Mysterious Viking Sword Made With Technology From the Future?
The Viking sword Ulfberht was made of metal so pure it baffled archaeologists. It was thought the technology to forge such metal was not invented for another 800 or more years, during the Industrial Revolution.
About 170 Ulfberhts have been found, dating from 800 to 1,000 A.D. A NOVA, National Geographic documentary titled “Secrets of the Viking Sword” first aired in 2012 took a look at the enigmatic sword’s metallurgic composition.
In the process of forging iron, the ore must be heated to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to liquify, allowing the blacksmith to remove the impurities (called “slag”). Carbon is also mixed in to make the brittle iron stronger. Medieval technology did not allow iron to be heated to such a high temperature, thus the slag was removed by pounding it out, a far less effective method.
The Ulfberht, however, has almost no slag, and it has a carbon content three times that of other metals from the time. It was made of a metal called “crucible steel.”
It was thought that the furnaces invented during the industrial revolution were the first tools for heating iron to this extent.
The difference in purity is seen by the consistency of the Ulfberht steel, almost free of slag. (Screenshot/NOVA/National Geographic)
Modern blacksmith Richard Furrer of Wisconsin spoke to NOVA about the difficulties of making such a sword. Furrer is described in the documentary as one of the few people on the planet who has the skills needed to try to reproduce the Ulfberht.
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Sebastian, did you not watch the whole documentary? they didn’t have the technology in europe to make crucible steel until later. the vikings were trading with the Persians during the time the swords were made. the Persians were making crucible steel long before the ulfberts were made. they explain all this in the documentary.
The Epoch Times article this links to (!) explicitly says that “It is possible that the material and the know-how came from the Middle East. The Volga trade route between the Viking settlements and the Middle East opened at the same time the first Ulfberhts appeared and closed when the last Ulfberhts were produced.”
Just another dumb attention-seeking BIN headline. Betteridge’s Law in action.
Where you freaking there? Ofcourse not listen to man and learn something this had already been done in the middle east nothing new anyways the best swords in the world are japanese.
they recreated one right there on the show …. as I recall.
Iron pillar of Delhi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi
‘One of the later inscriptions dates to A.D. 1052′
So you watch Nova? Congratulations. I remember the same episode from 3 years ago…
They used magnifying glass and the sun.
Of course. These are the swords made by Conan’s father. He solved the riddle of steel….
lol – “technology from the future”
500 B.C.E., The Chinese are trading the skills to make iron and steel via the Silk road and in Tunisia; Carthage, Phoenecians make quality steel by adding calcium from crushed snail shells.
700 AD. Hamwic emerges as a major Wessex trading town; steel ingots found in the ancient buried port of Hamwic in South England, are of the same type of high- quality steel that made the Industrial Revolution possible.
“This proves that blacksmiths made high-quality, clean steel a thousand years before Huntsman’s developments in Sheffield in the 1740s.”
University of Bradford Press Release 21 Feb 2001 – http://www.brad.ac.uk/admin/pr/pressreleases/steel.htm
700-800 AD. The village site of Galu, Kenya, produced crucible steel. Trade along the coast of East Africa expanded and promoted the founding of such settlements as Kismayu, Mogadiscio, Gedi, Malindi, Mombasa, Kilwas and others.
800 AD Vikings have steel swords…