HEMA Arming Swords

The single handed sword in the sources

The arming sword is the ordinary sword of the medieval centuries. It is the one a man wore at his hip when he was carrying nothing else, and it stayed in service for roughly four hundred years because the shape worked. Cruciform hilt, straight cross, double edged blade of about 28 to 33 inches, a grip long enough for one hand and a heavy pommel above it to balance the blade back towards the guard. Nothing about it is decorative. The consensus band that modern makers build to sits at about 0.8 to 1.0 kg with a blade around 30 inches, and that is where these six live.

In the fencing treatises it is usually just called the sword. The masters who wrote the surviving books treat it as the baseline tool, the thing a student already owns before he picks up anything longer. Fiore dei Liberi gives the single handed sword its own section of the Flower of Battle, used in one hand and in two. The earlier German material treats it as half of a pair with the buckler. Later the Bolognese writers carried the same single handed sword forward and added rings to the hilt, which is how you get the sidesword, and why the two families still look so alike at the guard.

The two blade shapes that survive

Broadly, two answers exist in the archaeological record. The first is a wide blade with nearly parallel edges and a shallow fuller running down most of its length, built to cut. The second is narrower, more sharply tapered, stiff in section, often with a short fuller or none at all, built to find a gap in plate armour with the point. Both are on this page. Ashgrimm is diamond in section with no fuller anywhere, which is the later thrusting answer. Haldvane, Mirlaug and Skarnvik carry a broad fuller and sit firmly at the cutting end of the family. Faskvar and Draugmar fall between the two, with a fuller that stops part way down a blade that still tapers.

Sword and buckler, and the manuscript called I.33

The oldest surviving European fencing manual is a sword and buckler book. It is catalogued as MS I.33, it is usually dated to around 1300, and it works through a set of named guards and their counters with a single handed sword in one hand and a small round shield in the other. That pairing is why the arming sword still has a place on a club floor. It is the entry point to the longest documented tradition in the art, and many clubs teach it from a first session because the tool is short, light and easy to control.

A buckler is a small shield, usually about nine to sixteen inches across, with a deep central boss and a single bar grip behind it. It is held out at the end of the arm rather than strapped to the forearm, and much of its job is to cover the sword hand rather than the body. That changes how the sword is used. The hands work together, the buckler travels with the blade, and a bind is resolved by moving the shield as much as by moving the point.

None of these six ships with a buckler. The specification panel on each product states exactly what is in the box.

Side rings, finger rings and what they are for

A plain cross protects the hand only as long as the hand stays behind it. Once fencers began hooking a finger over the cross to gain point control, the finger became exposed, and hilts grew a ring on each face above the block to shield it. Ashgrimm on this page carries exactly that, two side rings sitting one on each side above the cross. It is a small addition that tells you where the sword sits in the timeline, because a ringed arming sword is later than a plain one.

The distinction worth holding on to is that a side ring stands out from the flat of the blade and shields the hand from a blow that slides down the outside, while a finger ring sits forward of the cross and gives the finger somewhere safe to sit. Once both appear together, along with a knuckle bow, you have left the arming sword and arrived at the sidesword. The sideswords in this line show that next step, and the guide comparing the sidesword with the rapier follows the road further.

Fullers, taper and why one sword feels different from another

The fuller

A fuller is the shallow groove forged or ground down the centre of a blade. It is not a blood groove and it never was. It removes steel from the middle of the section, where that steel contributes least to stiffness, and leaves it at the edges where it contributes most. The result is a blade that keeps most of its rigidity while losing real mass, which shifts the balance point back towards the hand and makes the sword quicker to change direction.

How far the fuller runs matters as much as whether it exists. Haldvane and Mirlaug carry theirs down most of the blade, which keeps the piece light and cut oriented all the way towards the point. Draugmar stops at about two thirds, which leaves more steel in the last third and stiffens the point for thrusting. Faskvar runs a narrow fuller to roughly the same place on a narrower blade. Ashgrimm has none at all and gets its stiffness from a diamond section instead.

