The fullers of the type X were very wide, but at the same time there was a variant with a thinner fuller, which Oakeshott named the type Xa. This type of sword is made until the 12th century, but is not made after 1200 AD. The edges are almost parallel, with a long, deep and wide fuller, and a tip that can thrust, but is clearly not made to punch through heavier armour. The earliest, the Type X, straddles the Viking Age and the feudal world that followed.

The sword of this time was primarily a cutting weapon, used to strike down at lightly armored oppenents from horseback, and its blade forms reflect this. The sword of this period was the knightly weapon of last resort – if the knight drew his sword, it meant that the cavalry charge had failed and the knight was now surrounded by enemies. The armour of the period from roughly the 10th to 14th centuries – a timeframe that saw the end of the Viking Age and dawn of Feudal Europe – was marked by nobility and knights wearing mail armour, while infantry tended to wear linen gambesons, if they wore any armor at all. The Ulfberht forge even created swords from high grade crucible steel, a feat unmatched in Europe until long after the Middle Ages, although these swords ceased to be produced once the trade route providing the steel was lost. Beginning most likely with the Ulfberht forge – the 10th century equivalent of a sword factory or firm – bladesmiths discovered how to refine steel to the point that they could make a blade out of a single bar, rather than having to use the time consuming (albeit beautiful) process of pattern welding. The first period of Oakeshott’s typology began in the wake of a technological revolution that began in Germany. And it all begins as the age of longships faded away and a new feudal order emerged. Oakeshott’s typology is a journey through time and the history of Medieval warfare, from the Viking Age to the Renaissance, from raiders to armored knights to the sword masters whose work still inspires historical fencers today. As development in armor made one type of sword blade obsolete, bladesmiths would make another to take its place. The swords of the Middle Ages were precision weapons, built to function on a battlefield against the armor of its day, and defeat it. One cannot truly understand the development of swords without understanding the arms race – no sword was ever developed in a vacuum. It also tells a story – a chronicle of an arms race centuries ago that pitted armorers against bladesmiths in an ongoing battle to push military technology to its limits. Ewart Oakeshott’s (1916-2002) typology is far more than just a means for cataloguing variations on the Medieval sword.

The blade itself barnes and noble