A Blacksmith Is Not A Swordsmith
After Akiro’s Monologue, the film begins with a montage of Conan’s parents forging a bad-ass sword for him. This is kind of a deep cut; the fact that Conan’s father was a blacksmith is mentioned exactly once in the whole of the Robert E. Howard literary canon:
"But your Majesty!" cried the squire in great perturbation, "The Battle is lost! It were the part of majesty to yield with the dignity becoming one of royal blood!"
"I have no royal blood", growled Conan. "I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith."
This could be read as a statement of intent; here is a Hollywood blockbuster which deigns to treat the source material with the utmost respect. Sword enthusiasts would have been less impressed. This isn’t how a Northern Barbarian would have forged a steel sword, even in a fictional setting. Pouring molten metal into a mold to produce an object isn’t forging at all; this is called ‘casting’, and the technique of casting iron appears to have been unknown on the European continent until as late as 1400 CE. Even if the Northern Barbarians had been in the habit of casting iron, they wouldn’t have made their steel swords that way. Bronze weapons can be cast, but steel needs to be forged. ‘Forging’ describes the process of repeatedly heating and hammering a piece of metal to align the grain structure at an atomic level. Whats more, even a mediocre steel sword requires that iron and steel of varying elemental compositions be layered together in a process which must have appeared truly magical, as much to the practitioners of the Sword Art as to its observers. A sword must be able to absorb incredible amounts of force if it is to see you through a battle without shattering on the first major impact. It must be able to yield, and to spring back into place. It must give as well as take. Ancient swords forged of a single continuous piece of metal do exist, but they aren’t very good. You would think the film-makers would have known that after paying over $10,000 a piece to have not one, but two, swords forged for their titular character. They probably did know; its just that all that glowing, red hot metal looks so fucking cool against a backdrop of grim faces cast like molten steel in the fire and darkness and falling snow. So elemental.
The sword that breaks during the climactic battle with Doom’s retainers is the same sword Conan’s father had ‘forged’ in the beginning of the film. Of course it broke; we already told you, a cast iron sword wouldn’t work. Conan’s father was a blacksmith, and a blacksmith is not a swordsmith.
No one can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. But this (referring to the Sword), this you can trust.
Thulsa Doom had used that same sword, the one Conan’s dad had told him that he could trust, to decapitate Conan’s mother within the first twelve minutes of the film. Conan would meet that sword again years later, still in the hands of his enemies, where it would fail them and become the literal and symbolic instrument of Conan’s vegeance on Thulsa Doom’s Snake Cult. He would use its broken husk to decapitate Thulsa Doom himself.
In the norse Volsung Saga, Odin was a god who distributed swords, and who was active in casting the Riddle of Steel before mankind. Echoes of the Odinic Warrior Religion sing through The Swords omnipresence in the film. In the Sword we recognize the hand of providence:it acts as an agent of the Odinic Will which over-arches the fate of every man and nation, and which governs the rise and fall of kings.
It seems that the ironworks of Cimmeria are what drove Thulsa Doom north in the first place. When Conan is finally able to confront Thulsa Doom, the barbarian lays out his case: ‘you killed my mother! You killed my father! You killed my people! You took my fathers sword!”. Doom, in the fashion of a true narcissist, doesn’t even seem to remember killing them:
Ah.. must have been when I was younger. There was a time, boy, when I searched for Steel. Steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.
Steel had betrayed the Cimmerians, and shaped the destiny of Conan. It was this fundamental betrayal, and Conan’s subsequent life of pain, which cultivated a warrior equal to the task of vying with Thulsa Doom, the hypnotic Atlantean Sorcerer and Shapeshifter who had lived for over one thousand years. In this way, the Odinic function of the Sword reveals the basic plot structure of the film.
In the end, Thulsa Doom’s lust for steel would betray him.
