Sword Stands & Displays

What a stand is actually doing

Most people buy a stand after something has already gone wrong. A sword propped in a corner slides down the plaster. A blade laid across two nails picks up two bright rub marks. An axe leaned against a bookcase falls at four in the morning and takes a shelf with it. The stand is the thing that stops all of that, and the way it stops it is not complicated once you see where the forces are.

On a table top stand the load is straight down, so the only real questions are whether the base is wide enough to stop the whole thing tipping when a sword sits high on the top tier, and whether the cradles are soft enough not to mark the blade. On a wall mount the physics change completely. The weight hangs out from the wall on a bracket, so the fixings at the top are being pulled straight out of the plaster while the bottom of the bracket is pressed into it. That is why every wall piece here takes two screws per bracket, one above the hook and one below, rather than a single fixing in the middle.

The second thing a stand does is decide which way the blade sits. Rest a sword edge down and the whole weight of the piece bears on the thinnest, hardest, most fragile part of it, held against wood or metal for however many years it lives there. Rest it edge up, spine in the cradle, and the load sits on the thickest section of steel. The stands here are cut so the natural way to lay a sword is the correct one, which saves a certain amount of arguing.

The stands and mounts in this collection

Five pieces, split by whether they sit on something or hang on something.

Table top stands

Two of these. The walnut two tier stand is solid American black walnut with a chamfered plinth on felt feet, about 16 inches across the base and about 15 inches to the top of the upper cradles. Each cradle is capped in solid brass and lined with black felt bonded and trimmed by hand, and the pieces are held with solid brass thumb screws so a sword can come off the stand without tools. It holds two swords, one per tier, or one sword and its scabbard. A Mjolnir is cut into the back panel of the plinth. It arrives flat, with the two uprights bolting to the plinth using the hex key supplied.

The oak stand is a three tier table top rack in solid oak throughout, built with a through tenon stretcher passing across both uprights, which is joinery rather than a screwed butt joint and is why it stays square under load. A running knotwork band is cut along the face of the stretcher. The cradles are oak notches cut and rounded rather than lined, and the base is two curved feet set wide so the rack does not tip when the top tier is loaded. Swords are not included, and the blade in the photograph is there for scale.

Wall mounts

Two matched pairs. The walnut brackets are about 9 inches long each, sold as two brackets carrying four solid brass scroll hooks between them, with dense grey wool felt bonded into each cradle and an Elder Futhark rune line cut into the face. They mount on routed keyhole slots at each end, two screws per bracket, and the brass is left unlacquered so it will darken.

The oak pair is simpler and cheaper. Two plaques in clear oiled oak, each with a standing raven cut into the face and one cast steel hook brushed to a satin finish. The hook has an upturned lip at the end, which is the detail that matters, because a blade resting in a flat hook will creep sideways over months and eventually leave it. Two countersunk holes per plaque, one above the hook and one below. Wall screws and plugs are in the box. These take swords, axes, spears, staves and scabbarded blades, so they are the flexible option if you do not yet know what will end up on that wall.

The axe and board

One piece here is a display in its own right rather than a fitting. A hand forged high carbon bearded axe head, hardened to 54 to 58 HRC at the edge on a light hardwood haft, mounted on a solid oak board with shaped shoulders and plugged dowels at the corners. A Celtic knotwork band is carved across the face of the board, and the axe sits in four steel brackets lined in black leather. Keyhole hanging points are routed into the reverse. It arrives complete, board and axe together, and it is the only thing on this page that does not need you to already own something.

Materials, capacity and fittings across the range

Every figure below comes from the specification panel of a piece on this page. These are cut, sanded and finished by hand, so read dimensions as what to expect rather than as a guarantee to the millimetre. Where a listing does not state a figure, the table says so.

Capacity is the figure to read twice. A two tier stand holds two swords only if both are ordinary single hand lengths. Put a longsword on the lower tier of a 15 inch stand and the tip will foul the surface it is standing on.

Weight, fixings and the wall behind them

Work out the load before you drill. A hand forged sword with a scabbard usually falls between three and six pounds. Two of them on one pair of brackets is up to twelve pounds hanging out from the wall, and that load acts as a lever against the top screws. Into a timber stud that is nothing. Into hollow plasterboard on the plugs that came in the box, it is a slow test of your plaster.

Find a stud if you can, and if you cannot, use a proper hollow wall anchor rated well above the load rather than the friction plugs supplied for solid masonry. Level the two brackets to each other before either is fully tightened, because a sword on two hooks that are half an inch out of level will slide steadily towards the lower one. Set the bracket spacing so both hooks sit inboard of the sword's balance point rather than out near the tip, which stops the blade seesawing when someone walks past.

