The sword is not just a weapon, but a symbol of the status and power of its owner. Swords often received their own names and fame, which has not faded until now. Today we will tell you the stories of the famous blades and their owners who lived during the Middle Ages.
Excalibur
According to legend, Excalibur is often confused with a sword in stone, which will be discussed below. Both of these swords belonged to King Arthur, who himself is a great mystery to historians. Despite popular belief, most of the original sources refer to them as different blades.
Excalibur or Caliburn is another sword of King Arthur, the legendary leader of the Britons who lived in about the 5th-6th centuries. The epic about the king and his loyal subjects is very extensive and includes a full list of heroic adventures: saving beautiful ladies, fighting a monstrous dragon, searching for the Holy Grail, and simply successful military campaigns. The sword is not just a weapon, but a status symbol of the owner. Of course, such an outstanding person as Arthur simply could not possess an ordinary sword: in addition to excellent technical characteristics (which, in fact, was an outstanding achievement for the Dark Ages), magical properties are also attributed to the sword.
Before Latinization, the name of the sword most likely came from the Welsh Caledfwlch: caled ("battle") and bwlch ("destroy, tear"). According to legend, the king obtained the sword with the help of the wizard Merlin and the mysterious Lady of the Lake, instead of the one lost in the battle with Sir Pelinor. The scabbard of the sword was also magical - it accelerated the healing of the wearer's wounds. Before his death, Arthur insisted that the sword be thrown into the lake again and thus returned to its first mistress. The abundance of swords from the period of the Dark Ages, found by archaeologists at the bottom of various bodies of water, allowed them to assume that in those days there was a custom of drowning weapons in water after the death of a warrior.
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Sword in stone
The sword in the stone, which the king himself, according to legend, plunged into the rock, proving his right to the throne, has a curious relative who has survived to this day. We are talking about a block with a blade firmly embedded in it, which is kept in the Italian chapel of Monte Ciepi. The owner of the sword was, however, not the legendary king, but the Tuscan knight Galliano Guidotti, who lived in the XII century. A funny story is connected with him: once the Archangel Michael himself appeared to Guidotti, who, like many knights of that time, led a dissolute lifestyle and was an impudent rude man, and demanded that Galliano resign his knightly vow and take monastic vows. In response, the knight laughingly declared that it would be as easy for him to become a servant of the Lord as to cut a stone. Cutting the nearest boulder to prove his words, Guidotti was amazed: the blade easily entered him like a knife in butter. Of course, after this, Galliano immediately took the righteous path and after that he was even awarded canonization.
According to the results of radiocarbon analysis, the legend really does not lie: the age of the block and the sword stuck in it coincides with the approximate lifetime of the knight.
Durendal
Durendal is another sword in stone. Its owner was Roland, a real knight who later became the hero of numerous sagas and ballads. According to legend, during the defense of the Not-Dame chapel in the city of Rocamadour, he threw his blade from the wall and it remained sticking out in it, firmly seated in the stone. It is noteworthy that there is a certain blade in the rock near the chapel: thanks to the skillful PR on the part of the monks who actively spread the legend of Durendal, the chapel quickly became a center of pilgrimage for parishioners from all over Europe.
Scientists, however, question this fact and believe that the chapel is not at all the legendary magic sword of Roland. First, the banal logic is lame: Durendal is a woman's name, and the hero, apparently, had a real passion for him. It is doubtful that he would start throwing such a valuable and dear weapon around. The chronology also sums up: according to historical evidence, a loyal subject of Charlemagne himself died on August 15, 778 in the battle of the Ronseval Gorge, from which Rocamadour is several hundred kilometers away. The first evidence of the sword appeared much later - in the middle of the XII century, at about the same time when the famous "Song of Roland" was written. The true owner of the blade in the chapel was never identified: in 2011, the blade was removed from the stone and sent to the Paris Museum of the Middle Ages.
Wallace's sword
The huge sword, according to legend, belonged to Sir William Wallace, the leader of the Scottish Highlanders in the battle for independence from England. The famous knight lived in the period from 1270 to 1305 and, apparently, possessed remarkable strength. The length of the sword is 163 cm, which, with a weight of 2.7 kg, makes it a weapon of enormous power, requiring skill and daily training from the owner. As you know, the Scots had a passion for two-handed swords - remember the claymore, which in a certain historical period became a real symbol of the Scottish kingdom.
The scabbard for such an imposing weapon was not easy to make, and the material was quite unusual. After the battle on Stirling Bridge, where the sword and its master won fame and honor for themselves, the blade acquired a scabbard and a harness made of human skin. Its owner was the English treasurer Hugh Cressingham, who "tore three skins from the Scots and received a well-deserved reward." Scientists are still arguing about the authenticity of the ancient relic: due to the fact that King James IV of Scotland once gave the sword a new handle and decoration to replace the worn out old one, it is very difficult to establish historical authenticity.
Ulfbert
The Ulfbert is not one, but a whole family of medieval Carolingian-style swords, dated between the 9th and 11th centuries. Unlike their legendary counterparts, they are not credited with magical properties. Much more important is that for the early Middle Ages, these blades were not only massive, but also extremely high quality workmanship. Their distinguishing feature was the + VLFBERHT + mark at the base of the blade.
In those days, most of the European swords were made according to the principle of "false Damascus": cast from low-carbon steel with a high degree of slag impurities, these blades only visually resembled the famous Damascus steel. The Vikings, being sea traders, apparently bought crucible steel from Iran and Afghanistan, much more durable and reliable. For the Middle Ages, this was a real breakthrough in blacksmithing, and therefore such swords were highly valued: weapons of comparable strength in Europe began to be mass-produced only in the second half of the 18th (!) Century.
Vasily Makarov