has studied
similarly inscribed swords and said that these weapons were "all the
rage" in 13th-century Europe. The British Library recently updated its
blog post with more information from van Hasselt.

Wordy weaponry
Many inscribed swords have been found in countries including Poland,
France, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, making the River
Witham sword "part of a large international family," according to van
Hasselt.

In 2006, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden (as well as
several other institutions) started the Fyris Swords Project, a research
project dedicated to figuring out the historical context in which these
inscribed medieval swords were used.

The River Witham sword was forged in Germany, which was then the blade-making center of Europe, according to the British Museum.
And pre-Christian Germanic tribesman inscribed runes onto their swords,
axes and armor to "endow the items with magical powers,"the Fyris
Swords Project researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Waffen- und Kostümkunde (Weaponry and Costumes) in 2009.

It's possible that this ancient tradition was carried over to Christian
times and that the inscriptions on the blades were therefore meant to
"invoke God’s holy name and his grace to gain support and protection in
battle," according to the researchers.

Such swords were likely owned by wealthy warriors, according to the
British Museum, which speculates that the River Witham sword belonged to
a knight or some other rich individual who rode into battle during the crusades
of the late medieval period. The British Museum also suggests that such
swords may have been a part of the ceremony in which a man became a knight and vowed to defend the church.

Cracking the code
Even though historians are fairly