America missed the sword era. By the time colonial America got started, firearms dominated battlefields. We had Bowie knives and tomahawks – arguably high on the coolness factor, but they’re not swords. There were cavalry sabers, but they weren’t main battlefield weapons for the average soldier. The romance of the sword just doesn’t exist much in our own history.
Fortunately we have history nerds and renaissance festivals!
I was a latecomer to these. West Texas festivals were more about the western pioneering cowboy/homesteading/Indian wars. There were plenty of cap guns and lassos to be had, but no swords. More’s the pity.
But now I live in the Midwest, where European roots are celebrated. And that includes medieval weapons! Yay! A history nerd myself, I can finally immerse in the bizarre fantasy of brutal hack and slash warfare, without actually participating.
And the internet has made this pursuit so much more feasible than the first time I convinced my father to order a sword online from a random website. Hey, I didn’t have a credit card yet. And the internet was more innocent then. Now I do, and I can buy things myself. The difficult part now is convincing myself.
Of course, that first sword was a cheap stainless steel non-functional wall decoration meant for ignorant dorks…like myself, circa 2001. Now I have a better idea of what to look for. And while I’m aware of the large festival price markup, I wanted the experience of examining and buying a hand-forged sword, in person, from a weapon vendor. So I did.
From Legacy Forge.
And if one is to buy an overbuilt sword guaranteed for sport combat, it only makes sense to go Viking.
It did not come sharpened, which an evening with the bench grinder and whetstone solved. And to which the manufacturer cautioned against on their business card, blaming me for any upcoming stupid injuries. That’s fair.
Valhalla!
–Simon