Swordsmanship

In the literature about swords, their use has predominantly not been analysed. This article tries to reconstruct some aspects of the use of Viking Age swords from Northern and Eastern Europe. The reconstruction is based on biomechanics, martial arts principles, late medieval fencing books and

This article traces the pictorial lineages of images collected in one of the two Thun-Hohenstein albums through comparative analyses of fight books produced in the German-speaking lands, and considers how the representational strategies deployed in martial treatises inflected the ways that book painters and their audiences visualized the armoured body.

Abstract: The paper deals with the problem of luxury rapiers of the 16th century and their use among representatives of
different stratas in the early modern society. One can observe on the example of the two analyzed specimens, manufactured
in the workshop of the royal Toledan bladesmith Juan Martinez the Elder, how the increase in wealth and prosperity among
burgesses has lead them to copy fashion for luxury weapons and attire from the highest nobility.

V září 2014 byl v katastru Nimyčnyj poblíž obce Bohdan Rakhivského regionu Zakarpatské oblasti Ukrajiny náhodně objeven místním pastýřem J. Retyaznykom meč z konce 13.–14. století. Tento typ zbraně je velmi vzácný jak pro region Horního Potisí, tak i pro středovýchodní Evropu jako celek. K určení nálezu byly použity typologická schémata E. Oakeshotta, M. Aleksića, A. Geibiga, Z.-K. Pintera a M. Šercerové. Výsledky analýzy konstrukce meče poskytly doplňující informace pro posouzení vývoje sečných zbraní ve středověku.

A sword dated to the second half of the 13th century – the beginning of the 14th century was accidentally found by local shepherd Yuriy Retyaznyk in September 2014 in the Nimychnyy cadastral zone, close to the village of Bohdan in the Rakhiv district of Zakarpats'ka oblast, Ukraine. This type of weapon is quite rare both in the Upper Tisza region and Central-Eastern Europe. Typological schemes of E. Oakeshott, M. Aleksić, A. Geibig, Z.-K. Pinter and M. Šercerova were used for its identification. Results of the analysis of the sword construction provided information for the assessment of the development of bladed weapons in the Middle Ages.
Keywords:
Bohdan; sečná zbraň; meč; čepel; rukojeť; typologie
Bohdan; bladed weapon; sword; blade; hilt; typology

Short catalogue to a small exhibition of historical books on fencing and dueling from the library of the Arms and Armor Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and swords and other objects relating to them in the department's collection.

Within the chronological system of the 10th-century Carpathian Basin, the Hungarian research attributes an important role to the straight double-edged »Viking swords«. According to Gy. László, K. Bakay and L. Kovács, these swords appeared in the archaeological material of the Magyars in the second half or last quarter of the century. The chronological position of the swords is based on the hypothesis of a military reform, a »weapon change« and the organisation of a new army by dux Géza and rex Saint Stephen I, since they recognised that the nomadic Magyar tactics and weaponry are inferior to the contemporary West European armoured heavy cavalry. In this paper, a historical and archaeological critique of the hypothesis is attempted, discussing topics like the possibility of an early medieval European military reform, the unconditional linking of certain weapon types to certain tactics, the archaeological identification of military matters like tactics and retinue, the comparison of the efficiency of sabre and sword, and finally the assumed certain West European origin of these swords.

"Friederich E. Grünzweig, Runeninschriften auf
Waffen. Inschriften vom 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. bis
ins Hochmittelalter. Wiener Studien zur Skan di -
na vistik 11. Edition Praesens Wien 2004. 203
pp. ISBN 3-7069-0227-3.
This work is centered on a question addressed by Klaus Düwel already in 1981. Are runes frequently engraved on weapons? The answer to this question was negative some 25 years ago, and still remains so. Why a new book on the topic, then? This work appears to have been conceived as a catalogue or compilation of runic inscriptions on weapons, summarizing previous conclusions along the way, rather than as a work of independent research and creative analysis. As such, the work certainly does have its merits as a helpful source of reference. But Grünzweig's approach towards archaeology varies considerably when discussing diffefrent types of weapons. Much effort has been placed on criticizing individual works on the Roman Iron Age lance- and spearheads. Considerably less space has been devoted to the Migration Period swords. This makes the catalogue somewhat lopsided. One also wonders at the incredulity against certain theories while others are accepted only to be abandoned a page later. For instance, the hypothetical connection between the English Migration Period runic swords (three from Kent, the Isle of Wight, Chessel Down, Gilton Ash, Sarre) and the Jutish migration mentioned by the venerable Bede remains highly dubious. Moreover, if one follows Grünzweig’s own logic, one ought to look at the closest counterparts of the swords. But these are not the finds from Nydam, as he suggests. Rather, the scabbard from Bergakker in the Netherlands and the recently unearthed ring sword from Saint Dizier in Champagne-Ardenne are considerably closer in time and space to the English finds than are the Nydam finds. Indeed, the Gilton Ash pommel has its closest typological parallel in Saint Dizier. Moreover, the Saint Dizier inscription reads (a)lu. It does indeed match the inscriptions on the axe-handle from Nydam and the arrows from Illerup A. Less complicated are the chapters dealing with the handful of weapons from southwestern Germany and the Viking and Medieval Periods in Scandinavia. When summarizing his results, Grünzweig returns to his pet question, that of the apparent dominance of runic inscriptions in military contexts as opposed to female graves during the Roman Iron Age. He opts for the invention of the runic script in Scandinavia, yet still appears to have difficulties resolving the problem of the runic lances and spears from Eastern Europe.These do not fit an easy model of diffusion, especially since Grünzweig considers the Mos lance head an imported object.The fact that Grünzweig did not know of the Saint Dizier find at the time calls for future caution. One must not speculate about grand ethnic movements in relation to historical sources and material objects merely because one would like the sources to be true and the relations to be causative. It is considerably more challenging to have to explain why parallels in terms of inscriptions and material objects instead have the annoying tendency to appear in the wrong places. Runes on Migration Period swords connect Kent, France and the Netherlands across the Channel during a volatile period one knows very little about. Formulaic words like alu appear from Nydam via Spong Hill and Saint Dizier to Hüfingen in southwestern Germany. Rather than an ethnic question, this would seem to represent a problem complex concerning literate ideology, military hierarchy and social organization in the post-Roman world.
Svante Fischer
Musée d’Archéologie Nationale
Château Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Place Général de Gaulle 78105 Cedex
France
swantowraetruna@hotmail.com"