Profile taper and distal taper

Two separate things get called taper. Profile taper is how the blade narrows from the cross towards the point when you look at it flat on. Distal taper is how it thins from base to point when you look at it edge on. A sword with strong distal taper feels far livelier than its bare mass suggests, because the steel that has been removed sits at the far end of the lever. A sword with little distal taper feels heavy in the hand even when the scales say it is not.

Ransack Viking publishes no measured weight or balance point for this line, because these are forged and ground one at a time and no two come out identical. Flex is given as a named tier instead. The flex guide explains what the tiers mean.

How a trainer differs from a display sword

Steel and hardness

This is the single largest difference and it is invisible in a photograph. A display or collector sword is generally 1095 high carbon steel hardened to 54 to 58 HRC. That is the right answer for a blade that will be sharpened, will hold an edge and will hang on a wall or cut tatami. It is the wrong answer for a blade that will be struck edge on, hard, several hundred times an evening. At that hardness a blade resists bending right up until it does not, and then it takes a permanent set or breaks.

Every arming sword in this category is 51CrV4 spring steel hardened to 49 to 52 HRC instead. Softer, tougher, and specified that way on purpose. Spring steel at that hardness bends under a hard bind and returns to straight afterwards, which is exactly what a sparring blade needs to do. The trade is that it will not take or keep a fine edge, which does not matter, because these are not sharpened.

The edge and the tip

A blunt trainer does not have a rounded edge. It has a flat land, a deliberate ground flat along the edge line, typically 2 mm or wider, so the blade cannot bite into another blade or into gear. Every arming sword here is listed with that flat land. The specification panel states the figure for each piece and you should read it rather than assume.

Tips vary across the six and the difference is worth knowing before you enter an event. Haldvane, Faskvar and Skarnvik carry a rolled and flared tip of about 15 mm. Mirlaug, Draugmar and Ashgrimm are blunted and rounded off instead. Tournament gear rules are specific about this. The Berlin HEMA Cup, for one, requires a spatulated or rolled tip with a minimum diameter of 1.5 cm across its categories. A rounded tip is not the same thing as a spatulated one, so measure the piece against the ruleset your event actually publishes. Ransack Viking makes no claim of tournament legality for any sword on this page without naming the ruleset, and neither should anyone else. The tournament gear guide sets out what the published rulesets ask for.

Sizing a single handed sword

Arming swords are far less fussy about height than a longsword, because the grip takes one hand and the blade is short enough that reach differences matter less. The usual advice is to choose by blade length and by what your club drills. A 30 inch blade is the middle of the road and suits most adults. Go shorter towards 28 inches if you fence a lot of close measure or work sword and buckler almost exclusively. Go longer towards 33 inches if you want more reach in the bind and you have the wrist to control it.

Grip length is the part people get wrong. An arming sword grip is genuinely short, often no more than four inches of usable space between cross and pommel, and it should feel that way. If a single handed sword has room for a second hand it is not an arming sword, it is a hand and a half sword, and those live in the HEMA longsword category instead.

Every arming sword on this page, side by side

Every figure in the table below is taken from the specification panel of a product on this page. Nothing is estimated. Sizes vary piece to piece because each blade is forged and ground by hand, so read a stated length as nominal rather than exact.

Blade lengths sit at about 30 inches on five of the six and about 31 inches on Draugmar. None ships with a scabbard.

Browse related sword categories

• Arming swords with sharpened edges and scabbards for collectors and display
• The full HEMA range, from feders to rapiers and sabres
• Sideswords, the ringed and barred hilt that grew out of this shape
• HEMA longswords and hand and a half blunts for two hands
• Feders, the purpose built longsword fencing tool with a schilt
• Messers, the single edged sword built on knife style hilt construction
• Viking swords, the broad fullered single hander that came before
• Engraved and personalised pieces across the whole catalogue

Guides worth reading first

• What HEMA is, and what the sources actually are
• How to choose your first HEMA sword without wasting money
• HEMA sword flex explained, tier by tier
• Blunt against sharp training swords, and which one you need
• HEMA tournament gear rules and what the published rulesets ask for
• Synthetic against steel trainers for a first year student
• Display sword or battle ready, what the terms actually mean
• Care and oiling for carbon and spring steel blades