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A V i k i n g Chieftain's w o r dby STEPHEN V. GRANCSAY, Curator f Armsand Armor

The Viking warrior's love for fine and beautifulweapons extends beyond recorded history intothe realm of legend. The mythical smith Way-land, lord of the elves, forged the heroic swordsHrunting and Mimung, which were supposed tobe of an abnormal sharpness by reason of theirmagical origin. And when the Vikings begantheir long and spectacular career of Europeanmarauding they were constantly on the lookoutfor weapons worthy of their prowess.Before the Iron Age they had to content them-selves with swords, cast in bronze, that wereleaf-shaped and heavy-bladed. But in what iscalled the Celtic period of the northern IronAge, the centuries just preceding the Christianera, they began to use swords of hammered ironof good quality. These had long narrow bladesthat were, unfortunately, all too pliable. Theyare the swords that Polybius, in a well-knownpassage relating to the campaign of Flaminiusagainst the Gauls in 223 B. c., describes as buck-ling after a hard stroke, so that they had to bestraightened out under the impatient warrior'sfoot before he could deliver a second blow. Morethan a thousand years later the Norse sagas stilltell us from time to time of blades that werebent in combat. (It has often been said that theblade of a Viking sword could be bent far enoughfor its tip to touch the pommel and that it wouldhave sufficient resilience to spring back intoshape. This is sheer nonsense, for a blade of suchexaggerated flexibility would be of little use asa weapon. A good blade will bend so as to re-duce the length in the proportion of about aninch and a half to a foot.)There was no such thing as an efficient ferrousblade until steel, or at least steely iron, was putto use. Nor was there a definite moment in his-tory when that took place. The early smithsknew well enough how to extract iron from ore,but uniformity of product was another matter.

When they heated ore in a charcoal fire for afew hours it became more or less completely re-duced and they could forge it at red heat intoa bar of iron. But sometimes the iron was softand malleable while at other times it was hardand steely. Even steel itself must frequently havebeen one of the products whenever the reducediron was exposed for a considerable time to thecarbonizing action of the charcoal. Thus steelwas much more prevalent in early times than isgenerally believed, but it was made by naturalrather than scientific means. Not knowing thechemical factors that accounted for the varia-tion, the smith could but try to observe and re-peat whatever conditions seemed to be presentwhen he managed to turn out a superior blade.Perhaps it was because of this that he began tobe considered as much a magician as an artisan.Iron and steel held much of their mystery,after all, until the eighteenth century; it was notuntil modern chemistry was applied to themthat the magic disappeared. When we recall thateven after hundreds of years' background Cellinihad anxious moments about his success in castingthe bronze Perseus, we cannot wonder that inearlier times each blade that was made was achallenge to the smith. Not until all the pre-liminary processes came under the experimentalmethod of science did iron and steel cease to bea luxury and their manufacture move from theprovince of art to that of technology. Nor should

Contents MARCH 1959A Viking Chieftain's Sword

By Stephen V. Grancsay I73The Best Laid Plans

By Janet S. Byrne I83173

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h e Metropolitanuseum o f A r tMARCH 1 959BULL

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Detail of carveddoorpostrom HyllestedChurch n Norway, illustrating the legendof Sigurd. Here Reginforges Sigurd'ssword; Sigurdproveshis sword; Sigurdslays Fafnir. Historical Museum, Oslo

ON THE COVER: The Viking sworddescribedwithin. Shield boss (Umbo),Merovingian, VI Century.Gift of J.PierpontMorgan, I9I7. Knight's sword,French, xv Century.From the collectionof GiovanniP. Morosini; presentedbyhis daughterGiulia, 1932

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Detailfrom English xiv Century lluminatedmanuscript Courtesy of the British Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art BULLETINVOLUME XVII, NUMBER 7, MARCH 1959Published monthly from October to June and quarterly fromJuly to September. Copyright I959 by The Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York 28, N. Y.Re-entered as second-class matter November I7, I942, at thePost Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of August 24,1912. Subscriptions $5.oo a year. Single copies fifty cents. Sentfree to Museum Members. Four weeks' notice required forchange of address. Editor: Marshall B. Davidson.