From the first moments of the film, Conan is embroiled in the Sword Cult. Take a moment to appreciate The Sword Art:
A swordsmith needed to carefully forge a blade. He had to shape and mix metals of different known qualities, some softer for the core or sides, some harder for the edge and point. This was done essentially by “sandwiching” harder steel around softer iron so that the blade could flex under sudden impact but resist deformation. With the hammers and tongs that were his trade the swordsmith would work the proto-blade, moving the block of glowing metal back and forth between an anvil and a hot coal furnace fueled by a bellows. He needed just the right “color” of heat to keep the metal at just the right pliability. He would shape his metal while red-hot by slowly and repeatedly hammering and re-heating until it was the length, width, and thickness he wanted. He had to work the sides, edges, and tang into shape, none of which was entirely identical in its characteristics to the others.” –Source
While any blacksmith could manufacture a knife or an axehead only a swordsmith could create a high quality sword. The secrets of doing so were jealously guarded as well as formulas for alloys. The skill necessary to forge a balanced blade - one which is not too brittle or too soft and able to hold a usefully sharp edge - in the age before automated machines, blast furnaces, and the knowledge of molecular chemistry made the creation of a sword seem almost miraculous. A few degrees too hot or too cold within a very limited temperature range, which could only be discerned by the glowing hue of a hot billet, could make or break a sword. A lack of expertise in knowing when and how to apply carbon and flux and quench the blade could ruin weeks of work. Thus the swordsmith almost felt like he was one with his work, giving the process his complete devotion of concentration and thought. This led to the belief that he was actually imbuing the blade with an essence of his spirit. In Japan, the swordsmiths were so concerned with this belief that they would undergo purification rituals and meditation before even attempting to start a new blade, for fear that they might inadvertently create an evil sword.
To unravel the Riddle of Steel, we have to begin where the film begins; in the forges of Cimmeria, north of Aquilonia.
Aquilonia must have been Rob Howards analogue for Rome.The whole thing is literally ‘on the nose’; The ‘Roman Nose’ is called ‘Aquiline’; ‘Aquila’ means ‘eagle’ in latin; the aquila was the battle standard of the Roman Legion. QED, Aquilonia is Rob Howard’s stand-in for the Roman Empire.
Aquilonia is only referenced once in the film. When the Wizard of the Mound says that Conan will one day trod the thrones of the earth beneath his sandalled foot and wear a jeweled crown upon a troubled brow, he is talking about the crown of Aquilonia. This is exactly where we meet the barbarian in the first Conan story that was ever published, The Phoenix and The Sword (1932).
The story begins about two years after Conan had committed regicide. An outlander from the bleak northern lands of Cimmeria, the barbarian has slain King Numedides and placed on his own head the blood-soaked crown of the Aquilonian Kingdom.
Northern Barbarians toppling the Aquila. This is basic pattern of the Roman Imperial Collapse of 476 AD.
In part, Conan must then represent the Gothic Tribes of Magna Germania. We cant stop there, though; when it comes to the Pan-European Sword Cult, there is so much more to unpack.
Celtic Bladecraft
If the Rob Howard literary canon is obedient to the basic patterns of history and geography as we already understand them, the first place to look for the forges of Cimmeria is beyond the River Po in Northern Italy; over the alps and into the Gaullic land of the Celts.
In the archeology of Central Europe, the celtic La Tene Culture (450-58 BC) is the immediate successor of the pre-celtic/proto-celtic/celtic Halstatt Culture (1200-450 BC). Both phases comprise roughly the same geographical area, and there is no clear break between them, except that at one point around 600 BC, swords are replaced by short knives in the Halstatt D archeological layer, until swords are re-introduced after 450. Both archeological phases are rich in the remnants of a highly developed metallurgic culture which dates to an early period, such that it is believed that the art, science, and cult of the sword must have radiated to the rest of Europe outward from the Halstatt/ La Tene zone of influence.
The Mindelheim Swords
The famous proto-Celtic Mindelheim swords are named for the town of Mindelheim in Southern Germany, but many of the best examples were unearthed near the Salzberg, or ‘Salt Mountain’ in modern Austria (of note: Arnold Schwarzeneger, who had his acting debut in the 1982 ‘Conan’ film, is Austrian). This mountain still produces salt today. It is believed that the lavish proto-Celtic cemetaries of Halstatt near the Salzberg are reflections of the levels of wealth which salt represented in the ancient world; the grave goods unearthed there are thought to have been those of an ancient nobility, a merchant-warrior elite.
The Mindelheim swords are considered by experts the ‘last, and possibly the zenith, of all bronze swords’. They are also the first European swords to be reproduced in iron. Of about 100 Mindelheim-type swords that are known to us, 60 of these are iron sword tangs which date very close to the beginning of the Iron Age in Europe. The techniques of smelting, carburizing, and decarburizing iron-ore had apparently reached some sort of critical mass after 800 BC, when iron objects begin to appear in bulk across the continent. Before this time, iron and steel had been prestige materials from about 1200 BC.
With ivory pommels and amber inlays appearing in some specimens, the Mindelheim swords indicate that the Halstatt Celts were involved in trade as far south as Africa, and as far north as the Baltic. Apart from being the finest of the early swords in Europe, they were also the longest. This is significant; these blades were probably designed especially for a mounted warrior elite; that is, the first European Calvary; in other words, Europe’s first knighthood.
