A straight blade or a curved one?

Jens Nordlunde · 3rd February 2006, 04:40 PM

Hi Fearn,

Thank you for the link, which I found very interesting, as I have never seen the history of swords described so well in such a little space.
My question is not, ‘is one sword better than the other?’
It is more in the direction, ‘when did the curved sword start to be used, and why - due to the stress of the impact, or why?’
The author gave part of the answer when he wrote, ‘when they started to fight from a horse’ (quoted from memory).
The Vikings mostly rode to the battlefield, got off the horse and started fighting.
The early horse fighters used bows, and had a sword as a second weapon – if they had any sword, but as the author is concentrating on swords, we can forget about this part. When the swords started to be one of the main weapons, they started, to be more or less curved, due to the way of fighting, and to the cutting effect fighting another man on horse, even a standing man, but, and this is interesting, when the man was laying down he was difficult to reach – so the cavalry sword got straight again.

3rd February 2006, 04:40 PM	#10
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,718	Hi Fearn, Thank you for the link, which I found very interesting, as I have never seen the history of swords described so well in such a little space. My question is not, ‘is one sword better than the other?’ It is more in the direction, ‘when did the curved sword start to be used, and why - due to the stress of the impact, or why?’ The author gave part of the answer when he wrote, ‘when they started to fight from a horse’ (quoted from memory). The Vikings mostly rode to the battlefield, got off the horse and started fighting. The early horse fighters used bows, and had a sword as a second weapon – if they had any sword, but as the author is concentrating on swords, we can forget about this part. When the swords started to be one of the main weapons, they started, to be more or less curved, due to the way of fighting, and to the cutting effect fighting another man on horse, even a standing man, but, and this is interesting, when the man was laying down he was difficult to reach – so the cavalry sword got straight again.