The application of golden section in sword design has been a focus of my study some three or four years now.

Before I began making swords full time, I was working as graphic designer and Illustrator. In my art training, an important tool was the use of harmonic proportions in layouts and compositions. This is a very old art that bridges most of history's civilizations. Medieval art and engineering is very much built on the application of harmonic proportions.

The principle of the Golden section is one of them, and perhaps the most prominent and important, but there are other series of proportions building on other rations that are equally workable, for example number series derived from the square root of 2, 3, 4, or 5. One must understand that these principles do not automatically result in efficient or pleasing designs. There is a science or art in their application as well.

Book design/typography is very much dependent on an understanding of these principles. The same goes for architecture or fine art for that matter(at least in a medieval perspective). With decreasing divisions of a given number (It could be blade length or any other length that makes sense) you can construct the proportions of the blade and hilt. You can even build the degrees of distal taper, shape of cross section, relation of mass of different parts, change in angles or what ever you need to designate.
How far you want to take this is up to you and what makes sense in any given situation.

So how much of this is there to see in historical material (=surviving medieval swords)?

First we must understand that swords were not forged by a smith using a pocket calculator. What proportions or measurements he used were derived from the measuring tools of a smithy: a compass, a measuring stick and a plate cut with notches to see thickness. The Golden Section need not be calculated by decimal exactness. It can be implemented using fractions and the series of numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55...is the Fibonacci series of numbers.

Fibonacci was a 12th C mathematician who, among other things, found this principle for growth, where each new number is the sum of the two previous ones. If you construct fractions of this 2/3, 3/5, 5/8 and so forth you get a result that comes ever closer to 1.618....or Phi. You may design a book that has a page with the proportions 8:5 and it will follow the golden section, even if it is not exact if measured and divided to read the decimal relationship. You can also divide any given length in, say, eight parts or five or thirteen, and get a module measure by which you can construct any given object, for example a sword.

You can then use this module in various scales or construct sub divisions. In short there are unlimited ways to apply these principles.

How you do this is where the knowledge and art meet.

To learn how this was done we need to study originals. To my knowledge this has not been done on swords. That is why I work along this hypothesis and look for harmonic proportions in swords of various time periods. These principles are a great help in understanding the "logic" of medieval designs. It is often the more or less hidden structure that is beneath the obvious.

On the Golden Section and its use in design and engineering can be written volumes. It is difficult to address this in a good way in short article. One always runs the risk of creating new "truths" that are actually just one aspect or version of what is possible. I am still working with this hypothesis. There certainly are trends in how this is applied in swords, but I feel reluctant to go into too much detail at this stage. I have hopes to publish these ideas with thorough illustrations and examples: it is not a very good idea to present the work while it is still only halfway done. I do not intend to hide this under a blanket, but I would like to have opportunity to make a full presentation in due time.

The presentation I did during the "Swordfest" at Albion was using the sword of Svante Nilsson as example. It was actually this sword that put me on the track of finding ways to analyze swords in the aspect of the Golden Section.

One day I was trying to find a way to implement harmonic proportions in sword design just as it it used in typography and sat scribbling with a pencil in a sketch book. Starting with a given blade length I drew a line on a piece of paper, I divided this in eight parts resutling in a module to be used as a "building block"(8 being a number in the Fibonacci series). I then could use 1, 2, 3, and 5 to multiply the module with as all these belong to the Fibonacci series. This is a rather basic way to use the tool but I wanted to keep it simple to begin with. I tried to have the hilt 3 times the module and the guard two times the module. The resulting pencil cross on the paper started to look strangely familiar...

Half the module was assigned to blade width and width and length of pommel and I now saw the sword of Svante Nilsson emerge from the pencil lines on the paper... I double checked the measurement of the sword as I had noted them and found a high degree of correspondence. The difference was less than a millimeter in many cases and well within acceptable variation given that the sword was not made with a precision caliper or pocket calculator.

