[J.D. Crawford]

PS - the other 5-lobed viking sword bears a strong resemblance to a sword found in Poland (Oakeshott, Records, p 83), but it also looks suspiciously similar to their Tristan movie sword with a new pommel. Depends whether your an optimist or a pessimist I guess.

[J.D. Crawford]

So, I bought the 'Swedish Viking Sword' over the holidays and unfortunately was disappointed to the point that I returned it after a couple of weeks. I will get to the reason why at the end.

One's first impression is - wow, that's a really big Viking-style sword, at least the biggest I have handled. With its broad blade, over 32" long, its definitely at the high-end for this type. It's also relatively heavy, I would say at least 3 pounds although I did not weigh it. The PoB/CoG was 6.75 from the guard, although in effect it is further because the guard is quite wide at the handle, putting the hand further from the PoB than usual. Together with the other stats, only a little profile taper, and little if any distal taper in the thickness, this makes for a sword that is not easy to handle.

None of this was a deal-breaker for me though, I'm a sucker for a hero sword and was looking forward to confirming the presumably vast cutting power of that wide blade.

The hilt was another matter - it was much too long to be historical. Presumably they did this to help balance the big blade and /or satisfy the many people who don't know how to hold a short-handled viking sword. It was long enough to hold pretty consistently in a hammer grip despite the wide pommel, but too long to gain any advantage from a handshake grip palming the pommel - which in this model places the hand much to far from the guard.

Another complaint - the grip was rather slippery, which tends to exacerbate the above problems.

Yeah, and the sword would not go all the way into the none-too-exciting scabbard.

The sword was generally well finished, except that the holes on the side of the pommel were quite roughly drilled out from what looked like a solid cast piece of iron. In the original (see earlier posting) it looks like these are made by bending the lateral spikes down toward the upper guard.

Still, I would have put up with any of these design flaws for a 200+ dollar reproduction of a sword that I have admired for some time, but it also had one really unforgivable design flaw. Instead of being peened, the pommel is held on by a pin running laterally through the pommel and tang. If the pommel were a perfect fit to the tang this unusual method might work and be quite secure, but as Murphy's law would predict, within a couple of days of light use the pommel came loose, vibrating in annoying fashion and throwing off the sword's dynamics. I hear that this is not the only unit to suffer from this problem, perhaps they all do. There does not appear to be any way to fix this without dismantling the pommel.

That was it for me, I took the sword back and exchanged it for a Windlass Sticklestad Viking Sword, a model I have liked for some time. This particular unit is very light (feels like about 2 pounds), has a PoB of about 6', handles well, feels very solid, looks great...I am much happier with this sword and would give it a very positive review.

So, thumbs down on the Swedish Viking Sword. I would say that Windlass should have been more conservative on the blade size/mass, kept the grip at more historical proportions, and most importantly, change the pommel construction. If they had constructed the pommel in two pieces -an upper guard that could be peened onto the tang, and a decorative pommel that could then be pressure fit onto the first part (they did this with another model) it would work much better.

[Rob MacL.]

Disappointing news with the Swedish Viking sword, this was one I was thinking about going for at some point when I had a little extra money sitting around.

[Hugh Fuller]

Has anybody seen or played with their Dark Ages sword. It has a 32" unfullered blade and a 6" hilt which includes the guard and the pommel, leaving the grip to be, at my guess, ca. 3 1/2" or so. The blade appears to be 2" wide all of the way to the point, showing no taper until it reaches the point. They say that it is 3/16" thick and they do not mention distal taper. They also say that it weighs in at 3 pounds, 6 ounces. So, I am wondering just how it handles.

http://www.museumreplicas.com/museumreplicas/detail.aspx?ID=1437

[Anders Backlund]

[P. Cha]

You know, I kinda really like that rondel...but since I generally hate rondel dagger design, maybe it's a bad design after all .

[Sean Smith]

After this thread got me interested, I headed over to the MRL showroom to look at the Naumberg sword, as it had a very unique look for a 112-13th century sword (as they labeled it). It is a bit tip heavy, balancing almost 5.5" from the guard. The other off-putting thing about the guard is that it is tiered. I have never seen this on a historical sword, and it seems like they took some liberty with it. This is the guard much exaggerated in ASCII below...

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[Nathan Robinson]

A discussion of the Naumburg Sword can be found In This Topic. The method of interpretation of the guard is one thing raised.