I made this sword to propose to my girlfriend.

 

Blade is 1.33 lbs

26.5 inch blade and 33 inch overall length.

1075 steel quenched in Parks 50 and tempered in 500F avocado oil.

 

Guard is 1045 steel with hand graved copper inlay.

 

Handle is purple heart.

 

Pommel is cast aluminum bronze with twisted silver wire and a 1045 steel base held together with brass screws.

 

Tang is threaded with 1/4-28 to hold the handle together.

 

Scabbard is CNC carved Alder and then sanded to a nice oval cross section.

 

Total weight is 2.2 lbs and the balance point is 4.5 inches from the guard, vibration node at the middle finger of the grip.

Welcome aboard Asterisck, glad to have you. Nice blade, I like it and I'm not a blade guy. From what I've picked up it seems you've designed in all the necessary aspects of a good working sword.

Well lighted photos too, it's not common to see photos of steel without glare. I'm well pleased to see the one shot with strong light reflection is obviously deliberate for dramatic effect. Well Done! While not a pro, photography is one of my things.

One last thought. In what manner do you intend to "propose" with a sword? Hopefully not like a visiting Dane, gone a Viking, in N. England.

Thank you for the photo spread, we LOVE photos.

Frosty The Lucky.

My girlfriend(now fiancé) has a good deal of various Nordic ancestry and choose to make a sword as the primary instrument of proposal. Swords were a sign of status and wealth at the time of the Vikings. So I decided to lean into that.

They still are in the Danemark. Not like during the Viking period but good blades are still treasures.

Frosty The Lucky.

5 hours ago, Asterisck said:

My girlfriend(now fiancé) has a good deal of various Nordic ancestry and choose to make a sword as the primary instrument of proposal. Swords were a sign of status and wealth at the time of the Vikings. So I decided to lean into that.

I'm skeptical.  I was always told that my ancestry was Scotch-Irish, but I bought an Acestry.com DNA kit, and I came back 54% Scandinavian, 15% Greek, and the rest Welch/Irish/English.  I'm like, cool, 69% warrior.

But recently, I logged back in, and they were offering "updated" results.  I clicked on it, waited a day, only to find that I'm back to being Scotch-Irish.  All these DNA ancestry companies are full of it!  Rip-off!

BTW, awesome sword!  It looks incredible! You guys gonna cosplay on your honeymoon night? 

This is a very nice sword.  I really like how you have used the oxidation blue.

I do think you need some runes on the scabbard.  Also, are you going to install some kind of suspension system for carrying it?

How many hours do you have in it?

I do have to say that the one thing that I do not like are the screws under the pommel.  Everything else looks great to me and seeing those just clangs aesthtically.  They are so anachronistic and out of period.  I would have thought that you would have soldered the 2 pieces together.  Yes you have the pommel screwed on but that is not visible.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I didn't actually blue any of the steel, that is probably just the lighting.

I left the scabbard plain so she could have input on how to make it look, we'll be laser engraving and or burning runes and/or knot patterns into the wood, adding the chape and top fitting and modifying it for straps once we figure out how she wants to wear it. Then we'll varnish the hell out of it with something nice and durable.

I put 2 solid months into this sword. I had a lot of things to figure out and try on practice pieces before I did the real one. Made 2 practice blades out of plasma cut mild plate steel to test my grinding, weight, design, and balance.

I know the screws were a blatant anachronism, but I was running out of time to finish. I finished the pommel 2 days before I proposed. With it being my first sword and first blade of any kind I wanted to make sure it was serviceable over full historical accuracy. They definitely had 2 piece pommels that were riveted and I might make some custom screws that I can install and grind the heads down so it looks like a peened and ground rivet, I just didn't have the time to pull it off.

Beautiful sword!  If this is your first one, we look forward to the quality pieces you surely will be making in the future.

As for the screws, I agree with George.  Your idea of a screw with the head cut off and ground down is a good fix, go for it!

