Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/94

 ultra-enriched specimens they display are of somewhat earlier date than those British finds we have illustrated.

Apart from the mystic Runes found upon the blades of weapons of the Iron Age, about which much has been written, it is often difficult, wellnigh impossible, to construe any meaning to the arrangement of letters and curious markings so often seen on those of the XIth and XIIth centuries. There exists a very learned treatise on the subject of the names and emblems found on the blades of the Northern Viking swords of the VIIIth and IXth centuries, written by A. L. Lorange, curator of the Bergen Museum; but we well remember that consummate authority, the late Sir Wollaston Franks, expressing his fixed belief that on blades of somewhat later date the survival of such lettering was practised by bladesmiths ignorant of letters, and that in the passage of generations the original significance of such lettering was lost sight of, developing into a jumble of often ill-formed and unconnected letters out of which no possible sense can be made.

Examples in the British Museum; XIIth or Early XIIIth century

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Low Countries, France, England, Scotland and Ireland have all produced specimens of these so-called Viking swords, but those swords from the latter two countries differ a little in form and show a varying tribal influence, as will be seen by the illustration of the example of a thegnic sword found near Dublin. This sword, however, may be considered of rather later date (Fig. 26).

The strangest of all these swords that has come to the notice of the present writer is that found in Italy near the outskirts of Florence, at present in the collection of Mr. Henry G. Keasby (Fig. 27). On the pommel of this sword the lobations are exaggerated to such a degree that it resembles a palm leaf in form, the lobes finish in spikes so long that they must have proved a considerable hindrance to the use of the weapon. Its probable date is about 1100.

We have left to the last our description of perhaps the finest and possibly the earliest of the historical swords that the hand of Time has spared us—*