we forget that the actual materials for the historyof metalworking are to be found in the museumsof art and archaeology. What we can do nowthe schools of chemistry and engineering can tellus; what our ancestors did in metallurgy can bestbe learned by the study of museum collections.We have already noted that the early northernsword was unreliable. The Roman legionaries,on the other hand, had used iron swords withstraight, short, double-edged blades that werethick enough not to bend. The manufacture ofsuch blades became an established industry inthe partly Romanized districts of the lower andmiddle Rhine valley, whence came the famousNydam (Schleswig) swords of the fourth century,one of the earliest sword finds of the barbarianmigrations. Along the extensive frontiers of theRoman Empire there was, of course, daily inter-course, warlike or peaceful, between Romans,Romanized barbarians, and more or less bar-barous tribes. Though the Romans never con-quered Denmark they undoubtedly had somecontact with the Danes. We have found, for ex-ample, iron swords from Nydam and Vimose onthe tangs of which the Danes had stamped inraised Roman letters such Scandinavian namesas RICVS,RICCIM,COCILLVS,and TASVIT.The Ny-dam type of sword was widely used by the Vikingmarauders for several centuries beginning about300 A. D., and was probably the real originalof the heroic brands celebrated in Beowulf andother northern epics.The Nydam swords were a radical improve-ment over anything the Vikings had previouslyused. They were of the type now called, forreasons we shall see, pattern welded, and weretougher and more resilient than the early softiron blades. Albert France-Lanord, of the MuseeHistorique Lorrain in Nancy, whom I had thepleasure of visiting in I95I, has made a carefulstudy of Frankish and Viking pattern weldedswords. After examining many blades he foundthat the smiths who made them, by piling to-gether strips of iron and carburized iron, foldingthem in various ways, welding them, and thendrawing them out under the hammer, had pro-duced patterns of various kinds. (The same gen-

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eral effect can be seen in the variegated colorpatterns of glass paperweights.) Sometimes thecutting edges, very slightly carburized, are lap-welded to the central portion. Or the core of theblade may be a piece of steely iron a little longerand wider than the surface pieces, the projectingparts of the steely iron thus forming the pointand edges of the blade. The actual metal fromwhich the blades were made was no better thanwhat went into the first overpliable wrought-iron swords, but the method of working it gavesuperior results. The makers of the patternwelded blades began with small pieces of ironwhich they welded together to get bars of therequired size. This repeated welding crossed andinterwove the fibers in all directions, thus in-creasing the tenacity of the final product. Thevarying hardnesses of the initial small piecesgave to the composite piece greater elasticitythan the old wrought-iron blades had possessed.And from an ornamental viewpoint the contrastof the welded metals resulted in a pattern whichshowed prominently when the metal was cor-roded with acid, as the iron was eaten morereadily than the steel.

During the ninth, tenth and eleventh cen-turies, in the last and fiercest wave of their depre-dations, the Northmen infested the coasts ofFrance and sailed up the rivers, burning andravaging as far as Rouen and Orleans. In 845they sacked Saint-Denis and were paid seventhousand pounds of silver to depart from thecountry, swearing by their gods and their armsnever to return to the possessions of Charles theBald except as his auxiliaries. The next year theycame back to demand further ransom. Even theconvents of Saint Martin of Tours and Saint-Germain-des-Pres were sacked. Castles andwalled towns were built as protection againstViking raids, and mailed horsemen, armed withsword and lance, became available as a mobileand formidable fighting force. Both castles andmounted soldiers fitted in admirably with thegrowing feudalism, which, though not altogethermilitary in its origin, was rendered indispensableby military necessities. Thus the Vikings in theirpiratical days contributed greatly, as enemies,to the elevation of that feudal aristocracy ofwhich, in their Franco-Norman stage, they wereperhaps the noblest characters. When William

Viking swordDeposited in TheMetropolitan Museumof Art in 1946 by theUniversitetets Oldsak-samling Oslo, Norway

