Just having the handle and pommel historically sized makes your sword more "accurate" than most viking age sword reproductions. The shorter handle forces it to be used in certain ways, while many modern viking swords have longer handles to accomodate what the maker thought was right.

For a poor man, armor and weapons are the same no matter what they look like. Sword is sword and helmet is helmet. Dosen't matter it the kettle hat is one piece, spangenhelm and leather, or made of scales rivited to a backing . If it keeps your brains safe it is a good helmet.

I gotta say that's a mighty pretty blade. Agree with everything said. It's more important to be plausible or true to the spirit than being super mega accurate.

A thousand years from now, if that sword survives, it will be an historical example of an 'Iroquoian shortsword of the Late Pre-Diluvian period' or something like that, and historians and archaeologists will argue about why it was made, and for whom.

As a smith currently making Japanese armour for tournament combat, I can sympathize. I keep getting comments that my armour is not historically accurate, but it's the best I can do that will protect me from harm. People made things historically because they served their intended purpose. Purposes change with the times, and thus, our creations do as well.

Academic papers on say, experimental archaeology, tend to avoid terms like historical accuracy and instead go for plausibility: it's for pretty much all the reasons you list here, as well as to avoid being nitpicked to death by peer reviewers (not that anything will stop the truly determinedly pedantic). So seeing people in reenactment or other amateur communities fight about "accuracy" always makes me wince a bit.

Folks have a bad habit of thinking the past used uniform mass-production & that they didn't enjoy expressing their individually or culture.

You are very correct that nothing is truly accurate. I personally have a tendency towards being pedantic about swords and historical metallurgy, but in truth I can’t say that it really matters. What really does matter are the ways that we interpret and remember the past. Also, I have been binging your content and it is great stuff. And you are an awesome craftsman to have forged folded a pattern welded blade like that!

Good points. I would say that this applies more to certain kinds of reenacting then others. Especially given the lack of information, I could certainly see medieval era (and before) reenacting hugely benefiting from a greater focus on historical plausibility. Like you said, people used what worked and what was available. Not very much standardization. However, as you get into the gunpowder era, there's a lot more standardization, at least with the larger european nations. Even in modern conflicts, people will use non-regulation gear and modifications, but, in general, the scope of differences between each individual will be much smaller for more modern conflicts then older (medieval or before) conflicts.

This is a good point! And even what is held up as "accurate" is often based on a combination of research and speculation. I occasionally run into this issue when making art for my channel. With armor, swords, clothes, etc. it's often only enough to say "the research suggests it COULD or MIGHT have looked like this," but depictions of the past are frequently beholden to vague descriptions or scattered and fortuitous archeological findings.

I've had this exact same thought! Didn't even need to explain your argument before I liked the video.

There are enough people on the internet that if a complaint could exist, someone will feel the urge to give it voice.

Extremely good point. Not even the Amish can truly evade the influence of modernity

I feel you. I'm building an armour that has very little documentation and zero archeaological evidence and still people tell me that I'm doing it wrong. I've come to really appreciate the importance of historical pausibility. I'm discovering things that make a lot of sense to do in a certain way because it's just practical. People from that time would've had the exact same thought process. We humans haven't changed that much.

Once again you make excellent points! In addition to the excellent points you made your sword is historically "inaccurate" because you were not wearing proper period clothing, were not eating a period diet, or living in a period house in the "proper" region of Europe. I never considered the points you made, which seem obvious once stated, but I agree completely with the goal of historical plausibility vs historically accurate. One aspect of historical accuracy I have long contemplated though is that surviving museum pieces are generally too few to be a truly representative sample. The possessions of kings and the rich are over represented and those of ordinary people are underrepresented.

Both with the video on the idea of a holistic apploach to history and this video were on the mark.

You have reminded me of Teddy Roosevelt's speech man in the arena. A good chunk of people who him haw about historical accuracy are not doing what you are doing. You do way more than and go beyond what many say should be done.

Thank you so much for this! That’s one of the reasons I loved your videos about Iroquoian armour so much, you used available sources as a blueprint but you didn’t shy away from changing some details for ergonomic purposes. Reconstitution by itself is speculative so we shouldn’t shy away from doing what makes sense to us when working on such projects

I've been making 16th century printed board games. The prints exist, and it is known that the prints were painted and glued to wood, but no examples of that survive. Just the black and white prints. I've been painting the prints and making the boards and my standard is "would someone of the time think this is impossible." I've drawn from chess and backgammon board examples, and from some things that came a century later but with available materials and techniques, such as gluing the prints to linen. Nothing I've made is "historically accurate." All the same, I would bet they existed.

i drive a volvo station wagen... and i agree, with several of the reenactment groups i'm in any thing is classified as historical when you can provide at least 3 sources, art / artifact / text. with lots of other things we look at the technical / cultural capability's of the folk in time and place, so your sword is very good. (hand cranked grinding wheels are earlier than one might think Oakshott XII could definitely ave been made using one)

I think historical accuracy has its place in things like documentaries, but it can definitely be overdone in other contexts.

I remain amazed at your scope of talents. Interesting as always.

I doubt that the average person in medieval times would always have access to the methods or materials that we reference. A classic one is the war hammer. Yes we fine examples of purpose built weapons but there's also the guy who all he had was a wooden sledgehammer. And God help you if he makes contact. So just the idea of using whatever is available to you is historically accurate.

