden to sell swords to the Vikings, but they stole or captured them during the fight.
Mun pitää kyl vähä haastaa tota sun argumenttia. Suomesta on löytyny arviolta noin yli 500 viikinki ajan miekkaa, ja taas Norjasta toista tuhatta...
I think hes reffering to Ulfberth swords. Not all viking sword's
Hi form Sweden! People from south (as in not Scandinavia) used plant patterns in decoration of many things - smithwork on doors, paninted on rafters, and sculpted on the capitals of pilars. Scandinavians did not do this until well into the Christian era (12 century). Scandinavians used animal patterns, snakes, wolves, horses, hounds and such. The sword you call Franksish at the start of the video certainly fits this pattern, being decorated with a plant vine motif very uncharacteristic of Scandinavia.
Metal newbie here, so maybe this is a dumb question, but what does the metallurgy suggest? I kept waiting to hear about where the iron was from. I understand with trade and looting, everything ends up everywhere, but ….
Good and interesting video as always. Here in Norway it has been found over 3500 viking era swords. So they are relativley common here. Where they are made is a good guess, but there was lots of swordmakers I have been told. The quality of the steel and iron used was normaly of lower quality than in the rest of europe. Early types have shorter blades because of this. Again, I have been told so. I dont know if this is true..🤔
Yep! that's why plaiting the iron was a common practice while forging, similar to how the japanese fold steel. And that is also why the Ulfbert swords were fancy rich guy options, because they used imported Indian crucible steel.
You mention the Jutes, what’s a good resource for information on the jutes peoples
If I may, I’d like to clarify some of the confusion of the different Viking tribes and who went Viking where.The borders of the different Viking tribes and the modern countries are very different.
The Dane’s came from todays Denmark and from todays southern Sweden.
Sweden didn’t exist so within the area of todays Sweden lived four main tribes; the Swedes (east central), the Geats(south central), the Gutes (island of Gotland) and the Danes (South). The kingdoms of the swedes and the Geats later united to become Sverige (Sweden in Swedish). The southern part of Sweden where the Dane’s lived was later conquered from Denmark.
In the the area of todays Norway were the Geats and the Norwegians.
The Norse were however very mobile and often moved from one area to another. Many of the famous Viking kings and warriors didn’t originally come from the area or tribe they were known for. Somone known to be Norwegian might actually have been a swede and a swede might originally have been a Dane. One example is Ragnar Lothbrok, who is famously portrayed as a Dane but he was actually born in the kingdom of the swedes and was a son of the Swedish king Sigurd Ring.
What makes up for this confusion is mostly due to English name translations and very different borders. The people in Sweden today are all called swedes in English and the Viking tribe are also called the swedes. But in the Scandinavian languages there is a distinction. The tribe were “Svear” but the people living in todays Sweden are “Svenskar”. Svenskar are made up of Svear(swedes), Götar(Geats), Gutar (Gutes) and Skåningar (who used to be Danes).
Another contributing factor to the confusion and the factual errors is the fact that during the romance, it was common practice to slightly alter history for nationalistic reasons.
@@KurtFrederiksen Almost everything we have to go by are from the island if sagas and the Swedish rune stones, unless the Catholic Church documented it. And they were often wrong.
I think you’re missing the point of my post. The swedes is not equal with Swedish Viking’s as there was no Sweden. The Swedes (not Swedish)was living in the area of todays central Sweden and gave name to the country. But if you say Vikings from Sweden you must include several tribes and include the Danes, as they lived in what now is Sweden. That’s why I say it’s a lot of confusion with the terminology. I’ve seen dozens of rune stones in Sweden telling the story of vikings from the area of todays Sweden, including central Sweden where the swedes lived, telling the story of journeys to the British islands. Unfortunately there was a lot of misconceptions and incorrect facts during the nationalistic era of the romance when people from Norway and Denmark dictated the Viking history.
Irish culture did not include cities. Dublin wasn't just ruled by the Norse, it was founded by them.
Large amount of Ulfberht swords has been found from Finland but it's not known how they got here and some even have suggested that those were forged in Finland.
There are 14 found in Finland (Moilanen argues the number is 31). 17 in Sweden, 9 in Estonia, 13 in Germany and 44 in Norway. I can't understand why Finland have been suggested as the origin of the Ulfberth based on numbers, Do you have a source? Going by numbers alone, Norway would be the obvious suggestion. Out of 167 Uflberth swords, over a quarter have been found in Norway. I doubt they were made in Scandinavia, or in the Nordics, as the name Ulfberth suggest todays Germany or France.
