This summer the
Hurstwic Viking Martial Arts group will again travel to Iceland in order to film their second DVD based upon the Icelandic sagas at the actual historic location of the action. In Grettir's Saga, his sax, Kársnautur, was a prized life long possession and it should not be too much of a spoiler that this sax will play a rather dramatic part in the climax.
In their pre-production research, the group has been asking just how large and heavy a sax would need to have been to accomplish the described human hemisection.
I can locate a lot of dimension information on the double-edged swords of the era, but not so much on the saxes of the time. So my question to the forum community is just how large could a sax get (within the confines of the reality of the archaeological record)?
Below is a photograph of three excavated saxes, the largest with a blade length of just over 21 inches and a weight of just under a pound and a half in its present state (649 grams).