A lot of good points especially that which does not survive time to last in the archaeological record. For example if one learns this as a survival technique all you're going to worry about is it usable and reliability.,a.k.a my knapping,” skills is it done yet good enough that's it moving on forward"

I've recently started my own research project on Iroquois weapons. I have been looking into whether or not the Eastern tribes, in particular the Iroquois ever decorated their guns like what you see with western tribes. What surprises me is how very little info and few artifacts are out there. There are some decorated war clubs out there that are authentic, and they were decorated with either small glass beads or wampum beads. There're also the remains of the musket that was recovered off the bottom of the St. Lawrence River from the 1690 Phips expedition where William Phips and the British made a failed attempt at attacking Quebec. One ship that was lost was British and that's where the recovered musket comes from and the buttstock is inlaid with wampum beads. It's not known for sure if it was Iroquois, but it was a Native American that was allied to the British. So, it's plausible it was Iroquois. There's nothing in the Iroquois museum on exhibit that shows anything, there's a British made flintlock rifle on display at Fort Ticonderoga that has brass tacks in it and it's from the 1780's but when I contacted the curator, the provenance only goes to 1995 on the gun so there's no way to prove when or who put the tacks on the rifle. So again, plausible. So much of history has been written as fact only later for someone else to come along and say those facts are wrong and these new facts are what is correct. The only gun so far for sure is the recovered gun from 1690. So, it's plausible that an Iroquois owned it, and its plausible others were decorated the same way. When I was a history major some 20 plus years back we were taught doing research you had three sources. That way two could be opposing, the third would be a tie breaker. There are far too many people hung up on what things should be (as someone who spent a couple of years as a reenactor about 20 years ago) that they forget that we don't know it all and not everything is certain because we weren't there to see it all. But trying to create something new to be correct to the time is going to be flawed in some way or another.

Looks neat to me. Great job !

You tell them!

This guy sounds so much like Carl Sagan

The big question I put forth in the discussions is " they could not do it or they didn't do it" I myself am just going for close enough

Good point, l shall use it in the future

excellent points.

I don't have much to add other than that this is some mighty fine unintentional ASMR. You should narrate something, it'd be lovely.

Damascus twist blade that's pretty good I like it nice work

Right on! I agree with you.

that's pretty much SCA: it's a society for creative anachronism, not anal-retentive historical accuracy.

Interesting things to consider when studying history. I wonder how much of what we assume to be true in reality is far from it. I guess it's important to be critical of "historical facts," and trying to imagine what would have been plausible given the evidence seems a better way of understanding history.

You work with what is around you and just because your neighbor had got a certain set of things and fashioned them into other things does not mean that ours will look identical, everyone has their own expression for an entire lifetime, we tend to copy good ideas but add style to everything and sometimes we make improvements that work for us but other people would not see them as important. Like someone with hair armpits might want more breathability in their shirt so they make a cloak vs someone who shaves their armpits and wears a tight shirt.

for me i think of the gjermunbdu helmet or viking/norse helmets in general like we only have *four complete viking helmets so any deviation from those four helmets is wrong somehow? like how could a vendel period helmet never be worn during the viking period that just doesnt make sense

It's even worse: if you could acquire an absolutely identical sword made by an absolutely identical person, that still couldn't be historically accurate because there's no way our historical people would have had two absolutely identical items; every individual item would have had those little random variations that come from being handmade. It gets philosophically complicated very fast! Perhaps what we need to do is check our definitions, so that "accurate" doesn't mean "identical" but something more like your preferred word, "plausible"...

Well made & well thrust point.😉 Very sensible, realistic and practical. Is your sword sharp?

The rule I think that makes a reconstructed piece plausible is the technology used. If the technologies which are used to recreate a piece were known at the time (e.g. pattern welding, brain tanning) then the piece is plausible. An ancient Greek rapier sword is not historically plausible because the technology to produce blades of those dimensions was not available at the time and there is zero evidence for so long blades at this time period and area. On the contrary, an ancient greek dagger which looks like a bollock dagger is historically plausible because production of blades of those general dimensions is historically documented and even though the style of the hilt is not, wood carving was known and producing such a shape would be feasible.

100% agree

Compound Bows are also plausible for any culture that used pulleies and levers though. I'm just saying plausible is a slippery slope. I wouldn't critique the sword tho.

OH MY GODD! fUUuuuuck Historical accuracy! its sooo annoying how every little detail tore apart by the reenacting community because of it! like- who the fuck cares about thread? NO ONE IS GOING TO SEE THE THREAD! THE POINT IS TO HIDE THE THREAD! why would any sane person go out of there way to acquire and ues inferior linen thread thats WAYY to expensive ,bumpy ,easy to break and you need see wax just to make it useable, WHICH IS ALSO EXPENSIVE!! One time i got into a three day long argument agents a whole Facebook group about my first ever 18th century shirt being made out of *GASP* cotton! *shock horror* my question had nothing to do with the materiel, (i think it was about the gussets), needless to say my question did not get answered and my gussets were way too big... can you tell ive been burned in the past? xP

Historical accuracy is whatever the white guy of that time thought was cool

The importance is just not being "those guys" and telling attendees of events that your speculative equipment is accurate equipment. Or getting into source splicing where you create a frakenkit or frakenitem. Better to judge one specific region and work off that while trying to fill in the holes with common sense opposed to a grab bag of sources.

cuirass is pronounced queer-ass. Forgive my language but its literally how its pronounced. Its French, blame them.

Costuming youtuber V @snappydragon uses the term historically adequate.