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Viking sword, x CenturyRogers Fund, 1955

the Conqueror came to the English throne ino66 their invasions ceased, but in the meantimethey had passed on to their victims great physicalvigor and a high sense of honor. When theirconcept of the heroic acquired a Christian mo-rality, it led to the beginning of chivalry andserved as a cornerstone of European culture.The graves of the Teutonic conquerors ofEurope from the period of the dismembermentof the Roman Empire to the triumphs of theNormans in the eleventh century have yieldedrare and valuable objects of war equipment. Inthe time of paganism a Viking chieftain wasburied with everything he might need to get toValhalla. The most important item, naturally,was his sword-which was often bent before itwas buried, to prevent its being reused in themortal world. In localities that were early Chris-tianized Norse swords are generally dredgedfrom the beds of rivers, the sea rovers' highways.The Museum acquired in 1955 a Viking chief-tain's sword that is a fine example of metalworkboth decorative and functional. It is reported tohave been excavated from the canal at Orleans,France, but the date of the find is not known.Various things besides the place it was found,however, lead us to believe that it could havebeen used by one of the chieftains of the timewhen Rollo (about 860 to about 930 A. D.), therenowned Viking leader, was first Duke of Nor-mandy. It closely resembles, for instance, theswords shown in the eleventh-century BayeuxTapestry, the undoubted prototypes of the medi-eval knightly sword. The Bayeux swords, likeours, are of Viking type: straight, broad-bladed,double-edged. with a shallow fuller running mostof the length of the blade.The construction of the blade of our sword isuseful in dating it, but is of even greater interestas an example of metalworking. It illustrates atechnical process involving the welding of ferrousmetals of different quality that show on the sur-face of the end product the variegated patternsformed by their fibrous structure. This type ofmetal is called by various names-"damascenesteel," "Damascus steel," "watered steel," or

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Details of hairpin pattern welding from blades of swordsfrom the Philippines, India (Assam), and TibetBequest of George C. Stone, 1936

"pattern welded" iron. The terms have been soloosely used that it seems well to define them atthe outset. All the more so because, in duecourse, we will speak of its hilt as "damascened"with silver.

Our sword blade is made of welded iron show-ing a pattern on both faces. About ten years agoHerbert Maryon referred to this sort of structureas pattern welded, which identifies clearly thetype of work involved. The pattern welded bladewas used in Europe from early Christian timesto the eleventh century. It was widely used inthe East as well-until modern times, indeed, asa good many Oriental blades in our collectionsshow. The same process was used, eventually, forgun barrels which, developed originally in theOrient, were manufactured to perfection inFrance, England, and Germany during the nine-teenth century. The swords and firearms broughtback to Europe after Napoleon's Egyptian ex-pedition met with such admiration that West-erners attempted to reproduce this modern"Damascus steel." In I804 Nicolas Bernard, agunsmith of Versailles whose work is representedin the Museum, obtained the first practical re-sults in making "Damascus barrels," of whichmany varieties were ultimately developed. In

principle, bars of iron and steel placed in regularalternations are welded into one; then this bar(or two or three such bars placed together) istwisted spirally and the whole welded. When agun barrel made of such a bar is polished, intri-cate and often elegant patterns become apparent.Pattern welding, however, must be clearly dis-tinguished from an entirely different techniquewhich produces still another thing frequentlyknown as a "Damascus blade." This secondtechnique produces a pattern distinctively dif-ferent from that shown in the blade of our Viking

Detail of pattern welded barrelof a TurkishgunBequest of George C. Stone, 1936

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Detail of Persian watered steel blade signed byAsadullah Bequestof George C. Stone, 1936thirty-six ounces. The blade is well preserved andwas apparently never bent. The broad shallowmedian groove runs from the guard to aboutfive and a half inches from the point. Apparentlythe blade was made of thin strips of iron woundtransversely around an iron core and then welded,since the pattern runs out to the edges; the barwas forged to the required shape and the centralarea was ground away to reduce the weight andlend resilience. The tang may be in one piecewith the core of the blade, but of this we cannotbe sure because the guard conceals the normaljunction area.

