Arming Sword - Morphology

Morphology

Although a variety of designs fall under the heading of 'arming sword', they are characterized as having single-handed cruciform hilts and straight double-edged blades designed for both cutting and thrusting.

Blade length was usually from 27 to 32 inches (69 to 81 cm), however, examples exist from 23 to 39 inches (58 to 99 cm). Pommels were most commonly of the 'Brazil-nut' type from around 1000-1200AD. With the 'wheel' pommel appearing in the 11th and predominating from the 13th to 15th centuries.

Arming swords correspond to Oakeshott types XI, XII and XIII. The type is a development of the High Middle Ages, first apparent in the Norman swords of the 11th century. As such they are a continuation of the early medieval "Viking sword", which ultimately derive from the spatha of Late Antiquity and the Migration Period.

A combination of the Oakeshott and Peterson Typologies shows a chronological progression from the Viking sword to a "transitional sword", type X, which incorporated elements of both Viking and arming swords. This "transitional sword" continued to evolve into the presently defined arming sword.

These arming swords stand in contrast to what Oakeshott calls the 'great swords' in reference to their longer and broader blades, and calls the hand-and-half swords in reference to their longer grip, namely the subtypes XIIa and XIIIa that were in use simultaneously with the arming swords in the latter part of the High Middle Ages, c. 1250–1350. He notes these subtypes as the progenitors of the later two-handed longswords of the Late Middle Ages, in use c. 1350–1550. For this reason, scholars occasionally refer to these greatswords improperly and anachronistically as 'longswords'. By contrast, the arming sword will evolve into the later 'shortsword' worn as a sidearm while wielding the two-handed longsword.