@@daginn896
Interesting
Archeology can be misleading without primary sources to guide us i mean with the finding alone one will assume those Swords were Scandinavian, but in reality that was mostly because of the pagan burial traditions
Any pointing to them being forged in Finland are doing so for a biased reason. The general concensus is they were forged in Francia so either Germany or France by modern standards plus a little bit of other countries.
The name is a frankish personal name.
We'd also have to look at the Finnish swords and determine if they're even real or just era appropriate forgeries. Name spelling and a few other details matter. So do the fittings. All the highly decorated ones I know of are fakes and made of the wrong blade material. Might be some rehilted ones but none I'm aware of.
But finland is the wrong area.
@@daginn896 31 found in Finland. But we don't have exact numbers. One expert does show the 14 swords he accounted for. Another mentions a total of 31 and shows some of them but doesn't go into enough detail.
We also aren't sure on the exact number of real originals. And how many are actually in extant existence because there's some that may be in private collections. There's also some swords believed to be in reference to the originals that were found in Finland but not actual originals. And there's some that are in extreme states of damage from the ages that are debatable if they're even really still surviving examples.
Your videos are always so informative! Thank you for sharing!
In a way it is like arguing whether the Bowie knife is an American thing or Sheffield thing.
A lot of people like some version of "spatha" for this era of sword. "Dark-Age Spatha", "Migrant Spatha" (as in short for Migration Era Spatha), "Post-Roman Spatha", "Latter Spatha", etc.
Strictly speaking a migration era spatha would precede these swords! The migration era is like 400-750 AD, the viking era 750 - 1050 AD (give or take a few decades, and depending on whom you ask - the English, for example, usually say the viking age is 793-1066). The migration era swords are actually somewhat different from the viking era swords, although there are of course a lot of similarities and some overlap.
It's fine to call these 'spathas' but we should differentiate them from the migration era swords, if we want to be technical! (Personally I just call them viking era swords).
@@blakewinter1657 Shadiversity has a good idea for the name. Swert, it the Norse name for Swerd before the term sword was developed. It is still to specific, but not as nonsensically specific as a Viking Sword.
Carolingian seems better.
"Spatha" has an overall different approach to the handle and blade width, and is more commonly understood to be a longer version of the Gladius.
@@PJDAltamirus0425 I don't like Sverd for these because that's still the modern Scandinavian word for sword. "Sverd" is just as valid for katanas and rapiers.
@@WritingFighter I would never call them 'carolingian,' in part because I dislike Charlemagne. Also it suffers from the same problem as 'viking,' in that most of these swords were not used by Charlemagne's people, and also, the 'viking swords' lasts from 750 to 1050, much longer than Charlemagne.
So I agree with the points here! I really do. And, as an afficionado of Viking-Era swords (particularly those that were prevalent in Sweden and Finland), this is a point that I often consider as well when I talk about swords. They are not really viking sword, but viking-era. A few types were not even very prevalent in Scandinavia (e.g. the type L shown in this video).
However, I do use the term 'viking sword' a lot, because, like the term viking itself, it's gotten changed in popular language. Just as 'viking' has come to mean 'any Scandinavian from circa 750 AD to 1050 AD,' so 'viking sword' just means one of these styles of one-handed sword with a short hilt, relatively small but thick guards, etc.
I think of it kind of like the term 'pirate sword.' Technically, there is no such thing as a pirate sword. Pirates didn't make swords, nor did they have any kind of sword that was exclusive to them. But people talk about 'pirate swords' anyway, just meaning 'the kinds of swords pirates used.' That seems to be the way people use the term 'viking sword.' As long as we're aware of this, I don't think it's much of an issue.
By the way, I also really recommend 'Marks of Fire, Faith, and Value' by Mikko Moilanen for anyone interested in swords of this era. Although it focuses on swords found in Finland, and only on those with iron inlays in the blades, he includes so many useful measurements and things that I have not found in any other sources. So for people trying to learn what the originals were really like, it is a wonderful source. He is also a swordsmith himself, so he discusses the metallurgy and how the swords were likely made.
Hello Blake! :-)
@@RichardCarlsson How odd seeing you here!
