Originally used by soldiers between 1600 BC and 600 AD, Bronze-age swordsmith Neil Burridge recreates the quality and the elegance of ancient swords.
Burridge has been bringing Bronze Age swords, spears and tools alive for 20 years, making modern replicas of museum pieces and mudlarkers' finds.
He has cast about 500 sword blades and has a series on YouTube called Sword Corner.
People turn up fragments of old swords all the time, he tells Kathryn Ryan.
Photo: Neil Burridge
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“The sword once it’s broken up, 2000 years ago, and they spread apart, are buried and thrown in rivers and all kinds of things. They actually last incredibly well. So, 2000 years, maybe 3000 years, isn't particularly a great distance to travel underground for a sword.
“The pieces survive quite well. Whereas you bury something made iron 3000 years ago, and you'd be very lucky to find anything. So particles of swords, travel down through time very well. And hence, there's lots of fragments of swords being found. During the summer, I'd say a piece for sword is found every week.”
From these fragments, he can then recreate how it would have looked, he says.
“Most swords fall into certain type categories, and you can replicate them by just looking at the books so you can find a fragment. There's a German series and it catalogues every bronze sword ever found in Britain.”
Swords were the pinnacle of technology in the Bronze Age but also became an art form, Burridge says.
“They developed like all military technologies, the fastest development is always in warfare.”
Swords were originally made from copper, he says.
“The idea of bigger and bigger blades starts to be pushed on the bronze smith and it's the introduction of tin that changes blades from being copper to bronze.
“Bronze is much stronger, a more resilient material.”
The swords of that time would typically be about 12 inches long, he says.
“So, they never get staggeringly huge until the very end, when they sort of fully develop as swords and then iron swords come in and sort of replicate them.”
The bronze smith worked with technology developed by potters, he says.
“All early bronze working is based on what they could do from pottery manufacture … the first crucibles they were making out of clay and then making the first molds in either stone or clay.
“It just takes a little while for all that technology to join together and form more and more sophisticated methods until they get to the end of the Bronze Age and then they start smelting iron and hammering solids out rather than casting them.”
Bronze is an amalgam of copper and tin, he says.
“By sheer chance I live in Cornwall, so there’s tin here, it's a very rich, rare metal there are rich deposits in Cornwall and it’s very rare in Europe. So, you basically have to melt your copper and tin.”
You need a temperature of over 1100 centigrade, he says.
“Earlier metalworking with copper was probably even higher temperatures again, just to get the liquid to run in the molds.”
Despite working as a smith for 20 years, he is still amazed at the skill displayed by the original makers.
“I sometimes see stuff in the museums and I think, how did they do that? It is so amazing. Quite often people say oh, you're the expert, but I feel like I’ve only scratched sort of two or three out of 10 on the Bronze Age scale of 10.”
Bronze Age swords were light, he says.
“The blades are very, very swift. We see too many Hollywood films where they're attacking each other and bashing the blades together and beating on each other shields, it's kind of nonsense because if you were fighting, the last you want to do is smack your sword against somebody else's sword because it’ll break the edge of it.
“So, you'd use the side of the sword if you had to parry and you wouldn't be trying to hit the shield, you'd be trying to sort of basically put a hole in your opponent.”