For table top stands the equivalent question is the surface. Felt feet on a walnut plinth will not mark a table, but a stand loaded high wants a surface that does not get knocked. Mantels are the usual mistake, since anything above a working fireplace gets warm and dry air all winter and the timber does not enjoy it.

Timber, brass and steel

Oak and American black walnut behave differently and both are here on purpose. Oak is hard, open grained, pale to mid brown with visible ray fleck when it is quarter sawn, and it takes a knife cut carving cleanly, which is why the carved and engraved oak pieces show their pattern so well. Walnut is finer grained, darker, and moves less with humidity, which is what you want under a bolted joint that has to stay square.

The finishes are oil rather than lacquer. A hard wax oil sits in the timber instead of forming a film on top, so it has a low sheen, it does not craze, and a scuff can be repaired with a rub of more oil rather than by stripping a whole panel. It also means the wood is not sealed behind plastic, so it will react a little to a very dry room.

Solid brass hooks and caps are left unlacquered. They arrive bright and they will go honey coloured and then brown over a year or two. A metal polish on a cloth takes them back to bright whenever you want, and doing nothing at all is also a valid choice. Brushed steel hooks stay as they are and only want an occasional wipe.

What touches the blade

This is the part that decides whether a stand is kind to a sword or slowly ruins one. Bare wood against a polished blade is not a disaster, but grit finds its way into an open grain and then the cradle works like a very slow file every time the sword is lifted out and put back. Felt and leather solve that by giving the grit somewhere to sit below the contact surface.

The walnut pieces use bonded felt, black on the stand and dense grey wool on the brackets. The axe board uses black leather inside steel brackets. The oak rack uses rounded bare oak notches, which is the traditional answer and works fine if you keep the notches clean and lift the blade out rather than dragging it.

One warning that applies to every lined cradle. Felt and leather both hold moisture. A carbon steel blade left in a damp room will spot first at the exact points where it sits in the lining, because that is where air cannot get to it. If a room runs humid, wipe the blade and the cradle every few weeks and keep a light film of oil on the steel. Our guide to Damascus steel care covers the oiling routine.

Care and storage

Dust the timber with a dry cloth. Once a year give the oiled surfaces a thin coat of hard wax oil or a furniture oil and wipe off whatever has not soaked in after ten minutes. Keep the whole thing away from radiators, sunny windows and the top of a working fireplace, because dry heat shrinks timber and a shrunk upright loosens a bolted joint.

Check the fixings once a year. On a wall mount, put a hand under the bracket and pull gently outward, which is the direction the load actually acts. On a bolted stand, a quarter turn on the hex key takes up anything the timber has given away over a winter. Brass thumb screws want to be snug rather than forced, since brass threads strip more easily than steel ones.

Engraving

Every piece here has a flat face designed to carry a cut, which makes these some of the easier things to personalise. The plinth back panel, the bracket faces, the stretcher and the axe board all take text or a symbol. Elder Futhark is a phonetic alphabet rather than a cipher, so a name is transliterated by sound and there is no rune for the letter C. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your engraving replaces it rather than sitting beside it. Text engraving is 19 dollars, a symbol is 39 dollars and a family crest is 49 dollars. It is permanent, an engraved piece cannot be returned, and the spelling you send is the spelling that gets cut.

Where these come from and how they ship

Ransack Viking is a US company based in Memphis, Tennessee. The pieces are handmade in the Czech Republic, then imported, inspected and shipped from Memphis. Engraving is done in the US after arrival. Because the timber is natural and every board is cut from a different tree, colour and figure vary from one stand to the next, oak runs from pale straw to warm brown and walnut from mid brown to nearly black. Dimensions, joinery and fittings are the same every time. The grain is not.

How to choose

If you have one blade and a wall, buy the oak plaques and put the money you saved into the blade. If you have a collection and a shelf, buy the three tier oak rack. If the display is the point and the room is finished in dark timber, buy the walnut, because the brass and felt read as furniture rather than as a fitting. If you want something that arrives complete and goes straight on a wall, buy the axe board.

Browse related categories

• Swords across every pattern we carry
• Viking swords with pattern welded and plain blades
• Scabbards and sheaths, including replacements
• Bearded axes to hang beside them
• Viking home decor for the rest of the room
• Viking shields, the other thing that needs a wall

Guides worth reading first

• How to display swords and axes safely
• Display sword vs battle ready, what the difference actually is
• Elder Futhark runes and how a name is transliterated
• Mjolnir and what the hammer meant