@@blakewinter1657 Ditto.
Hmm, the pirate analogy is sound but did Vikings/ the people of Denmark, Scandinavia, etc not make their own steel? Are they and their blacksmiths not famous for a kind of Damascus accidentally made using twisted steel bought from the Middle East? Or is this another case of we can’t be sure where the swords are from in Europe?
Edit: I’m talking about UlfBerht swords which apparently indeed are not probably not “viking”.
I have to take a look at that book. I remember one Norwegian book on vikings stating that the Norse really preferred Frankish swords (or just blades) at the time, such as the famous Ulfberht swords. Not sure if this is the whole story of course.
Ulfberht is Saxon for wolf bright. Yes, Ulfberht, or +ulfberh+t to be correct, was Saxon make, not Frankish. The Franks spoke vulgar Latin at the time, and if they were indeed monastery made, they would have been in Latin, not Saxon.
I and a team of people from around the globe researched this for many years. The ONLY language Ulfberht is contemporary with, and is found in, is Saxon.
I actually have a sword of that type from Windlass, it's based off of a find from Finland, it's got a pattern welded blade and the guard and pommel are unusually shaped, it's labeled as Damascus Viking sword in their catalogue
Suontaa sword?
@@lehtju4waif5ahk49 no it's the one with z type hilt.
@@lehtju4waif5ahk49, I don't know, but it's listed in Windlass's catalog as Damascus Viking Sword
Is there any historical data on where the Iron was mined in Europe.
It seems to me that the Iron Mines would be the driving factor.
What about Seax Swords and Ulfberht Swords? Do you personally own any actual Viking Swords that you can show us, instead of pictures from a book?
We have the Saxon Hoard on display at the city museum, split between our museum and Birmingham. Its very uniquely Saxon in ornamentatiom but the bare bones of how the swords and armour are shaped and styled show the huge influence of the Roman Legions. The swords are just like Roman cavalry swords which is unsurprising as the Germanic tribes fought for the Legions, often as cavalry. Then there is the Romano British influence as well. I am fairly certain its why European swords all have the same flavour.
I also thought about the Spatha. I am just unsure about the average respective lenghts.
There's also the fact that the culture of covering most of Europe at this point was Germanic so it really shouldn't be that surprising that most of tye weapons across Europe looked similar with eachother
Great video, i was just thinking about this topic last night. To my understanding most franks would have known these swords just as spatha, as they used latin terms for the military, for example lorica insted of mail.
Some modern Danish historians claim that the Vikings never existed. It is a literary invention from the 1800s. The Viking expansion is just a Nordic Iron Age expansion...
Decorations aside, it's ultimately a Roman calvary sword.
Pretty sure Vikings also used Turkish/Arabian style swords... atleast some of the Varangians that served as guards for the emperor in Konstantinopel/Mikklagard (todays Istanbul). The Vikings used what they liked and could get their hands on. Some they made, some they bought, some they stole and some they looted from the dead.
A good sword is a good sword and that is valuable.
Interestingly enough. If I remember it correctly, the Varangians were offered swords along with the rest of their battle gear by the Byzantines but said they'd rather use their own swords. I'm not sure what the reasoning was, but I imagine the designs being too different from what they were used to might be a part of it?
@@anarchclown The early medieval swords in middle east were very similar to early medieval European swords. Straight stocky blade. Short crossbar.
@@ReasonAboveEverything Yup. I don't know why they made that choice to be honest. I just know that it was specifically mentioned at some point that they didn't want the Byzantine swords.
@@anarchclown I'd quess it's because the swords they used were already custom made or at least the hilt was custom made for the each warrior. Plus possible magical bonds they might have with the sword.
So, sorry if this is a stupid question, but with the single-edged sword at 19:20, which side is sharp?
Is this type of sword like a Falchion and the more curved edge is sharp, or is it like a Seax where the straighter edge is sharp?
I don't have that book so I can't confirm, but my suspicion is the curved side due to the extra wear/pitting on that side.
Looking at other examples as well it looks like you're correct. Thanks. :3
@@kewlin Of course! Also, I should have mentioned this before: not a stupid question!
"What is a viking sword?"
Any sword that was worn/carried/wielded by a person who went viking.
@@Meevious No, it's a sword that is used for viking.
I wasn't referring to a sword owned by a vikingr, but one being used for the purpose of viking.
