Jim,
I knew soon after starting the project that it's formidable and has immense number of resources
. So probably it turns out to be quite general work and a prologue to my MA (as I hope). The work is rather interdisciplinary, I try to find how medieval people regarded swords using medieval legends and literature, markings on swords, texts on swords and medieval habits concerning the sword as sources and using the methods of archaeology, history, psychology, folklore and semiotics.
Hence the focus is not mottoes and markings only, this is just one way of many attempts to creep into medieval mind
. Of course, I do not think that my work is absolute or shows "how things actually were" and what did they "actually" thought (which is quite impossible). The deductions are just some of many possibilities.