The pattern in an early medieval blade began as a fix, not a flourish. The furnaces of the age produced what is called sponge iron — lumps of impurity held in a matrix of relatively pure metal, far too soft on its own to make a decent sword. The answer was to build the blade out of several kinds of metal at once. Smiths forge-welded bars together, twisted them, hammered them down into one, and did it again, blending harder and softer steel until they had a bar with an edge that would hold and a core that would spring rather than snap. The visible consequence was banding, running the whole length of the blade, brought out afterwards by polishing or by etching with acid; twist two bars in opposite directions and you get the chevron the Vikings liked. By the second and third centuries AD the Celts were already working the look of it as well as the strength. And then it stopped. By the end of the Viking age pattern welding had fallen out of use in Europe — because once you can make good steel to order, there is no reason to build a sword out of scraps.

All of which is why a sword was worth handing down, as W. Britain rightly say: it represented weeks of skilled work and metal that could not simply be bought, and a blade with a history behind it was worth more again. Broga has his up and coming over, with a nasal helmet and a round shield carrying a red cross — one of the commonest devices in the archaeological record. He faces off naturally against "Brandr" Viking Attacking with Sword and Axe, whose page takes up the other half of this story — the names smiths inlaid into blades, and the people who copied them badly. Set him beside "Bestanden" and coming out past "Seaver", and you have a wall that holds and a man who breaks from it.

Model: 62141 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set