A cutting sword isn't a sword that is itself a cutting. It is a sword that is used for the purpose of cutting.
That War of Clans ad transition legit made me lol. Really fun moment there.
Next video: Not All Bastard Swords were used by Bastards
what type of swords were the Moors using in Iberia back then?
Id like to see a discussion about this also. I looked it up and found that they may have used a sword called a jineta.
Viking swords
I know its late, but thanks for this. Much appreciated.
as much i know, there are no metal ore mines here in iceland, but the ore is bound in certain types of moss and had to be melted out, the quality was of course very fragile and the blades had to be imported from france and the local blacksmiths only mounted the handles on them and the sword was finished... fun fact, the "vikings" stole so much silver if you could find all this today and put it on the market the price of silver would fall by half - according to studies from sweden from the early 2000's
This actually ties very closely to what I was going to post. We have amazing examples of the Saxon "three core" swords and numerous depictions of them in Anglo-Saxon art, that predate the "Viking Age." Later examples of art, in my opinion, clearly show Norse using swords strikingly like the Anglo-Saxon "three core" swords. As a smith, this makes a good deal of sense to me. Bog iron being the primary source of "hardenable" material in the most of the Scandinavian countries, produces significantly lower quality steel and is excessively labor intensive, while the British Isles, Frankia, Spain, the German Principalities and the imported steel from northern India / Pakistan was of significantly greater quality. Why wouldn't a raider / trader either take the raw billets or even better, the finished product home with them? And if the form was equated with function, as well as the material, it would make sense to reproduce the designs you know work, but add a little personal flair.
@@bjornronaldson6017 Do you have a source for the lower quality of metal produced from bog iron? Because all I can find suggests that it actually has less impurities than most orea, meaning it should produce better metal.
As far as I understand, the reason for European pattern welding was the fact that bloomery smelting produces very impure ingots with non-homogenous carbon content. Which means that you can pick out the high-carbon steel pieces to use as edges, pattern weld the rest into as strong a blade as possible and weld the edges to that.
That process would have been the same for any bloomery smelted iron though, not just bog iron.
@@gustavchambert7072 it's less that the bog iron is inherently poor quality and more that the billet steel coming out of Northern India was of abnormally high quality at the beginning of the Viking Age. I believe the Brotish Royal Museum did a metallurgical study of several swords from the period and I know there have been several private experiences done with both processes, though we no longer have access to the naturally occurring raw material from those veins.
@@bjornronaldson6017 sure, I know about the north-indian steel but you seemed to say that the distinction was between bog iron and mined ore in general, as you mentioned the indian steel in the same sentence as a bunch of european mines.
You actually state flat out that bog iron is more labour intensive and of lower quality than all the european, mined sources you mentioned.
To my knowledge, none of those places made crucible steel or similar until much later in history, meaning the only real difference would have come from the source of the material.
@@gustavchambert7072 ah, I see what you are getting at. Here is one interesting study on bloomery steel from the Medevail period, www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_c/articles/2015_thiele_bloomery_steel_tests.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiD2Na-sb75AhVPpIkEHRwlAJIQFnoECAcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1fuDsRTGRmiaUOsq7PMCe0
And here is a decent description of smelting process for bloomery steel, with links to comparisons between modern and period bloomery steel.
Still sifting through my library for my information on bog iron. It's not something I work with regularly, so I believe it may be in a box somewhere and since it is 5am here and my roommates are asleep, I am not going to risk waking them. I will try to find the texts and get you the info.
I'm glad he brought the single edge Norwegian swords because that the first thing I though of as a specifically viking sword.
One in five swords discovered in Norway is single edged.
What about the seax, specifically the long version?
its a regular kitchen knife. What special about it?
Great video, I really appreciate the depth you're going into on this topic!
Thank you so much for this, Matt! I was always convinced that "Viking sword" or "Anglo-Saxon sword" are, by and large, marketing terms for what should be referred to as an "early medieval (northern) European sword". Given the scarcity of findings and the, erm, mobility of property associated with every aspect of what we retrospectively call "Viking culture" today, there simply is no honest way of being sure that a sword ending up in e.g. a Scandinavian tomb actually originated in the area. Likewise, how do we know that a sword found, say, amidst the remains of a longship on the bottom of the river Thames, didn't travel across the continent with its previous owner? I wouldn't even be surprised at them wielding handed-down gladii from the 5th century. Anyway, enough of me nerding out. It's just nice that I can finally LARP a pre-Norman-conquest Anglo-Saxon warrior sporting a "Viking sword"... 🍻👍
There are definitely decorative styles that are primarily Scandinavian and can quite confidently point to a particular sword having been made in Scandinavia. It’s the more generic, pan-European style swords that are hard to place as made in a specific region of Europe. And of course, some sword types are clearly Anglo-Saxon or Frankish, for instance.
