Viking sword

The Viking Age sword, also called the Carolingian sword, was the type of blade common across Western and Northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, appearing in the eighth century as a development of the earlier Merovingian sword and evolving in turn into the knightly sword of the twelfth century. A typical example measured 84 to 105 centimeters overall with a blade of 70 to 90 centimeters and weighed 1.0 to 1.5 kilograms, built at first by pattern welding and later, as steel quality improved, from more refined blade stock. The swords carried enormous symbolic weight in Norse society as marks of wealth and honor, handed down through families and sometimes given personal names, and although most were forged in the Frankish Empire, the majority of surviving examples were found not there but in Scandinavian graves, where the dead were buried with their most valued possessions.