European swords can provide clues about a dig site, but they can also provide traps.
Oakeschott's typology broke them down into basic families and sub-families which can be roughly tied to regions and periods, but those are not rules. As releventchair noted, blades travel. If a sailor leaves a sword at a site, that sword could have conceivably come from nearly anywhere. Without additional evidence (such as other artifacts), the presence of that sword means nothing by itself.
The grip, guard, and pommel can tell us more, but again, they can also fool us. It was not uncommon at all for an older blade to be married to newer grip components or vice versa. Sometimes it was merely an expedient way to repair a broken weapon; at other times, it was done to "freshen up" an old weapon with more fashionable components. Those components can also be roughly tied to regions and dates, but not always; like some of the blade designs, some of those patterns went in and out of style over the centuries.
Sometimes very old weapons were recovered and pressed into service long after they'd went out of style. The sagas mention individuals breaking into burial sites to recover famous weapons. Additionally, our current understanding of which people used which weapons over what period of time are based on incomplete records. We have not dug up every sword buried out there, but even if we did, we would still be working from an incomplete record - not every sword wound up in a back yard or a river. This is why I dislike the term "Viking sword." The Vikings did not use only one style of sword, the styles that they used evolved over time, and they were not the only Europeans using those styles of swords at those particular times. The term actually covers the evolution from the Roman spatha all the way up to the Oakeschott Type XII, the so-called "knightly sword" that most people imagine when they think of a knight - and possibly after, depending on who you ask. This was quite a transition, lasting around 800 years or so, and resulted in a number of different designs along the way - the Migration Period swords, the Type X, etc.
Unfortunately, all we have in this case is a poor photograph of a chunk of rusty metal that may or may not have been from a sword, which corrosion may or may not have significantly changed the shape of. Assuming that it is a sword tip, the tip itself appears too pointy to be from the Migration Period, which hints at when it was made (but not when it was placed there!). Mrs. Hope tells us a bit about it: "...and he handed me a heavy object about 5 inches long, made of iron. When I'd cleaned it I could see that it was part of an ancient iron sword: the channel for the blood to run out was there." The mention of the fuller also hints at when it was made and would have been appropriate for a "Viking sword" from about 700 AD on. It's tempting to lock in on the fact that the fuller came to within 5" of the tip (this suggests a sword from the High Middle Ages or earlier), but this tip may not be from a sword - it may be from a large knife or a bayonet, in which case it could have ended up the ground only a couple of years earlier. That's assuming that it was in fact a fuller.
This does provide a good example of what I was talking about earlier, though...intelligent people can still be wrong, particularly if they're straying out of their lane. That "channel" is known as a fuller and is a feature that lightens a weapon without compromising its rigidity; it has nothing at all to do with blood. If it was indeed from a "Viking sword," it almost certainly wasn't made of iron. A sword guy could have told her that, had she asked. This is why it's important to have an expert look at something before jumping to conclusions.
? any thing on the island and around the island to hold back the tide is gone back into the ocean and washed away. So how did the metal make its way 1' to 2' under the stones. I had many questions like you have but there is no way to answer them NOW. I will not make the same mistake in New Ross. We have a lot of proof of a castle at this site. Ya Joan Hopes info sounds crazzy but if you went to this site you would see things that would mess up your mind to. Things happen on site every day. The neighbors still see things. We have seen things we will not talk about yet. If we did we would sound just like Joan Hope. Joan had a high IQ and she knew if she put some of her stories on the web people would make fun of her BUT she still did. WHY. Because the things she saw did happen . I am sure things happen on Oak Island to. No Big Foots or UFO but there is some kind of energy or power or something in this area doing this. May be some day we will know. This is part of what we do besides hunting for treasure. I have many questions like everyone but who can answer the weard things that happen. So we will continue our trips back to New Ross until we get answers. Thank You