The Halstatt merchant-warrior elite need not go far for their iron; the Cult of the Iron Sword was probably nursed to such health in South Germany because South Germany was so rich in iron. The iron of Norricum was famous in Roman times; while this area was not exploited by the proto-celts of the Halstatt period, it is only a short distance south of the Salzburg.
One very famous Mindelheim-type sword,discovered in the Vostengraff, or Grave of The King, in the town of Oss in the southern Netherlands, is outstanding for a few reasons;
- It is exceptionally well-preserved, allowing us to observe a Mindelheim-type sword in its full glory.
- It can be confidently dated, based on the context in which it was discovered, to about 700 BC, indicating that the Halstatt smiths were already highly proficient in crafting blades from iron at that date.
- It was discovered well outside the bounds of the Halstatt cultural hegemony, indicating either on-going trade between the proto-Celts and their (Teutonic?) neighbors, or on-going conflict.
- It was discovered curled into itself, apparently on purpose, placed inside an urn, and then placed inside the burial mound of a person of high standing. Such swords are said to have been ‘killed’; was this gesture meant as a slight to foes who had been vanquished? Is this how warriors were symbolically released from their life-long vocation of pain and violence? At the end of the day, no one is exactly sure what was meant by the gesture of killing a sword. To me, it looks pretty disrespectful.
There is a prevailing notion that the Celts of Gaul were pre-literate. This comes from the fact that if they wrote down anything, none of it has survived the test of time or cultural genocide. The testimony of once and future Roman dictator, Julius Caesar, is the only piece of evidence we have that undermines this basic assumption:
[The Druids] are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters.
Virtualy all of the information we have about the ancient people of Gaul comes from their rivals and conquerers. It seems like Caesar, who was bent on the conquest of the whole of Gaul, might have siezed upon any opportunity to disparage his opponents before a Roman audience. ‘They cant even write’ would have been a pretty sick burn. If Caesar says they wrote things down in Greek characters, I tend to believe him.
Looking at the evidence available, the Halstatt proto-Celts and the La Tene Celts were a talented people. They could weave, and they dyed their woven products in a range of colors; they built fine spoked wheels for their excellent carriages, held together with iron nails; they introduced brass to western Europe, and were skilled in the firing of white and colored glass; they processed fossil amber into jewelry and amulets, developed the use of enamels, and were especially skilled in the extraction of metals from metallic ores, and in the smithing of bronze, iron, silver, and gold.
Indeed, the proto-Celtic and later Celtic metallurgists were among some of the the finest in the ancient world; while they did not invent bronze, steel or The long-sword, they brought these arts as near to perfection as could be obtained given the prevailing state of technological development. The highest expression of their expertise in metal-working is in their swords; these were the most sophisticated known iron/steel objects in the western hemisphere for hundreds of years.
Moreover, theirs may have been the earliest iteration of a mounted warrior elite on the western European subcontinent. Rather or not this is inherently admirable is another question, as this means of social organization seems to have brought with it a societal feature more romantic observers might have preferred to attribute to roman interference: wealth stratification.
All of the above offers buttressing support to the theory that the Riddle of Steel and the Cult of the Sword probably came into central Europe with indo-Iranic bloodlines trading or migrating from the Caucasus, the Crimean, the Eurasian Steppe, Central Anatolia, and/or the Iranian Plateau during the intervening years between the Bronze Age Collapse of 1150 BC and the beginning of the Iron Age in 800 BC. The proto-Celtic and Celtic smiths nourished this cultural bequestment with such relish that it spread in all directions from the Halstatt/Latenian hotbed, permeating the material and ideological stratum of both pagan and Christian central and northern Europe so completely that the mythologic, folkloric, and cultural history of those regions can hardly be considered without making some reference to the Sword Cult.
Celtic Mounted Warriors Introduce The Romans To The Long-Sword
The Roman encounter with the Celtic mounted warrior’s long-swords directly inspired and informed and design of the Roman spatha, a weapon adopted by their own calvary. In late antiquity, Rome would retire the gladius entirely and adopt the spatha as its standard issue infantry weapon.
What pressures do you suppose they were responding to when they chose to retire the weapon with which they had mastered the near-entirety of the western world? Was it the efficient mounted calvary of the Celts?
