Osprey Viking Sword
Although the Vikings could stand against almost any equally sized enemy force, with their fast longships, the Vikings didn't have to face strong opposition. They could raid coastal villages and get out again long before the villagers had time to invoke assistance. This was the ideal method for vikings: strike quickly, take what you could, then leave again before organized resistance could form. It was only when the Vikings started making permanent outposts in England that they were defeated, and it wasn't through military defeats either. The Vikings, settled and defensible, no longer were raiders and conquerers, they became a part of England, assimilated into the population. To wax poetic for a moment, the Vikings were assimilated into the country as a sunken ship is assimilated by coral in a coral reef, becoming itself an important part of the reef. All right, so it ain't Shakespeare; The Vikings weren't into the whole flowery poet stuff anyway (you ever read Beowulf? Not exactly Lord Byron type stuff).
Swords from the Viking lands (including Northern Germany) have a long and distinguished history through the middle ages, and still have some prescence there today. The city of Solingen was the Toledo or Damascus of Northern Europe; swords that came from Solingen, particularly from the family of swordmakers known as Ulfberht, were revered, and many counterfeit sword makers stamped the word "Ulfberht" on their blades to give them more value (often misspelling the name). In fact, the early viking swords are often said to have been the predecesors to the knightly broadswords/arming swords of the middle ages.
Viking blades are farily easily to identify. They normally have three-lobed wave" pommel, long straight double-edges, wide fuller (groove that runs down the blade), and a short grip. The blade often had engravings, usually featuring important or sacred phrases and pictographs.
See Strongblade's Osprey Viking Sword
