Skofnung

The Vikings had many stories to tell around the fireside. 

Vikings are associated with swords and axes, shields and spears. Maybe a bow and arrow. But the predominant weapon of myth and fable was the sword, often very old and with a personal name. 

Hand-made, they were expensive; a pattern-welded blade could be worth as much as £250,000 in our terms if the hilt furniture was jewelled or finished in precious metal. 

Skofnung was made for King Hrolf Kraki of Denmark . Not only did the sword have mystcal powers but had a life stone which was said to offer healing powers to those the sword had injured. When Hrolf died, Skofnung was buried with him inside the mound at Roskilde.

Two hundred years later, Skeggi of Vlidfirtlz in Iceland broke into the mound and removed a good deal of treasure, including Skofnung. In the dry and air-tight burial chamber, Skofnung was clean, bright and covered in dried lanolin. With that cleaned off, it was as good as the day it was made.

A warrior called Kormac faced a duel with Bersi, a professional duellist, and decided his sword wasn’t up to the mark, for Bersi had a sword called Hviting, which had its own life-stone and Kormac’s did not; also, the blade bent after a few hard strokes. Kormac’s mother suggested he’d better see if he could borrow Skofnung from Skeggi. Kormac did so, and Skeggi refused to lend his sword.

On his mother’s insistence he tried again, and this time Skeggi agreed, but gave Kormac lots of instructions about using the sword. No woman could look upon it, the sun should not be allowed to shine on it for too long and he must breathe on the blade as he withdraw the sword from the bag which protected it. Breathing on the blade would allow the luck of the sword to swim out into the pattern and if luck was with him Kormac would see the snake moving in the fuller.

Kormac wasn’t impressed and laughed. When he took Skofnung home he wanted to show it to his mother but could not remove the protective bag. When Kormac tore off the bag, Skofnung howled. It refused to leave the bag and howled even louder when Kormac put his foot on the bag and dragged out the sword. The snake vanished into the hilt.

At this Skeggi reclaimed his sword and in time handed it on to his son Eid, who then loaned it to a man called Thekrell and to his son Gellir, who died at Roskilde. No doubt Skofnung was buried with him, very close to the mound from which it had originally been plundered, for no more was ever heard of Skofnung.

Lesser known weapons, but probably more likely to be owned and used every day, were the various shapes and sizes of saex common to the Viking age. A langsaex, as the name suggests, had a blade a good deal longer that the shorter and more common scramsaex which came in all shapes and sizes from a common eating knifr to a blade inscribed with runes and inserted into a patterned hilt. Such weapons have their own history, and Skofnung even has an island, Skofnungsey, named after it. I almost used the masculine pronoun for him in that last sentence…