The Roman spatha was reflected in the design of the Germanic spatha, which informed the much later Viking and Saxon swords, which would eventually become the familiar cruciform sword of the High Middle Ages, but the entire chain of custody seems to go back to the Celtic long-sword. -source
The Roman social, imperial, and military cult could not have been more different from the way the Celtic Barbarians organized themselves. Roman citizenship was symbolized by the toga. The Roman solider was never buried with his weapons; these were instead returned to the state. In their first military engagements with the Celts, Roman soldiers had been equipped with the gladius, a kind of short sword. These were effective at close range, uniquely suited for the disciplined combat style of the Roman Legion.
The individualism of the Celtic Warrior is nowhere better demonstrated than in their relationship with the long-sword. In Gaul, says H. Foll, the sword was the ultimate symbol of a free man. In Gaul, sword owners were always buried with their weapons. It is for this reason that so many examples of the Celtic Sword Art are available for us to study.These weapons were designed to cut and slash, and were optimized for single combat. These weapons are also believed to have been designed to be wielded on horse-back.
While the Roman soldier was a cog or a bolt in an expertly engineered machinery of conquest, the experience of the Celtic warrior must have been far more personal, subjective, even transformtive. They say that the Celts were known to fight completely naked:
H. Foll, to whom I am indebted for the bulk of technical information presented here about Celtic Swords (and swords in general), says of the La Tene Sword Art:
‘Celtic Swords…[] are the most advanced iron/ steel objects of their time, demonstrating some new degrees of cunning as far as working with iron and steel are concerned’. Repeat that sentance: ‘…the most advanced iron/ steel objects of their time‘. The Celtic Barbarians of Gaul, so derided in historical sources, none the less obtained the apex of one of the most complex material sciences practiced in the ancient world: The Science of The Sword.Techniques in iron-working which they pioneered and perfected would remain unsurpassed in the West until the early Renaissance Period; this is almost baffling to consider, especially in light of passages like this:
"The Romans...had observed from former battles that Gauls in general are most formidable and spirited in their first onslaught, while still fresh, and that, from the way their swords are made, as has been already explained, only the first cut takes effect; after this they at once assume the shape of a strigil, being so much bent both length-wise and side-wise that unless the men are given leisure to rest them on the ground and set them straight with the foot, the second blow is quite ineffectual."
The foolishness of the Celts was a theme which Polybius treated in some detail, but anyone who worked metal like this couldn’t be that stupid. Then again, engaging in melee combat against armored opponents while completely naked doesn’t seem particularly wise, does it? (I have no basis for the claim which follows beyond my own experience; Celtic metal-working looks as though it were heavily informed by the psychadelic experience. Mushrooms would have grown well in the damp and loamy forests of Northern Gaul. Mortal combat in the buff sounds pretty shamanic to me.)
Radomir Pleinar carried out a systematic metallographic analysis of swords attributed to the La Tene culture, which would have been contemporary to Polybius and the Celtic invasion of Italy. Based on his findings, It would appear that the Sword Art was in fact jeaously guarded by those who cultivated it; for swords of the same kind, each specimen is typically very different in terms of composition and construction. In Pleinar’s analysis, about 40% of the items were made from wrought iron or mild steel and characterized as ‘inferior’. Wrought Iron is an alloy of iron containing only a small amount of carbon; cross-sections of these blades are pictured here. ‘Piling’ is the technique of fire-welding different grades of iron together; when this is done artfully and toward some definite effect, this is called ‘structural piling’. Instances of random piling confront us with a situation where the smith appears to have known what they were supposed to be doing but didn’t actually know how to do it, while blades made from a single piece of wrought iron approach Polybius levels of unworthiness. Pleinar claims to have put a few of these inferior blades to the test; he failed to bend even one of them into a shape that would have made them unsuitable for extended combat.
As for the remaining 60% of La Tene swords investigated by Pleinar, some were not just good, but great. Pictured at right are the metallographic patterns found in the ‘good’ La Tene swords that Pleinar looked at; cross-section number 12 is an example of a high-level, skill-intensive technique called pattern-welding, nearly indistinguishable from the pattern-welded blades which would become the common stock of Northern Europe from the 5th to 8th centuries AD. Think about that. Provided there were no errors in the dating methodologies used, the sword-smiths of the La Tene archeological horizon ran the gammut from wrought iron blades forged from a single slab of metal, to blades which paralleled the expertise of those smiths working in regions adjacent to the La Tene cultural sphere almost one thousand years later.
Those societies most heavily steeped in the grim mystique of the Sword Cult were the most motivated to move the technology of steel forward.
‘The Serpent In the Sword’
H. Foll found this speicmen posted on the Hermann Historica auction site. It is dated to the 3rd Century BC. the characteristic anthropoid (human-shaped) hilt means that it is undeniably of Cetic origin.
