Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Lee · Today, 10:14 AM

Alan Williams hypothesized that the ULFBERH+T swords may have been made from Asian crucible steel on the basis of high carbon content and microstructure. The popular press then ran with a corruption of that theory - that ULFBERH+T swords were the best - luxury goods of their time - and the other variations were knockoffs.

However, far from being the Viking Super Sword, the +ULFBERH+T inlaid swords were likely from a particular workshop that used higher carbon steel and corrupted the earlier existing +ULFBERHT+ inscription and there may be a metallurgical reason so many are found broken.

For me, Ingo Petri pretty much shot down the Viking super sword concept in 2015 at the Solingen Sword: Form and Thought conference. Here is a more recent paper by him explaining his reasoning: https://www.academia.edu/68589269/VL...nd_manufacture. (The formatting is better if you download the pdf from there.)

Today, 10:14 AM	#7
Lee EAAF Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Upstate New York, USA Posts: 941	Which is the inferior knock-off? Alan Williams hypothesized that the ULFBERH+T swords may have been made from Asian crucible steel on the basis of high carbon content and microstructure. The popular press then ran with a corruption of that theory - that ULFBERH+T swords were the best - luxury goods of their time - and the other variations were knockoffs. However, far from being the Viking Super Sword, the +ULFBERH+T inlaid swords were likely from a particular workshop that used higher carbon steel and corrupted the earlier existing +ULFBERHT+ inscription and there may be a metallurgical reason so many are found broken. For me, Ingo Petri pretty much shot down the Viking super sword concept in 2015 at the Solingen Sword: Form and Thought conference. Here is a more recent paper by him explaining his reasoning: https://www.academia.edu/68589269/VL...nd_manufacture. (The formatting is better if you download the pdf from there.)