* i;;-i, The art of inlaying one contrasting metal onDetail showing spottedwatering of Japanese swordblade by Yoshinori Detail of blade of our Viking sword showing edge-Bequestof GeorgeC. Stone, 1936 to-edgepattern welding

sword. It was an early steelmaking method inIndia, where it had already achieved fame at thetime of the invasion of Alexander the Great. Inthe preparation of the ancient Indian cruciblesteel known as wootz, carbon irregularly dis-persed in the metal forms two distinct com-pounds-pure steel, and carbureted steel or castiron. These two tend to separate from each otherwhen the molten metal remains at rest. As themetal cools the two compounds arrange them-selves in a crystalline structure that gives a"watered" appearance to the surface of themetal. Blades produced by this process we referto as "watered steel," to distinguish them fromthe pattern welded type of our Norse sword.Both these so-called Damascus steels were actu-ally made in Damascus as well as in various otherlocalities; but since Damascus was the greattrading post for the caravans of East and West,its name in this connection serves rather to de-signate an outstanding product than the specificplace where that product was made.The flat two-edged tapering blade of our Vik-ing sword is a beautiful example of patternwelding. It is thirty-one and seven-eighths incheslong, two inches wide at the hilt and one inchwide near the point. The grip is three and five-eighths inches long, and the whole sword weighs178

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another has long been referred to as "damascen-ing," and the traditional term describes accu-rately one of the techniques used to decorate thehilt of our Viking sword. It is iron, completelycovered with copper wire hammered into grooveswhich are clearly visible under a microscope. Inalternate rectangular areas are silver strips, eachformed of two flattened wires, and niello, anamalgam of silver, copper, lead, and sulphurwhich, like enamel, is applied in paste form andthen fused to the metal beneath it. Nearly allthe silver and much of the niello are still present.The techniques used are much the same as thoseemployed in the Museum's rich series of Mero-vingian buckles. (The belt buckle, like thesword, was an indispensable part of the warrior'sequipment, and was the object of special care on

the part of goldsmiths who ornamented manybuckles with rich and intricate motifs in nielloand silver. For the churchman the belt was theliturgical emblem of moral purity; for the soldierit was the symbol of courage-it bound him tothe sword which represented the warrior virtues.)The pommel is composed of an upper and alower bar, the former trilobed, the latter ellipticalin horizontal section. The tang passes throughthe lower bar and its terminal is riveted. Tworivets pass through the under side of the lowerbar to secure it to the upper. (The pommels ofMerovingian swords in our collection are similarin construction.) On the pommel are three groupsof twisted silver wire, one encircling it hori-zontally and dividing the upper from the lowerbar, the other two disposed diagonally over the

LEFT: Hilt of our Viking sword. RIGHT: Hilt of Carolingian sword. The pommel is damascenedand thebladepattern welded Gift of GeorgeD. Pratt, 1928

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Details of variegatedweldedpattern on blades rom Sumatra, the Caucasus,Java, and MalayaBequest of George C. Stone, 1936

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top of the pommel. Each group consists of threestrands of wire, the outer two twisted to theright, the center one twisted to the left. Thisbraided wire inlay suggests an earlier custom ofbinding a relic or charm to a flat oval pommelto counteract misfortune or strengthen the armof the warrior.

Whether the Vikings actually made any oftheir pattern welded swords is a matter of con-flicting opinion. It seems unlikely, however, thatthey would have depended entirely upon foreignmanufacture, for a country that could producegood swords was in their day far more powerfulthan a country that could not. With all the bogiron available, with their worship of the smith,with their need for the best weapons, and withthe great technical knowledge they displayed inshipbuilding and seamanship, surely the Norse-men could ultimately have made their ownswords. Swords of the latest pagan period havebeen found in Denmark which have runic in-scriptions formed by letters of iron let into the

iron blades. There is no reason to suppose thatingenious swordsmiths, anxious to improve thequality of their blades, could not have experi-mented with every kind of ore and every heatingand cooling method, and so have discovered orrediscovered for themselves the most practical aswell as the most aesthetic principles for weldingand forging iron and steel. It is not generallyknown how many different peoples have actuallyused pattern welding. The Museum's extraor-dinary collection of pattern welded blades frommany widely separated areas-India, Japan,China, Tibet, the Caucasus, the Philippines, theMalay Peninsula-is a strong argument for in-dependent invention of the technique.To those of us who are interested both in thelife that was lived in ancient times and in thevarious survivals of its forms and customs, ourViking sword is an object of considerable value.When we study it artistically and technically wesee that it is a masterpiece of early technologyand early art combined.

Belt buckle,Frankish, VII Century. nterlaceddesign in silver nielloGift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917

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