A medieval sword found buried under a birch tree in Siberia may have belonged to Ivan the Terrible, archaeologists have claimed.
The rare 12th century blade, discovered in 1975 and nicknamed Siberia's Excalibur, was found three kilometres from where the lieutenant of a Cossack leader favoured by the tsar is thought to have died.
Until now the sword had been considered a spoil of war, but a new theory suggests it could have may have been a gift from the leader to Ermak Timofeyevich, and passed along to Ivan Koltso.
Pic:
The article later describes it as a "a massive sword, about a metre long with a typical iron hilt of medieval knight's swords with a clearly expressed crossbar guard and tripartite pommel."
It's a Viking-style sword. The Russians were part Viking in their ancestry.
4 comments:
Huh, I never heard about that find... And it doesn't look too bad for having been buried!
That's pretty cool.
I bet that baby is HEAVY. Very cool.
Wow. The hilt and pommel on that are SO Viking. "Russian", from "Rus" - "red". I'm decended from Russells - a name derived from "red haired".
Post a Comment