While swords definitely could be passed down the generations, I’ve never heard of a 5th century (Migration Era!) sword found in a Viking Age context. If it happened, it must have been exceedingly rare. I’ve never heard of a 7th century sword found in a Viking Age context either. Maybe you could find some blades from the Vendel Period still in use in the 9th or 10th century if you went looking for them, but if that were the case they were all re-hilted in contemporary styles.
It's also very possible that some swords for decorate by blacksmiths once they came to other countries, depending on the owner
A Viking sword is one with a horned helmet on the pommel, a biker leather hilt and a horsehair plume that's side-shaved and braided. Usually kept in a woolen chainmail scabbard.
No thats total wrong, they used fur like a real barbarian not wool for the scabbard.
what length of blade should my viking sword have if my height is 166 cm?
Would you recommend a master smith? The only swords I can find online are mass produced junk, usually made in Asia.
Have you ever done a video specifically about the Ulfberht swords?
I don't know much on the subject and would be interested in your thoughts.
Ive gathered that the term viking is more of a verb, " here we go a viking, am I incorrect? Id love some content on the clarification.
Yes you are incorrect. There's the masculine noun 'víkingr' which means a pirate and the feminine noun 'víking' which means a piratical raid.
A must have book it seems.... excellent video as always!
Greetings from a Swede in Glasgow....
There's very little I dislike more in this world than the casual use of the Christian pejorative 'pagan'.
what about the Ulfberht swords? Also aren't they collectively referred to as migration era swords, or am I thinking of something else?
My fellow history nerds (of aficionados, whichever)
I'm going to Europe for the first time to visit Belgium and several German cities. What battlefields, sites, and museums do I need to go to? I'm already planning on going to Waterloo and Bastogne, and might be able to make it out to Teutoburg. But other than that I could use some advice.
How many of the early medival swords may have been re-hafted late Imperial Spatha?
Several
In the same vein, it really annoys me, when someone says "Early Medieval sword". It should be Early Medieval *Era* sword!
I'm kidding. People are lazy. "Medieval Era" will become simply "Medieval", every single time, and it doesn't annoy me. Similarly, "Viking Era" will become "Viking". That's potentially confusing to people who know nothing about history and historical weapons, but we have no choice, other than to live with that. For referring specifically to swords made in Scandinavia, or by Scandinavians, I suggest saying _Norse swords._
The Norse raided, traded, settled, crafted, conquered, manufactured, explored, captured, oppressed, killed, were killed, ruled, extorted, fought as mercenaries, and generally did everything else that people did back then. They were just a bit more eager than average, when it came to some of those things. Matt has a chip on his shoulder about the Vikings behaving badly in England, and has very nearly accused English Viking reenactors of treason. It hardly matters which side in what part of English history one reenacts, though. If it's after the Roman occupation ended, one will be a traitor, by that standard. At that point, everyone in England was an invader or a descendant of an invader. Yes, Matt, even you. The Vikings weren't special in what they did, just in how successfully they did it, how many places they did it, and for how long they kept doing it. Oh, and they considered getting killed a success, which, I guess, does set them apart a bit, but not by nearly as much as one would think.
Winning 50% of pitched battles is pretty good for an invader arriving by sea, by the way. The rule of thumb is that an invading force needs to outnumber the defenders 2:1, in order to be successful. Arriving by sea, the Vikings had nothing close to that kind of numbers. Combining matching the English in pitched battles with guerrilla tactics, the Vikings were very successful. An invader being better than the locals in guerrilla tactics is also pretty unusual.
As a novice, I have to ask, What happened to all the stuff taken from the monasteries?
simple burried with the dead, used as currency or simply melted down or cut down to be repurposed. the gold for example is probably part of someones old ring or necklace that were handed down in the family... (if i had been less lazy today id call my uncle up and ask for a picture of a family ring thats been in family for almost 800years)
are the Clontarf sword and the Ballinderry sword two names for the same sword or are they two separate swords?
