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The most outstanding technical characteristic of these swords is the "pattern-welded" blade (Fig. 16) and the greatest symbolic or mystical characteristic is the ring upon the hilt of sonie of them (Figs. 17,18,19). The purpose of pattern-welding, a most complex method of welding soft, pure iron and steely iron together to make a good stiff blade, was purely technical. It was simply one way of producing a reliable weapon, but because of its beautifi.il, mysterious appearance, much poetry and legend gathered round it.

The rings upon the pommels of sonie swords must have had special military or social sig-nificance, but in spite of an enormous amount of scholarly research (as well as the propagation of a host of nonsensical notions) we still have no positive idea of what that significance was. We can only make calculated guesses.

Figurę 17. Method ofasscmbly of a Migration Period sword-hilt. Pommel of silver or bronze; sand-wich of ivory or wood between metal plates; tang of blade once hidden by a grip of ivory or wood; metal collar at bottorn of grip and sandwich of ivory or wood between metal plates.

To attempt a factual discussion of the technolog)' of pattern welding is beyond the scope of this chaptcr; instead,

I will givc a few examples of what the poets of the north had to say about the appearance of pattern-welded blades and illustrate an actual specimen (Fig. 16). One of the best descriptions is not by a Norse poet at all, but by the Roman sccretary, Cassiodorus, of the Teutonic Emperor Theodoric, who ruled the remains of the Roman Empire. In A.D. 520 the chief of a North German tribe called the Varni had sent Theodoric gifts, among which were some fme swords madę in their lands. Cassiodorus returned the Emperor's thanks in a famous letter, part of which relates to these swords:

"Ton have sent us swords capable even of cutting throupih armour. They are morę precious for the iron of which they are madę than for thego Id that enriches them; with their strikingly perfect polish, they shine so that they reflect the face of whoever looks at them. Their perfectly formed edges are so regular that one would helieve they were fashioned with a file rather than hammered in the forge. The admirably hollowed middle part of their blades seems to be veined and patterned. There is the play of so many different shadows that one would think the metal is interlaced with elcments of various colours. The beauty of these swords is such that one is tempted to attribute them to Vulcan, of whom they say that he forges with such skill that whatever comesfrom his hand is not the work of a mortal, but ofa god."

Until recently the reference in this letter to the blades being veined and patterned was not understood; many thought it was just a flight of poetic fancy, but once surviving pattern-welded blades such as the one shown here in Fig. 16, had bcen really examined, photographed by x-rav and then cleaned in the 1950s and 1960s, it was obvious

what Cassiodorus meant. Now we can see what he saw and know that he was not making pret-ty compliments. Even so, he had an advantage over us -he could see the swords in their pris-tine condition, whereas we see them only after morę than a millennium of burial. But we can take what he says literally, as a careful description of what he actually saw.