Going further I found interesting correspondences in how the distal taper varied along the blade and how these sections of the blade related to each other. Next I started to look through other swords I had documented and saw that you could see harmonic proportions being applied in many aspects, especially in how blade width, thickness and distal taper varied rhythmically in different swords, but also in over all proportions of hilt components and outline of the blade.

Interestingly it seems that the use of harmonic proportions in the shaping of a blade will have effects in the placing of nodes, pivot points and resonance. This has a direct effect on performance and handling. Harmonic proportions therefore seem to have an effect not only on the aesthetic aspects of a sword, but also its performance.

This is very similar to the waymany musical instruments are built according to harmonic proportions, to make the most of their acoustic potential. In the case of swords the desired effect is the opposite: you want to minimize the influence of vibrations.

I hope this short text will give you an idea of the scope of this topic: Harmonic proportions can influence many different aspects of the sword and can also be a tool in our understanding of their functional principles. To make a more thorough presentation of this I would have to write a much longer text and provide illustrations and examples from historical swords. This will have to wait till a possible future publication.

So how much of this were ancient swordsmiths aware of?

It would have varied of course. You need not have theoretical schooling in these matters to be able to do work that express harmonic proportions. It only takes a good eye and a developed understanding of form.

I would not be surprised if cutlers in urban areas who scolialized with masons, artisans and artists of various kinds knew about and discussed these ideas. It is not unreasonable to assume cutlers defined some aspects of the blades they ordered from blade smiths. Likewise, I think that blade smiths through history (a few or many?) would have developed a theoretical understanding of proportions.

It is reasonable to work according to rules of thumb and well defined processes when producing volumes of blades to set standards, before the blade is shaped the billet is drawn out to a bar of specific taper and cross section. This is then given the correct cross section and possibly a fuller. The proto blank will need to have the correct distribution of mass for the final blade to have the correct balance.

If many blades are forged in a series, which would have been normal, then it makes good sense to designate the proportions of the proto-blank. Those proportions would carry through in the finished blade even after grinding.

This is actually an important aspect in my design work for Albion: My blade designs are much like the forged blank that the blade smith would have sent to the grinder. That semi-finished blade needs to have the right proportions or the sword will not have the correct heft or performance.

Harmonic proportions is a design tool that is of great help in achieving swords that have the same heft and feel as their historical counterparts.

In designing the Next Generation line of swords I have dedicated myself to the making of well crafted, high quality performance swords at affordable prices that are made after the example of actual historical types. This last might seem eccentric; why insist on historical types?

I think there are a number of benefits with this approach. First of all, why do we assume we can improve on or design from scratch something that has taken millennia to develop? Might there be things to learn and appreciate if we spend time looking and contemplating ancient designs and solutions? Could this actually change our present understanding of the sword? I think so.

All designs must be understood in their contexts. And that is another benefit: we can test our theories and see what actually works with authentic proper tools. If the techniques does not work, it might be the case that there is something strange with our interpretations...?

The contemporary obsession with scent stopper pommels and certain specific details like placing of balance point, total weight and grip length can be overpowering.

We have different types of swords through history just precisely because they need to fill different needs and functions. Do not ask every type and sword to follow the same limited set of criteria. If we did that all swords would feel the same and look basically the same, only with fullers or other features added as a cosmetic touch.

I personally think there is a value in staying true to time and place in style and function. The danger here is that we only look for and appreciate a limited number of features that fit our present understanding of a specialized application of swordsmanship or the craft of swordmaking.

There is farmore to swords than is obvious from the perspective of the study of historical fencing manuals or test cutting mats, bottles or meat. To develop a broader understanding we need to be exposed to authentic originals or study well made replicas of specific types or individuals.

To me, saying that our swords are built after historical examples is not a mere marketing hype. It is an essential element in the design, development, manufacture, use and understanding of these magnificent weapons. It is a journey that encompasses both the continuous study of original swords and the accurate recreation of these incredible weapons, allowing us to test out the underlying "secrets" that we rediscover through that study.