1/29/20 Catherine Piro PD7

Catherine Piro

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Period 7 

Today, we began class with a short vocabulary quiz for the first 10 minutes. After collecting the vocabulary quizzes, Mrs. Fusaro gave us information regarding our test on Friday (January 31, 2020). The test is on Norse Mythology and Beowulf. A fourth of the questions are on Norse Mythology and are very general. Five questions will focus on the grammatical structures in Beowulf and the rest will focus on the concepts and the reading. 

For the remainder of the period the class watched a video titled Secrets of the Viking Sword by National Geographic. Secrets of the Viking Sword is about medieval weaponry, specifically the Viking sword Ulfberht. A select few have carried the weapon branded Ulfberht and the secrets behind its design, creation, and use have been lost. Master swordsman John Clements said that a good sword is not just a blade with a sharp edge; a sword also has to have strength, flexibility, weight, and shape. The sword’s name comes from the text inscribed on the blade and was “perfectly designed for its day.” Ulfberht was rare and expensive as it was made from pure steel between 800 and 1000 AD and married form and function for the chaos of Viking battle chaos. 

The Vikings spread from Scandinavia and spread throughout Europe from the 8th and 11th centuries. Typically, Vikings fought with axes and spears, while the rich used swords for close combat. Only 171 different Ulfberht swords have been found in burial places. The once beautiful and deadly swords were found as nothing more than corroded skeletons of blades. Present day blacksmiths are attempting to recreate the beauty of Ulfberht, but none have been accurate. Blacksmiths are having difficulty recreating Ulfberht as there is no record of how the blades have been made. As a result, the modern day blacksmiths are trying to reverse engineer the blade and refine and focus on the subtle, yet significant details.

For thousands of years, weapons had been made out of smelted iron. From 8000 BC to today, steel has been used to craft weapons. Carbon is added to iron to harden the metal and turn it into steel. Medieval iron is soft and brittle as the medieval blacksmiths didn’t have high enough temperatures to craft slag free steel. Viking blacksmiths could only introduce carbon intermittently through the coal of the fire and had to hammer out the other impurities. The uniformity of Ulfberht is similar to that of modern steel than medieval steel as it has three times as much carbon. Ulfberht is composed of crucible steel (iron melted at high temperatures), a technique that was used 800 years later. This prompts the question: Where did they get the raw material?

Vikings were advanced navigators and traders and their reach extended into North America and Central Asia. The men were forced to go to war. The Vikings were pagans who worshipped there weapons and believed they could bring them to heaven. Viking swords had personal names to incorporate the power of an ancestor or another individual into the weapon. Viking blades rarely touched each other directly as they wanted to go for the kill.

The lack of impurities made Ulfberht unusually flexible and it could withstand the stress of getting stuck. Ulfberht was regarded as having magical powers. Some medieval blacksmiths might have used burnt bones as another carbon source to incorporate more power into the weapon. The ovens used to craft Ulfberht were found in Central Asia, 2500 miles from Scandinavia. These unique ovens trapped more heat as they were sealed from the top and ventilated on the side. To eliminate impurities and separate slag, the oven must reach 3000 degrees. No evidence of knowledge of crucible steel was discovered until the Industrial Age. Artifacts from the east were recovered from Viking graves; possibly from the Volga trade route. The steel most likely originated from Iran as the trade closed and the manufacturing of Ulfberht ended in the 11th century.

Reflection 

    Secrets of the Viking Sword discussed the importance of the sword in Viking culture and its function in battle. Despite most of the information regarding Ulfberht’s creation being speculation, the video provided important cultural context and insight into weaponry and its role in Beowulf. Learning about the craftsmanship and different materials used to create the highly regarded weaponry such as Ulfberht allowed for me as a reader to understand the function of swords as they function symbolically and literally in Viking society. Secrets of the Viking Sword acted as a continuation of our lesson yesterday on the importance of Hrunting. The section of the video about the names and incorporation of power into Ulfberht demonstrated the connection between the weapon and its owner. Additionally, the power/personality of the sword conflicts with the nature of Hrunting as discussed yesterday. Hrunting was created by giants and “blessed” by God as it survived the flood. Ulfberht and the strength of other swords comes from ancestors and the powerful beings they were named after. This adds another layer into the conflict within the text between the pagan practices of the Vikings and Christianity.