Posted: February 08, 2000 at 19:36:26: by Osric
: In Tolkien's works the good guys' (except Egalmoth's) swords are always
: straight and double-edged, whereas their enemies wield scimitars / other curved
: blades. It could be said: those with the most skill prefer to make double-edged
: swords. How is it in real life? Is there any real advantage for one type of sword
: over another, eg. balance and cutting properties? Did double-edged swords fall
: out of use sooner because they aren't as good or because they're harder to
: make?
: Someone know?
: -Foradan
The thread following this query brought up a lot of stuff that semed wrong-headed to me as a long-in-the-tooth roleplayer who also does Anglo-Saxon / Viking battle-reenactment (good on broadswords, educated guesswork on curvy things).
I’m sure Tolkien gave his heroes straight swords because the swords in British history were all straight till something like the early modern period.
I’ve missed a lot of the mediaevalism debate – and there’s too much of it to plough through now! – but I would think giving their opponents curved ones was more to evoke the Saracen foe of the Crusader knights, than the Ottoman Turks who threatened the rest of Europe a little later on. Whatever the influence, I bet CS Lewis was using basically the same one for his evil Calorman empire. Does any stuff on the Inklings cast any further light?
To pretty much restate what Martin Read said, both straight-bladed and curved swords can cut with the edge of the blade. Against a lightly- or unarmoured target they will do more damage with a stroke that cuts on impact and then slices through with more of the blade. Straight blades can certainly do this, but you can pull through better with a curved blade.
Against an armoured target you want to concentrate all your strength into a hack at that single point of impact, since if this doesn’t actually bite, any slicing effort will be wasted. (Incidentally, a lot of TV and film stunt fights use this sort of move – especially the slice across the belly – precisely because it’s safe!)
I can’t imagine that curved blades would be any better in close-quarters than straight ones – without room to get in a good swing they’d surely have less chance than ever of wounding a target wearing any decent sort of protection.
I don’t think a straight blade is necessarily any better for hacking blows than a curved one. Nor are they preferred just for having a point to thrust with, since broadswords, claymores etc. are too heavy to thrust effectively with (and often weren’t even that sharp on the end!). I suspect straight blades are probably just more intuitive to use. If curved swords are harder to parry against, they must also be less good for parrying in self-defence.
By the way, I think everyone’s been assuming that you would only have a single-edged sword if it was going to be curved, and that any straight sword ‘might as well’ be double-edged, but this isn’t the only reason. The seax (pron. “sax”; from which the Saxons took their name) and the falchion only have one cutting edge, preferring the blades to be thick-backed for the added force this would put behind a blow. Such weapons are therefore better for unsubtle hacking attacks, at the expense of the option to thrust, and again precluding the sophisticated or genteel swordplay that romances and fairy tales have given all our heroes.
And finally, to dispel a common myth, a double-edged weapon doesn’t offer any advantage for the backhand or return stroke. Such an attack is incredibly weak anyway, and people just naturally turn their wrists. It’s wrong to think this costs any time or requires you to actually shifting your grip on the sword’s hilt. I’d love to hear from someone with a reenactor’s experience of scimitars, tulwars, or the like. Cheers everyone! Osric
P-)
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