Excellent video, but I found myself wondering why you didn't show more of the bigger pictures ?
I think the books from Osprey, man at arms, ellite, created zome of that question, it points out your point but mentioned the pommel styles made a differences. And yes a big arms trade amd taking a dead warriors. But love new information about the subject❤
Wasn't there a time when the Franks put the death penalty on selling sword blades to northmen? A lot of the blades the vikings used were probably bought (or looted) elsewhere since mining iron wasn't a huge thing in Scandinavia during the viking age. Better use the bog iron for tools and smaller weapons like spear points or axe heads.
Even as far away as Arabia I bet.
Extend the handle a few feet, shorten the blade a lot, widen it a bit, turn it sideways, there you go.
Looks like Germanic Spatha seems like an accurate name for this kind of sword.
I can't believe this guy doesn't have 10 million subscribers.
What is the "Anglo-Saxon" style sword you've got there? Nice.
I have a question about that kind of sword. How effective are they at chopping into spears?
How many draugr have been let lose cuz of archeologists
Same with the "Viking" shield. Used absolutely everywhere in Europe from as early as the 5th century for the oldest found via archaeological searches.
Very interesting additional Point.
Marvelous explanation, illuminating and thought provoking!
there are some migration era swords that have a longer hilt but look reminiscent of Viking swords
Sorry for the dumb question. I am interested in Portuguese history. Outwardly, say in 1000 AD, a norse warrior and a Christian warrior would be nearly identical in their kit? ( Armour and weapons)
Thank you
Also a warrior would use whatever equipment he felt most comfortable with and felt had the most advantage. Look at brigantine armor.
Want to know how to tell a Viking raider from a Viking trader?
Count the swords on both sides.
Is there nothing in the metallurgy, proportions of alloying elements or even isotopic composition, of the steels that can be related to ores in various regions? Obviously this would only tell you where ore was mined rather than definitively where the sword originated but I would expect a correlation between ore origin and sword origin. Unless an awful lot of steel was traded long distance instead of locally produced...
"What makes them viking swords?"
Vikings stole them. Any other question I can answer for you? 🤪
Will you be doing fight and weapon reviews for the upcoming LOTR and GOT shows?
Matt Easton: Complains about pop culture views of vikings
Also Matt Easton: Shows ad for a game that perpetuates pop culture views of vikings
There were also Vikings from what is the modern day Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, though most people forget.
Viking refers to an activity as well as a cultural package (that of pre christian Scandinavia).
Has anyone undertaken isotope analysis on any of these period swords that could definitively identify the source of the original material? It wouldn't conclusively prove a particular provenance since the raw materials could have been exported or imported to a region but it would certainly give more certainty as to their source..
So my Roman Denarii I found in South America definitely isn't Aztec?
People seem to underestimate the amount of trade that went on in that period, technology travels.
I just had a thought whilst watching. It’d be really cool to have a virtual SG workshop with all your weapons on the walls beautifully rendered and videos about/related to them and weapon information on a virtual museum plaque.
would the Norwegian and scandinavian all be under the dane law?
Brilliant video and also thanks for the disambiguation of what is viking, scandinavian, frankish both in terms of swords and culture/ ethnicity. However, I´d quote you at 4:46 "..Francia, the land of the franks, what we generically call France these days.."
Well, you shouldn´t because Francia/ France or frankish/ french is not synonymous at all.
Albeit it is true that most of Roman Gaul had fallen under Frankish rule by the 8th century (conquered and accordingly named "Neustria" (New Realm) by Merowingian king Clovis/ Chlodwig I), the Frankish heartland "Austrasia" was located to the (then germanic) east. The clue is both in the name and the geography, Austrasia most likely being a latinisation of *oster rike, meaning "eastern realm", centered on the Middle Rhine, including the basins of the Moselle, Main, and Meuse rivers, most of which are located in modern Germany, Holland and Belgium, to a far lesser extent in modern France. Given the fact that both the metallurgic fingerprints and the "brand name" of the infamous Ulfberth swords (clearly falling into the overall stylistic patterns of the so called "Viking swords") these most likely originate from the Rhineland in modern Germany. Interestingly enough, that´s also where a good deal of suitable iron ore deposits during the middle ages were found. There´s an interesting source (downloadable as pfd.-file in English) about Ulfberth swords: "Anne Stalsberg, Herstellung und Verbreitung der Vlfberht-Schwertklingen. Eine Neubewertung, Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 36, 2008, 89-118". So, the whole lot of this type of sword to my understanding is neither Viking, nor French, or "European" for that matter. It´s rather a "Carolingian Spatha", or an "Early Medieval German Sword"... which admittedly is a bit of a mouthful.