Wow, that’s an incredible build! The attention to detail from the blade steel to the scabbard is impressive — your girlfriend is lucky. If you enjoy crafting swords like that, hand forged sword from  Everest Forge show similar dedication to balance, materials, and craftsmanship.

On 6/23/2025 at 8:25 PM, MeltedSocks said:

I came back 54% Scandinavian, 15% Greek, and the rest Welch/Irish/English.  I'm like, cool, 69% warrior.

I'm mildly insulted. Who told you that the contemporary Welsh, (Welsh, unless you're welching on a bet) Irish, and English weren't warriors? There' s a reason for all that armor and castles. Most cultures were at some point, that's how you got to be and stayed a culture. Not to mention that almost every part of the UK had large influxes of Scandanavian ancestry, even before the Normans. Dublin was a Viking town, as was York.

Incidentally, that's a lovely sword, and a deleted lot better than my first one. Congratulations on the proposal.

Edited October 16, 2025Oct 16 by Mod34
Edited for inappropriate language

On 6/24/2025 at 1:44 PM, Asterisck said:

With it being my first sword and first blade of any kind I wanted to make sure it was serviceable over full historical accuracy.

That my friend is one handsome sword and the correct weight for battle use. Outstanding just doesn't do it justice especially for your first one. Ya done good. As far as the screws go, if you haven't already fixed them they can be blackened, so they don't jump out and catch the eye.

I can’t control the wind. All I can do is adjust my sails. ~Semper Paratus~

In old Norse, Viking was a adjective, meant raider or pirate and they went viking. To Vike was to steal, thief had the same root word I don't recall now. When you think about what great warriors they were remember they mostly raided monasteries, churches, and small villages on the coast. It wasn't till much later enough Norsemen and other Scandinavian men decided raiding paid much better than farming and herding sheep they became a real threat.  And began raiding farther inland and up rivers. 

It only took England to unite a LITTLE BIT to devastate Viking fleets and start their decline and western Europe followed suit though they were already organizing nations.

What remained returned to sea traders migrating south and east but not as "Vikings." Sure, they made it as far as Constantinople but not as Vikings, as Christian traders.

The reason the British Isles have such a serious combination of ancient and prehistoric cultures is parts remained unfrozen during the Younger Dryas while much of the coastlines of western Europe were okay farm land. During the last ice age of the English Channel and more was pretty good farmland, known as Doggerland. At the end of the ice age the water returned as The British Isles cleared of ice and shrank. Much of the population of western Europe migrated westward and ended up on the Isles. 

If you're interested in better info than my poor memory even the Wiki is a decent place to start. Do remember though most of old Norse history is "translated" from the Edas which were oral tradition poetry and are hardly really accurate. Humans tend to exaggerate their heroes.

Frosty The Lucky.

22 minutes ago, Frosty said:

To Vike was to steal, thief had the same root word I don't recall now.

Mmmm, not quite.  Variations of "thief" are common in Germanic languages and have essentially the same meaning:

Quote

Old English þíof, þéof (North. þéaf). Common Germanic; in Old Frisian thiaf, Old Saxon thiof (Middle Dutch, Dutch dief, Middle Low German dief, dêf, Low German dêf, plural dêven), Old High German diob, diup (Middle High German diep, German dieb); Old Norse þiófr (Swedish tiuf, Danish tyv), Gothic þiufs, þiuƀ- < Old Germanic *þeuƀo^z, pointing to an Indo-European ablaut-series *teup-, toup-, tup-: compare Lithuanian tupēti to crouch down.

Whereas "viking" is derived from terms related to raiding expeditions:

Quote

The Old Norse word is commonly regarded as < vík creek, inlet, bay, + ‑ingr ‑ing suffix3 a viking thus being one who came out from, or frequented, inlets of the sea. The name, however, was evidently current in Anglo-Frisian from a date so early as to make its Scandinavian origin doubtful; wícingsceaða is found in Anglo-Saxon glossaries dating from the 8th century, and sǽ-wícingas occurs in the early poem of Exodus, whereas evidence for víkingr in Old Norse and Icelandic is doubtful before the latter part of the 10th cent. It is therefore possible that the word really originated in the Anglo-Frisian area, and was only at a later date accepted by the Scandinavian peoples; in that case it was probably formed < Old English wíc camp, the formation of temporary encampments being a prominent feature of viking raids.

