The Historiska Museet has done an awesome job digitizing details about some of the items in their collection. It is cool when a museum puts good photos of their collection on line, but the SHM takes it way farther than that. Here is one of the photos of the sword in question -
http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/bild.asp?uid=20997
Following the inventory # 19734:36, you can find your way to images of the hand-written collection notes as well as the typed inventory notes and images of the sword and the other items from that grave and that dig. For sword research it is an amazing trove of information.
http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/invnr.asp?invnr=19734
Alas, I don’t really read Swedish, but even so it was easy to run down some details on the sword.
Inventory #19734:36
Find place: Gotland, Halla, Broa
Viking period, acquired 1931.
The handwritten notes for the grave describe two swords and one spear etc. .
This is presumably the first sword, described as broken in three parts (“tre delar” in the notes next to the photo).
(photo 1)
L- 102cm
Hilt? L - 17.1cm
Over ? L- 9cm
Under? L- 10.5cm
Blade width – 6.5cm
The other sword is described as having a type H hilt and the drawing shows more breaks (photo 2)
Moving to the Museum’s Iron Age catalog, the grave goods are described differently, the second sword has lost its hilt (photo 3)
This blade has the right inventory #, and is in more pieces so must be the second sword’s blade (photo 4)
The ‘Fig. 11’ mentioned in the museum notes is also in the Järnålderskatalog, and shows a side view of the pommel. (photo 5)
I love this museum!!
