Early Medieval / Late Iron Age North-European Swords and Their Use

As I've mentioned repeatedly on my blog, Warhammer 40k is not and does not aspire to be realistic. However, I still find that studying how weapons have been used and designed historically and how they are used and designed now gives me new insight to posing and sculpting my miniatures. Since my main army is inspired by historical (and fictional) Vikings, early Scandinavian sword is a good starting point for this topic for my blog.
I should point out that I'm by no means an expert on this topic, but I have done some reading.

Typically, the Scandinavians used very similar swords to rest of Northern Europe. Most often, they were double-edged, about one meter long cutting weapons with wide blades and a single fuller (also sometimes erroneously called a blood groove). They were nearly always used in conjunction with a fairly large, round and flat centre-gripped shield. The swords and shields changed with time, with Vikings in the late 11th century often using kite shields similar to those made famous by the Normans through the Bayeux tapestry, but for now, I'll focus on one of the more archetypical sword styles (and not on the shields much at all).

 This is a (somewhat crude -- it was drawn quickly, and I haven't drawn anything for quite a while) sketch of a fairly typical Scandinavian or Frankish sword hilt with a five-lobed pommel, widely used for a couple of centuries, up to the 10 century. The grip is characteristically very short, so that an ungloved hand just fits in (as a sidenote, complex metal gauntlets didn't appear until several centuries later). If I imagine Space Wolves using similar weapons, it stands to reason that they would factor in the extra room taken by Power Armour's gauntlets (or even Terminator Armour's, though that would mean warriors in Terminator Armour couldn't use the same swords as they did in Power Armour, unless they had them modified).

There are no known surviving swordfighting treatises from this period in history, but it has been suggested through experimental research that these swords were used by holding the little finger in contact with the pommel. This contact point would then function as a fulcrum point when the blade was swung forward in a relaxed grip. Instead of muscular strength, the power of the sword swing would come from blade acceleration.
Obviously, this would take a lot of training to get the blade alignment right (ie. hitting the target straight on with the edge), but at the time, a sword was a fairly large piece of steel, and the warrior wishing to purchase one would often be a nobleman, who could dedicate his time to practicing fighting instead of doing manual labour.

There were other hilt designs, and some Vikings also used single-edged swords, though, as I understand it, those were always in the minority compared with the double-edged design. Anglo-Saxons also had similar, but still distinct hilt designs on their swords. Also, by the end of 11th century, the typical sword had a small disc pommel that would not facilitate this kind of attack, and there are pommel types that could be considered transitionary between these types, so there were probably many different swordfighting techniques in use by the Vikings.

Preparing and planning for the Wulfen

Since the Wulfen miniatures and rules are now out, and it's a pretty big thing for the Rout, I decided I should prepare to do something with them, too. Notice the word "prepare", as I haven't yet actually bought a kit, and it will probably take about a week for my copy of Warzone: Fenris to get here, as well. However, it's not too early to start planning.

My drawing skills are a little rusty, but I think this gets across my general idea of a Wulfen's face. It would be surprising if I didn't end up sculpting at least one Wulfen head, so I decided I should familiarise myself with their facial structure. The general expression is very ork-like, especially when you can't see their skin colour or (facial) hair (speaking of, it will be tricky to sculpt them a moustache that does not look like enormously long nose hair). The main difference is the subtly muzzle-like shape of their mouth and nose. The chin is conisderably smaller than that of an average Ork, and I may have drawn this one a little too tall. Also, the teeth are more regular and less hippopotamus-like than those of an Ork. Other than these, though, I will have to use hair, skin colour and possibly facial toattoos to make the Wulfen seem distinct from the greenskins, face-wise.

I find that imagining a creature's skull is helpful to get a clearer mental picture of what the facial structure is supposed to be like. Obviously, a Wulfen skull would look like it's somewhere between a canid and a human. Pictures of other primates' skulls would probably be useful references. I also used a troll skull from Skyrim for inspiration, obviously omitting the third eye socket on the forehead.

This little exercise thas led me to currently believe that the Wulfen heads would probably look pretty good if I simply sculpted a human head with a clearly distended jawline and a muzzle-like nose and mouth. The nose would have to be extra wide and flat, and luckily, at least at first, anything I'm not sure of can be covered with thick hair.

Obviously, though I've looked at pictures of the new models online, I won't really be sure of how they look until I have them in my hands. That's also when I'll be really sure about the scale of the models. The Wulfen models are probably going to be pretty significant for my army, and I'm pretty sure I won't be even remotely satisfied by just following the assembly instructions in the box. If nothing else, I'll at least repose the pack leader. The standard pose looks honestly pretty goofy to me, and I expect I'll be replacing it with something more threatening and savage looking, as opposed to the model straight from an all-yeti production of the West Side Story. And since I'm complaining, I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the new Ulrik the Slayer model, either. It just looks way too static for the warrior who earned the repepct of the Khornate Daemon Primarch Angron.

I'm also seriously considering making another model of the Redmaw, to visually tie the character in with the new models. I probably won't do that until I'll have at least one Wulfen pack ready and painted, and definitely not until I've had a chance to take a close look at the new models, so not before March, I'd guess.