 

 

I can't disagree but I spent quite a bit of time looking into ancient western European languages and there don't seem to be any real regional origins. The real disarray stems from the Younger Dryas. Cultures and "tribal" groups were more consistent after the last ice age than after the Younger Dryas but the latter struck much more quickly, some estimates say a couple few centuries rather than the millennia of the last ice age. 

Heck, we're in an interglacial period of the most recent ice age. It's still going on this is just a warm blip.

Western European migration patterns are harder to track than the languages though DNA has helped with the former.

On top of how convoluted word and language origins are I have my memory. I did a lot of reading but what I remember most is how many days I spent trying to track these things down. 

Being wrong is no surprise but . . . ?

Frosty The Lucky.

Not quite sure what the Younger Dryas has to do with it, since that was about 12,000 years ago and the Indo-European languages started branching out only about 8,000 years ago. 

There were well established cultures in western Europe before the Younger Dryas let alone the spread of Indo-European or Indo-Hittite, or. . . ?

I'm just going to pull a fade on this topic, it's just to intricate and current linguistic and archeological scholars can't agree. Heck, you should see what the Time Team experts were saying before I cancelled my subscription 2 years ago. They couldn't agree on language origins in early medieval times let alone 8 millennium BCE even though there is archeological evidence preceding the Younger Dryas. 

What DNA shows is a serious mixture of people from India north the and spotty east. 

I'll concede my memories of the meaning and origin of viking is in error. Just looking for a few of the ancient western European languages has to involve a long deep exploration of a a rabbit warren filled with worms. I hadn't seen two analysis that "matched." I dropped the roll eyes from matched.

Frosty The Lucky.

9 hours ago, Nobody Special said:

I'm mildly insulted.

Don't worry about it.  I went back to 23 and Me to worry over DNA being leaked when it asked me to update my results based on a new algorithm.  I'm once again back to being Scotch-Irish, zero percent Viking, like my grandparents told me I was.  It's all BS.  Waste of money.  Lizard DNA comes back as Slavic and Native American.

It's nice to see that so many have a Memory of Thousands of Years Ago!!!  This MUST be Proof of an After-Life!!   LOL

Neil

12 hours ago, MeltedSocks said:

being Scotch-Irish, zero percent Viking

Well, Scotch-Irish are people that the Brits relocated from Scotland to Ulster in the 1600s, partially as a labor force and partially to increase the Protestant base in Ireland, but that's sort of 600 to 1000 years after the fact. It didn't go great, btw, which is part of the reason so many ended up relocated to colonial and post-colonial America.

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were Germanic tribes, not Norse per se, but a lot of them ended up settling in Norse countries, so there's a common root there, but again it would hard to be Scottish or Irish (or English or Welsh) without having some Norse ancestry. They had settlements all over, including on the islands in Orkney, starting a few cities in Ireland you might have heard of, like Dublin and Cork. The Normans were directly descended from the Norse and finished conquering England (1066 and King Harold shot in the eye with an arrow and such?), and the history of England for a long stretch prior to that invasion is a series of the Saxons fighting with Viking incursions and mini-kingdoms. Heck, King Harold was more Norse than Saxon.

Not that any of us are our ancestors or can really buy into their accomplishments and culture; it's all a big Rorschach test based on historical myths and romanticized nonsense like braided beard beads, horns, on helmets, and "kill the wabbit" that says more about us by far than where we came from (duly noted Swedefiddle), but if you've got Scotch-Irish, your ancestry comes from a lot of places, definitely including a viking or twelve and probably Genghis Kahn.