The serpent pattern running through the center of the blade means that the blade is pattern-welded. Pattern-welding is a high-level, skill- intensive technique which involves ‘braiding’ different grades of iron and steel of varying elemental compositions.
Such technique could have only developed on an armature of centuries of metallurgical experience.This style of sword would dominate Europe seven to nine hundred years later during the so-called Viking Age; at an approximate date of ~300 BC, this piece is among the earliest-known examples of European pattern-welded steel. It would have been produced around the same time Polybius was writing about the soft Celtic swords that bend after the first impact.
Was Polybius speaking euphemistically and calling the Celts limp-dicked?
//The other thing I love about this piece is the idea that items which could re-frame our entire perception of history are just kicking around in private collections, waiting to be auctioned off to other private collectors//
The Singen Blade
There isn’t any information available on google about this particular Halstatt blade that doesn’t come from Radomir Pleinar, by way of H. Foll. It is called the Singen Blade because it was discovered in the town of Singen, in the modern state of Baden-Wurttemberg in southwestern Germany, in what would have been ancient Suebian territory.
For all that Pleinar himself doesn’t have much to say about the Singen Blade, it may be one of the most interesting pieces we’ve looked at yet. It is, according to the people who analyzed it, the oldest iron sword yet discovered in middle europe, dated to 750-700 BC, and it was produced using a technique called ‘faggoting’. This is a technique wherein one hammer-welds a bundle (like a bundle, or ‘faggot’, of sticks) of smaller iron and steel pieces into one contiguous shape, and it is how some very excellent Japanese blades were produced after about 1300 AD, some fifteen hundred years later.
Foll surmises that because the microstructure of the Singen Blade is so similar to that of an 8th century iron sword discovered in Luristan, Iran,
‘…I do believe (but not know) that there is a connection between the “north Iran” and the European iron technology. Did the early “Celts” bring it along when the migrated West? It is not clear if the Celts had moved in from the East but this “theory” is seriously considered in expert circles.’ – H. Foll
The Palace of the Assyrian ruler Sargon II at Khorsabad near modern Mosul has been reconstructed inside the Lourve Museum in Paris. Here we find more evidence of military technological transfer from east to west, or from west to east; details of sword scabbards depicted in the relief panels of the 8th century BC Khorsabad are markedly similar to the winged chapes of the sword-scabbards of the Halstatt Celts. A chape is a device which,
‘As Prof. J.L. Myres recognized,… [] would allow one hand to hold the reins as the wings of the chape were hooked behind the thigh or under the arm or foot to anchor the scabbard and facilitate the
drawing of the sword with the other free hand… if it is true that this feature functioned to allow the sword to be drawn with one hand, it supports the view that the longer Hallstatt swords were used as cavalry weapons.’ -Source
The Barbarian Horizon
For all that the Celts had some of the finest smiths in the ancient world among their ranks, the Celts lost the war, their sovereignty, and their culture. Between the years 58 and 50 BC, the Romans under Julius Ceasar conquered the overwhelming majority of Gaul. For centuries, the River Po in Northern Italy had represented the bleeding edge of the Roman world; the Barbarian Horizon, as it were. With Roman dominion extended over most of the Western European continent in the aftermath of Ceasar’s conquests, the Barbarian Horizon had a new line of demarkation: The River Rhine, beyond which dwelt the Germanic Tribes, who would hold the line between the Roman and Barbarian worlds for centuries to come. These were the Barbarians who, like Conan, would swarm out of the bitter cold fastnesses of their Northern homes to bring the down the greatest empire the western world had ever known; What, then, can be said of the Sword Art of these men?
According to this map, the line between the Germanic and Celtic tribes was as firm as the one that divided the Germanic tribes and the Roman provinces. Like the Romans, the Celts expanded in every direction except the one that would bring them into further contact with the Germans.
The Germanic Tribes are described in primary sources as simple-hearted country bumpkins who don’t understand legal structures and who drink too much; wild men who love combat and hate any form of discipline. Somehow this confederation of rugged pasteuralists who didnt practice agriculture or build cities or have access to any form of wealth outside of their herds of inferior animals managed to hold off the greatest regional powers for centuries. Are these Rob Howards Unconquerable Cimmerians?
To Be Continued…
Guerilla Warfare and ancient, impenetrable lands defended by high enchantment. Have you ever read Lord of The Rings? The historical Magna Germania might be the real-world analog of Tolkien’s unfading Loth’Lorien.