Here´s an interesting video about making a copy of a Merovingian sword (spatha), literally from ore to blade. Although it´s in German, you´d easily get the gist: ua-cam.com/video/fkzxYojj3cI/v-deo.html
How about the Frisians of the Netherlands areas?
Thanks for the sword video ⚔️
Two things that I feel strongly should be considered here is how developed was metallurgy in Scandinavia at the time and how much and of what quality ore they had access to. If both lesser than western and southern parts of Europe, then it would be logical for Vikings to have kept better quality swords (and consider them better to the level of choosing them as sidearms for final journey - burial). The fact that more straightforward swords were in fashion longer there seems to back that up. However all that is just my rambling, I have no idea. Great video, thanks Matt!
Wait a minute. That Clontarf has a Squire Line mark (the original version) on the blade (visible at 9:54)! Is that actually a Squire Line Viking hilted as a Clontarf? My brain is hurting, now.
Yes it's a squire line one that had the edges improved.
@@scholagladiatoria I didn't know (or didn't remember) that Albion ever made a Squire Line Clontarf.
There was a TT show on a hoard of posh hilts and such with no blades. One would assume that the blades were reused, perhaps several times. Metalurgy shows blades were made in many places and exported from early Roman times.
Hi Matt.
Is it not possible to perform spectrographic/isotopic studies on extant examples to determine any number of desired variables?
Nice to hear your pronunciation of Clontarf improving with time.
Where can I buy that shirt????
If I rember correctly. In Finland there have been found largest amount of viking age swords after Norway...
Will you do a review of the 2022 movie ‘The Northman’? There is a single edged sword in it, I’m not sure how accurate it is.
The whole term "viking" should just simply be abandoned in academic context. It's been way overused in recent years due to media popularity and a lot of hype from fans of tv shows and movies. Great presentation btw!
Make it go stand next to chainmail.
@@hollyingraham3980 ? what's wrong with chainmail lol more accurate than fucking leather armor....
But the term chainmail isn’t an ambiguous term. It’s a justified term due to the use of mail in other contexts, like email, snail mail, etc.
Helmetless Hollywood viking: Rah!!!
Hjalmar Helmetbro: Well, Sven... It looks like you forgot your helmet again. You wouldn't want your wife to be a widow and the jarl to get fined for an Osha violation
What we know about these "vikings" its mostly product of westerners imaginations to make them some kind of pioneers (germanocentrisation and germanophilia of world history) of culture - they even called this "viking age" - the exaggeration of importance of these pirates is unbelievable. It's like they came from different planets and gave us savages light be cause they were sailing around europe and robbing other nations. Such a wonderful achievement to humanity. No one have ever done that in history, right?
in fact, I think that basic pattern of sword was used from Ireland all the way to Arabia.
but then we could also get into semantics and ask what's a viking? becuase Saxons(and the rest of the germanic world and the whole of Europe to a greater extant) were doing viking things a lot earlier than "the vikings"
Isn't that style of sword based off of the Roman/Gallic era swords? Which would explain why they were all over early medieval Europe...
Excellent Vídeo. For a long time I tried to figure out the differences between anglo-saxon and viking swords.
You have shown slight differences on pomels and crossguards, but what about the actual mailing of the sword? Are there metalurgical differences? I heard about a high quality viking blade made by a certain blade smith that even engraved his mark on its swords!
The overall design likely emerged from the Roman Gladius, and Spatha. Individual swordsmiths elaborated with their own creative embellishments.
Also what type of swords were they using in the medieval Rus at the same time? Same kind of swords. All medieval Russian nobility and warriors were portrayed with the same kind of swords.
isn't a more proper term "migration era" or "dark age" sword?
The Danes that invaded/raided then-England were mostly Jutes and to this very day, Danes from Jutland are still called Jutes. As far as I know the Danes were predominantly a tribe/clan(?) from Zealand.
I might be wrong.