Loopcrown Hand Forged 1095 Steel Viking Sword | 36 Inch Overall | Ring Pommel and Rune Cut Guard with Fitted Scabbard | Norse Reenactment Gift | RK-1834

The Loopcrown is a Viking style sword built around one unusual feature: an annular pommel, a solid steel disc pierced through with a ring. Below it sits a corded grip and a downswept guard with a line of Elder Futhark runes cut clean across its face. The blade is straight, double edged, and fullered down the centre. It comes with a fitted scabbard.

Ring pommels are not a modern invention and they are not decoration. They belong to a small and very specific group of swords from the Vendel period and the early Viking age, found from Sweden across to Kent, and the archaeology suggests strongly that the ring was an oath ring. A lord swore a man into his household and the ring on the sword pommel was the physical record of it. The Sutton Hoo sword carried one. So did a scatter of high status burials across the North Sea world, and in almost every case the sword is otherwise the most expensive thing in the grave. On some the ring is a real separate hoop that moves. On others it is cast or forged as one piece with the pommel, which is how ours is made. Forged, ground, hardened and assembled by hand in Memphis, Tennessee.

Specifications

What the ring on a ring sword meant

Oath rings run right through Norse and Germanic law. The Icelandic sources describe a heavy arm ring kept on the altar of a temple, dipped in blood and worn on the arm of the man taking a legal oath at the assembly. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the Danish army swearing peace to Alfred on a holy ring in 876, and records that they broke it, which tells you how seriously both sides expected the thing to be taken.

A ring fixed to the pommel of a sword puts that idea on the one object a warrior would never put down. It is a bond you carry in your hand. The scholarly reading is that these were gifts from a lord to a sworn man, and that the ring sword was as much a receipt as a weapon. That fits the pattern of where they turn up, which is almost always in the richest burials in a cemetery and almost never in an ordinary one.

There is a practical side too. The pommel of a sword is a counterweight, and a big solid lump of steel at the end of the grip is what stops the blade from dragging the point down. Piercing it with a ring keeps the visual mass while shedding a little of the actual weight, and it gives you somewhere to run a wrist thong if you want one.

The steel, the runes and the blackening

The blade is 1095 high carbon steel taken to 54 to 58 HRC. For a long straight double edged blade that is the useful window: hard enough to hold an edge, soft enough to flex under a hard parry and come back straight instead of taking a permanent set or breaking.

The guard and the pommel are blackened rather than polished bright. Blackening on steel is an oxide layer rather than a coating, which is why it does not chip off the way paint does, and it has the practical benefit of being one more barrier between bare carbon steel and the air. It also gives the runes contrast without needing any inlay, because the cut faces catch light against the dark ground.

The runes on the guard are Elder Futhark, the older twenty four character alphabet used across Germanic Europe from roughly the second to the eighth century. By the Viking age proper most Scandinavians had moved to the shorter sixteen character Younger Futhark, but Elder Futhark is what almost everyone recognises now and it is what our converter works in.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel, the leather or the wood. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us where it goes. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it. On this sword the guard is the obvious place, and the flat of the blade beside the fuller takes a longer line if you need more room. The engraving page shows both at size.

Handling and balance

Viking age swords are quicker in the hand than their reputation suggests. The mass is spread along a fairly parallel blade rather than piled into the last third the way it is on a later cutting sword, and a heavy pommel at the back pulls the balance point in close, usually four to five inches ahead of the guard. The result is a sword that turns fast and recovers fast, which is exactly what you want when your other hand is holding a shield and you are working over its rim.

The rounded point is worth noticing. Early Viking swords are cutting weapons and their points are often blunt or spatulate, because the thing they were expected to meet was a shield or a mail shirt, and neither rewards a thrust. The sword was built to cut around the shield, not through it.

Care

Oil the blade. 1095 will rust and a long blade gives it plenty of room to start. Wipe the whole length down after handling, because the acid in a fingerprint is what etches the first mark. Blackened furniture wants the same light oiling as the blade, and it should not be scrubbed with abrasives or the black comes off in patches. Do not store the sword in the scabbard for months in a humid room. Take it out, wipe it, oil it, put it back. Sharpen with a stone along the existing bevel and keep the angle consistent from ricasso to point. Our full page on steel care covers oiling, storage and taking rust off without ruining a finish.

Forged in Memphis

Forged, ground, heat treated, blackened, assembled and fitted in our shop in Memphis, Tennessee. Nothing on this page came out of an importer catalogue with a new name stamped on the box. That has a cost and the cost is time. Processing runs one to two weeks before the sword goes out, and longer with engraving, because the runes are cut once the blade is finished and the sword is then checked over again. Shipping inside the United States is free. Our lifetime warranty covers defects in forging, grind, heat treat and fittings, with no end date and no receipt needed.

A note on handmade variation

This sword is hand made rather than machine made or bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph. The blackening on the guard and pommel takes unevenly by nature and no two come out at the same depth of colour. The ring in the pommel is worked by hand and its opening will sit a fraction differently. The cord on the grip finds its own tension. The runes are cut individually and hold their own line. The dimensions, the steel, the heat treat and the build are the same every time. The character is not.

Frequently asked questions

Does the ring in the pommel move

No. It is forged as part of the pommel rather than fitted as a loose hoop, which is how a good number of the surviving originals were made and which is far stronger.

Is it sharp out of the box

Yes. It arrives with a cutting edge. Ask in the order notes if you would rather have it blunt for display or reenactment.

Can I use it for reenactment combat

Not as it ships. Reenactment groups require blunt edges and a rebated tip, and this comes sharp. Ask for a blunt version if that is what you need.

Is the scabbard included

It is. The fitted scabbard in the photograph ships with the sword.

Can I put my own runes on the guard

Yes. The guard takes a short line of about a dozen characters. Longer phrases go on the blade beside the fuller instead.

How long does it take to arrive

Processing is one to two weeks, then free shipping inside the United States. Engraved swords take the longer end.

What is in the box

• Loopcrown Viking sword in 1095 high carbon steel with a ring pommel
• Fitted scabbard
• Care card covering oiling, blackened finishes and storage
• Lifetime warranty against defects in forging, grind, heat treat and fittings
• Forged and finished in Memphis, Tennessee

Explore the range

See the rest of the Viking swords, the arming swords, the wider Viking weapons, or read the guides for how pommel weight changes the way a sword handles.