SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

102 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
inspired or made objects outside the modern boundaries in
Bornholm (it is only from the caption to the photograph that the
reader learns that the Akirkeby font is in Bornholm, not Gotland
as the text suggests), Hedeby, and even the London stones which
are not certainly Swedish at all.
However, within his definition of his subject Professor Jansson
has produced an excellent book. He quotes extensively from the
stones, using the material to cast light on a number of topics of
interest to the mediaeval historian as well as the Old Norse
scholar: on the Swedish expeditions overseas, on the qualities
the Vikings admired, on social and legal conditions in mediaeval
Sweden, on the conversion to Christianity. Particularly valuable
to the English student, whose knowledge is so often confined to
the West Norse field, is a long and detailed section on the verse
texts of the rune-stones, the only readily available account of
much of this material.
Peter Foote's translation is fluent, readable and free from
Scandinavicisms. There is no index in what is otherwise a
well-produced book.
K I. PAGE
THE SWORD IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND, ITS ARCHAEOLOGY AND
LITERATURE. By H. R. ELLIS DAVIDSON. Clarendon Press:
Oxford University Press, 1962. xxvii + 225 pp.
This book deals exhaustively and palatably with the form and
the reputation of the sword in Anglo-Saxon times, basing the
account on the examples found in England, but relating these to
the European finds to such an extent that the work forms a survey
of the 'teutonic' sword in the period from the Age of the Migrations
to the Age of the Vikings. The work consists of three parts:
(i) The Making of the Sword, a study of the typology and
fabrication of the sword; (ii) The Telling of the Sword, an
anthology of literary allusions to the germanic sword in Anglo­
Saxon, Norse, Arabic and Byzantine contexts; (iii) The Using of
the Sword, a selection of literary quotations illustrating the sword
at work. There are two appendices, (a) The Forging of a
Pattern-welded Sword, a synopsis of the work of J. W. Anstee
and1. Biek, especially the experiments at the forge of the Museum
of Rural Life, Reading, and (b) The Shifford Sword, contributed
by R. E. Oakeshott. There is a good bibliography, a provocative
furniture of footnote references, and a satisfactory index. The
four photographic plates are very good. The twenty-six line