1'200 Year Old Viking Sword Found

on a Norway mountain !
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/viking-sword-discovered-mountain

 

Cool, it is cool but it annoys me that the article at the end goes into this scientists wonder why the sword was left there or why there was a Viking on the mountain is still unknown like who really cares why there was someone there or why he left it there? Like it is inconceivable that somebody thousands of years ago walked a trail that was walked today. What a miracle.

There'll be an investigation now you watch.

 

They weren't supposed to touch that... Hell's gonna break loose now.

 

well this just proves that the reindeer hunter who pulled it out of the stones is the true king of england.

 

Wrong sword... That one is at the bottom of a lake.

 

Think King Arthur was influenced by a verse in the Volsung Saga which had the elves make a brilliant blade and had it cast into an oak tree. Whoever pulled it out would be victor. Can't remember what they actually won it may have just been the sword but it was the beginning of a long journey that involved dragons and Valkyries.

Then also in Polish mythology, King Borson was said to have gone into hiding in the forests of Carpathia and would one day return as king of Poland. The origins of this one are older than Arthurian records but it's a very similar tale.

When I was a child, I was all about king Arthur. I had audio books, cartoons, mythology books, novels etc.

As a child the short versions of the tales would indicate that the sword pulled from the stone was Excalibur but that wasn't the case. I believe that sword was destroyed in battle and the Lady of the Lake handed excalibur over. Saying goodbye to a sword in a lake was a common occurrence I think especially in the UK it is not uncommon to find weapons in river streams where they were put to rest.

There's just something very hauntingly beautiful about it that's drawn me as a child and stuck with me forever after.

 

many a knife is lost when the trekker stops to take a shit

 

Maybe he encountered a bear and lost the sword while running to safety

 

King Arthur is an amalgum of lots of different legends from all over Europe, Norse and Celtic stuff in particular, he's also probably most closely linked, in the real world, to Charlemagne. Excalibur is probably partly based on Charlemagne's sword Joyeuse, which was said to change colour 30 times a day, shine brighter than the sun (enough to blind opponents in battle) and magically protect it's owner from all poisons.

Joyeuse was supposedly forged from the same steel as two other legendary swords.

The first is Curtana, the sword currently used in the coronation ceremonies of England, which has a broken/squared off end. This is either because it is meant to symbolise mercy, or because the Legendary Knight Tristan left the tip broken off in the skull of Morholt, or because Ogier the Dane used it to try and kill one of Charlemagne's sons, only to have an angel swoop down and break the tip off, saving the boy's life.

The second is Roland's Durendal (which, according to some myths, once belonged to Hector of Troy) said to be the sharpest sword in existence, indestructible and capable of cutting through solid stone, Durendal's pommel contains a tooth of St. Pete, blood of St. Basil, hair of St. Denis, and a piece of the raiment of Jesus' Mother Mary. Legend has it that Durendal is embedded in a cliff somewhere still, yet another source of the "sword in the stone" legend.

Some also say that Joyeuse contains the Spear of Destiny (the spear that pierced christ's side) embedded in its pommel.

Charlemagne's Paladins are almost certainly the primary influence on Arthur's Knights of the round table.

Always been really interested in how these legends repeat throughout history.

EDIT:

Just clicked the link:

Holy fuck, that's incredibly well-preserved.

 

why is this a big deal?
i know its unusual for anything not rot,
but the process by which some things are sometimes preserved,
are well known and not exactly news.

and why would a sword be more interesting then a boat,
or a cooking pot for that matter?

 

Ummmm.... Because it's a sword?


Just guessing.

 

yeah..a boat would be interesting but they didnt find a boat on top of the mountain

probably because wood rots too quick and returns to the earth..plus its was on top of a mountain////

and no one is interested in cooking pots...even if they find it on top a mountain

 

A fully preserved longboat would be huge news.

Swords mean more to archeologists in part because they meant more to the Vikings. A sword would be likely to be the most expensive item a viking owned, usually an heirloom passed down from generation to generation. Often they would be given names.

We can also perform tests on the steel which increase our knowledge of trade routes and which cultures the Vikings had encountered an when. Unlike cooking pots, swords were at the forefront (look how I avoided saying cutting edge) of viking technology, with new and extremely advanced welding techniques developing over time. In fact, there is a great deal of research and debate over exactly how advanced viking blacksmithing was, and which cultures influenced it, so a find like this can be extremely valuable. (if this turns out conclusively to be made from crucible steel, for example, then that would be a pretty big deal). Much can be learned from swords about viking culture, trade, migration patterns and technology.

Then there's the element of mystery- this sword was clearly abandoned on a mountain, not in a battle or as part of a grave site. To abandon such a valuable object in the middle of nowhere is a fairly interesting thing to have done (probably, as the articles suggest, someone who became lost in a blizzard and died of exposure).

Then there's the symbolic attachment to swords that has always captivated people in cultures from ancient times to the present. all other battlefield weapons (spears, bows, knives, javelins etc.) are essentially repurposed hunting and farming equipment. A sword, on the other hand, is the only weapon explicitly created for battle, and therefore it holds a huge symbolic value. All kings in medieval art, for example, who wanted to appear bold and warlike, would be depicted holding swords in artwork. This symbolic emphasis on swords in stories and artwork (combine dwith the fact that they are better equipped to survive long periods and be discovered) has given us an unrealistic view of exactly how often they were actually used in some cases (spears were almost always the preferred weapon throughout human history). Nevertheless, we have an attachment to swords as symbols- the tools that forged Europe etc.

 

It might just be me, but axes are way more bad ass if I was a king I'd be depicted with a rusty axe, that's what would send fear to my enemies. Not a sword, the bearded axe, chopping limbs, pulverising bones just everything not nice lol.

 

If you find an old cooking pot on a norwegian mountain its probably from a mountain troll and kids were boiled in it.

 

this is far from entirely accurate. how can you find something old like that, and not be interested in how ordinary people lived their every day lives, and cooking pots, along with post holes and such, other chemical changes in the earth that tell you where walls were, all those kind of things, tell you a hell of a lot more about people and how they lived, then just something someone would use to kill or injure someone else with.

what people lived and experienced, that's history, a bunch of people killing each other, or an arms industry, sure that's part of it, but really the smaller part.

 

i'd like have the d.n.a. scrapings if any traces could be found, analyzed. maybe we could find out who's kids they were, and reconstruct troll d.n.a.
you know, troll park, like jurassic park.

 

You make it sound as if there are no mountain trolls in Norway anymore.

 

They all stayed out too late one morning.

 

True dat. It wouldn't mark you out as a member of a warrior class though. In some cultures, gods were depicted as fighting with double-bitted axes. Mainly because (outside of warhammer artwork) a double-bitted axe is an insane battlefield weapon and was never used. T

he only people with the strength to wield one effectively would be gods, so sometimes the use of a double-bitted axe in artwork can denote the status of a deity.