Can anyone point me towards some sword/weapon mythology?

The smith was a potent figure in a broad swath of Indo-European mythology. Hephaestus/Vulcan was one instance; also Wayland (Anglo-Saxon), Gobannus (Gallic), Dazbog (Slavic) - they're all quite different, but there's a family resemblance. I'd start my research there.

If you're going to be writing in detail about the actual forging process - then you'll need to research a similar culture and period. Early bronze age? High middle ages european? Japanese? Each culture has their own craft and technology - peculiar to their geography and era.

The Japanese code of Bushido referers to the sword as the 'soul of the samurai' - but that's a metaphorical sense. At least, for the most part.

Having decided HOW your weapons are forged, you can invent your magical ritual for capturing or implanting souls. Some smiths would chant prayers or songs while forging or tempering blades. Ostensibly this imparted magical qualities, but most likely, by singing a song or reciting a poem or prayer with a particular rhythm, a Smith could standardize the time spent in the quench, or number of blows or some other timed process. Easier to do while working, and there were no clocks to keep accurate time.

A fantasy author you may not have run into is Michael Moorcock. He wrote a series of books about Elric, a wussy weirdo magey type who wields a creepy soul-drinking sword that gives him powers beyond mortal men.

Here is the first book in the series.

In it, the sword messes with his head and drives him into killing frenzies so it can drink more souls. There's a lot of moping by the protagonist as he agonizes over the friends he's accidentally vacuumed up into his sword.

I'm pretty sure Robert E Howard featured a few nasty swords in his Conan series and you're sure to find intelligent swords in Dungeons & Dragons settings like "Forgotten Realms" and "World of Greyhawk". Wikipedia helpfully has a giant list of swords from fiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_swords

Many of those had some kind of intelligence or purpose driving them.

Benbenberi covered what I was going to bring up. I'm reading Diana Paxson's trilogy based on the Volsung saga (although mostly Wagner's retelling of it, I think) and I'm reminded of the prominent role the smith plays in the hero's quest. Regin is the smith in the Volsung saga who makes the sword Sigurd uses. The details are totally fuzzy to me right now, so maybe someone else can fill them in. But basically in most of these early medieval epic poems, it was a big deal to have a sword that wouldn't break. Blades breaking at really critical moments is a repeating theme. So maybe some of that could play into your world?

ETA: The Anglo-Saxons and other similar cultures were really into naming everything, especially swords. So swords all sort of had personalities and names to go with them. Which makes me think you might look into some of the mythology surrounding the various swords of people in the Arthurian legends. I'm thinking of Gillian Bradshaw's Arthurian trilogy, where she has Gwalchmai (Gawain) wielding Caledfwlch (Excaliber) which has magical properties.

And it's not mythology, but there is a really cool and powerful sword in China Mieville's The Scar.

Fenika said:

It might eventually matter who made these swords if I write more in this world, so are there any vaguely similar legends that I could research and base my story on?

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Any fantasy sword and sorcery book. Tolkien, etc. Foir historical, look at the beginning: Beowulf, the Arthurian legend, heck, just about anything involving a sword.

Jeff

The legend of Weyland the Smith goes deep into Germanic legend. It's less about making swords than gruesome revenge and the motif of Weyland as a death god. Weyland is somehow connected to the legend of Egil the Archer. There may be some usable stuff there.

There are quite a few swords in Icelandic sagas, there's a cursed blade in Gisli's Saga, and one (which I can't recal) where a fellow has a sword with a magic worm in it, and all sorts of taboos about how it's to e drawn & sheathed, etc. The upshot is a bit of a parody as he loans it to a friend who ignores all the rules and still beats the hell out of his foe.

EDIT: It was in Cormac's Saga, chap 9-10, I guess maybe he should have been more careful with the sword, as he comes off second-best.

are you familiar with the plot to the video game series soul reaver? There are lots of little devices used but in one part of the story a major character (Kain) tries to kill another major character (Raziel) with a sword called the soul reaver except it shatters into pieces when it strikes against Raziel's head and instead a greenish wraith blade emerges from the sword and wraps around raziel's arm and becomes his main weapon.

This is left a mystery for several installments of the game which uses time travel as a theme quite frequently. Then in the final chapter of the game raziel travels back in time and actually sacrifices himself to the original version of the soul reaver letting it absorb his soul revealing that the wraith blade which wrapped around his arm was his own soul from another timeline and that's why it refused to kill him when kain struck him with it.

Fenika said:

Cheers folks. I tried to look up some info on Beowulf but only got general into on the swords. The smith legends/myths sound good.

I'm writing in the High Middle Ages, based loosely on Eastern Europe.

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In that case, maybe your starting point is the Sarmatian-Slav connection. The Sarmatae were noted for worshiping a sword as the war-god (Herodotus mentions this in relation to the Skythians too). This motif plays into the Hunnish story of "the sword of Mars" and their migration. I suspect it also relates to the Arthurian "Sword in the Stone" via the Alanic occupation of Armorica.

The main thing is that the Sarmatae had a big cultural impact on the Slavic tribes in the Migration period. A lot of the scholarship is debated, but that hardly matters if you're going for fantasy. Sulimerski's The Sarmatians (Praeger, 1970) has quite a bit of archaeology, some of which points towards the role of swords in religion. You could take a gander at Maenchen-Helfen's The Huns and Wolfram or Burns on the Goths too, since they left a mark on E Europe. Sorry if that's a bit tenuous, but it's been a while since I dug about for Sarmatian mythology. My Slavic knowledge is a bit iffy outside of Czech legends.

For anyone aiming at some degree of verisimilitude involving swords, I heartily recommend The Book of the Sword, by Sir Richard F. Burton. Burton, in case you're not familiar with him, was the wealthy upper-class adventurous and controversial Victorian explorer, genius linguist, and detester of Victorian English society, who famously penetrated Mecca in the guise of an Afghan healer, and sought the source of the Nile River with partner/rival John Hanning Speke. Burton was boundlessly energetic and curious about other cultures, spoke dozens of languages and dialects, translated into English the 1001 Nights from old Arabic, probably the greatest feat of scholarly translation ever performed. He also wrote, illustrated and published numerous volumes about his travels and exploits (including the Mecca adventure), and was fascinated with ancient weaponry, thus The Book of the Sword. Dover Publications has reprinted many of his volumes, including that one, in facsimile editions with original illustrations. They are magnificent, and I've read several.

Burton also translated a number of ancient erotic texts, including The Perfumed Garden and Kama Sutra, much to the dismay of his proper and strong-personalitied wife, Isabel, who was something like twenty years his junior. When he died, the first thing Isabel did was raid his study, take everything of his remaining notes and unpublished writings she could find that offended her Anglican sensibilities, and have a bonfire on the front lawn.

So, with that digression, by all means, take a look at The Book of the Sword.

caw