239 - An important Viking sword

An important Viking sword dating: 10th Century provenance: Northern Europe, Broad, straight, double-edged blade, finely worked in pattern-welding, giving the surface a harmonious appearance similar to wood. The central part of the blade featuring a slight fuller at the middle while the tip is oval. On one side, near the forte, there is a ring-shaped silver inlay. Straight quillon with rounded ends; the pommel, made in two pieces and slightly offset in relation to the quillon, and has a large part of its original geometric decoration in silver and copper. The tang, similarly executed in pattern-welding, is straight on one side and oblique on the other. While today pattern-welding is essentially an aesthetic choice, in the Viking Age it responded above all to the need to make use of every possible fragment of ferrous material (bloom) and to homogenise an iron that was by nature highly heterogeneous and which, after long processes of hammering and consolidation, was carburised in order to be transformed into steel. The beauty of pattern-welded steel was at first merely a by-product of the process, and only later came to be appreciated and deliberately sought for its natural aesthetic value. Our sword represents a remarkable example of this technique of blade construction and moreover preserves, to a large extent, the decoration of its hilt.