Just a random question, why dont families have old swords lying in their closets from back in the day? Surely when Ogg the viking retired from his days of raiding he didnt just toss out his old weapons. What about Aramis the musketeer? Or many of the thousands of other weapons and armor that thousands if not millions of soldiers must have carried at one time dating back to the Roman and Greek eras. Those must have become cherished heirlooms.
So where are they now? Would a 500-2,000 year old sword just rust away? Were they melted down into something else? There are only a few left in some museums from what I have seen.
It doesn’t take much to destroy a sword. All it takes is one generation with no appreciation for it. Great-grandpa had a sword, grandpa treated it like an heirloom. Pa didn’t see much use for it in an age of firearms. Pa gives the worn sword to his kid as a toy. Kid bashes it on rocks and throws it in the river when he’s bored with it or broken it.
When Civil War reenactment first started in the 60’s quite a few reenactors brought out authentic weapons that grandpappy had in the basement. They did not lost as old firearms weren’t meant to take much use.
There were a lot of collectors of weapons whose descendents saw little value in them. A lot were donated to museums where they sit to this day, but several collections were just sold off. One collection was famously sold in the 20’s at Wanamakers.
I’ve seen a number of swords from the Civil War and Revolutionary War come up in Antiques Roadshow … materials from earlier just don’t last … and if we’re talking about the run-of-the-lot common soldier issue swords, then these swords weren’t made very well to begin with … how many swords did Ogg the Viking go through in his pillaging campaigns; these things break, get ground down to nothing on the sharpening stone or just simply rust away …
Generally speaking … items from that long ago that have lasted until today were originally of the very highest quality … so very few to begin with … and these types of items tend to be donated to museums and the like …
It doesn’t take very long for metal exposed to the elements to rust. Most weapons would probably be unrecognizable chunks of oxide in a decades or two.
Keeping metal from rusting requires constant upkeep: painting, drying, oiling, etc.
In addition, a lot of warring cultures did not use many swords. Aces and spears were the mainstays of the Vikings, for example. Swords cost a lot more and were harder to make.
Spears and other pole weapons were popular among most nations’ armies, for that matter. You only need a small point made out of metal, and the rest is cheap (and perishable) wood. Plus, they’re easy to improvise out of farming tools, which is important when your army consists mostly of farmers.
There are thousands upon thousands of old swords still extant in Europe. Museums, auction houses and antique shops are awash with them as a quick check of the net reveals.
How old are the swords, though? I know there’s only ONE extant iron Viking helmet, the overwhelming majority presumably having rusted away. I imagine the same is true for almost all iron swords–steel is what would have lasted. Does bronze last longer than iron?
Not swords, but there’s plenty of muskets from the 1750s-1900s floating about in varying stages of repair, including a surprisingly large number which can still be fired.
As other have said that metal is expensive and useful. Melt it down and make something else, maybe a new sword.
And let’s not forget, the fact we see these as heirloom because most extant swords today are either heirlooms or museum pieces, the fact is that these were initially functional weapons. Look at how many usable World War II aircraft survive today; a handful, out of production runs which often numbered in the tens of thousands.
And a surprising number of WWII aircraft for which there are none left, too.
It’s relatively easy to find weapons from the 19th century onwards but I’d say a lot of the stuff from before that which has survived is either in museums or it’s in the private collections of people who don’t tell everyone what’s in their private collection.
This. It’s extremely rare to find military-grade metal dating back before 1300-ish, outside of grave goods (and even then, that’s consistently been plundered to shit).
Chainmail in particular, while absolutely known to have been used extensively far into Antiquity, is almost a no-show prior to the XIVth-XVth era - IIRC from some research I made there isn’t a single full hauberk on Earth from before 1400, just bits and pieces or singular links. One reason for this is that chainmail links are small, thin and rust through easily ; so barring very specific environments (like bogs or deep lakes) conservation itself is a large issue ; but the major reason is that that kind of armour was consistently repaired, refurbished, recycled up until the point metallurgy, mining etc… became advanced enough that every bit of iron wasn’t quite as valuable and/or military tech advanced enough that chainmail just stopped being relevant. Most of the “full suits of armour” you can see in museums are really cobbled together from various sources - and, often time periods !
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And let’s not forget, the fact we see these as heirloom because most extant swords today are either heirlooms or museum pieces, the fact is that these were initially functional weapons.
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Actually, a great many of the museum pieces, particularly for Antiquity and Early MA, are really ceremonial pieces - which explains why they survived. Either out of respect for the significance of the piece in its contemporary time, or because it really was unusable. Like for example the horned helmets that today are popularly associated with Vikings/Germanic fighters : a handful really exist/have been recovered, but they’re absurdly impractical, even dangerous to use and were probably either for chieftains/bodyguards to wear in court, or for religious purposes. Real viking warriors wore simple, efficient stuff like this instead.
[QUOTE=Mr Miskatonic]
In addition, a lot of warring cultures did not use many swords. Aces and spears were the mainstays of the Vikings, for example. Swords cost a lot more and were harder to make.
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Forgot to add : another data point to keep in mind is that the notion that things of the past have inherent value *because *they are so old and tell of the past is something of a recent development. A particularly aggravating account I came across was the personal journal of a country burgmeister (or possibly priest, I don’t remember) from the 1750th. A peasant from the village had unearthed a real trove of old swords from a nearby riverbed - some 50 to 100 IIRC, and brought them to him in a big pile, seeing as he was the town’s leading light. Knew his letters and errything. Our smart guy looked over the find, described them as “in bad repair” and “looking unimpressive”, and had them promptly taken to the scrapmonger. Yup. The researcher commenting the journal estimated the swords as having been XIth-XIIth century remnants of a big battle fought thereabouts, possibly older even. We’ll never know, 'cause they probably ended up as horseshoes.
Mentioning grave goods highlights another big point. Some cultures buried weapons as part of the grave goods for a warrior. That’s a decent chunk of weaponry that were not handed down as cherished heirlooms to be preserved and protected from rust.
Ogg the viking had a good chance of being buried with the sword or axe he carried during his raiding days. He took his sword with him. How else would he fight daily in Valhalla?
Steel will rust just like iron. However bronze is completely different. Bronze is mostly copper, and just like you can sometimes find native copper nuggets sitting on a streambed, bronze and copper pieces can last for thousands of years. So steel swords will be piles of rust in a few hundred years unless carefully preserved, but you can throw a bronze sword into a bog and pull it out two thousand years later and it will be perfectly fine.
Of course all these old metal pieces were relentlessly recycled, any bit of metal that didn’t have an immediate use would be remade into something else.
