Historically Accurate Sword of Gryffindor (Harry Potter Series)

Buckethead

Well-Known Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
I have never been happy with the design of the Sword of Gryffindor in the Harry Potter movies. I'm a massive fan of the series, but also have a great interest in swords, and it got me thinking; what would the sword look like if it was actually (mostly) period correct. For anyone that doesn't know, the sword from the movie is based on a ceremonial sword of Napoleon I - the 19th century. Here's a comparison:

Napoleon Comparison.jpg


Godric Gryffindor was a wizard born in the 10th century, so his sword should be of that period, an 'anglo saxon' or 'viking' style sword, like so

The_Big_Six_Final_For_Printing-126_2b83ab5c-d032-44ec-a675-ece999fa7ed1.jpg
da1540.jpg


So I have set about designing such a sword, with the intention to make 1 or more replicas of this design.

Book reference of the sword says that:
  • It is made of Goblin silver
  • Has rubies set in the handle, up to 'egg' sized
  • Has Godric Gryffindor's name just below the hilt.
I intend on making mine in the fashion of a hero prop, so it will be a metal construction, with a steel blade, along with steel handle fittings. I want it to be functional, but it will not have a sharpened edge, just like a hero prop. There will be stones inlaid into the handle, but I can't quite stretch to rubies. I'm thinking more garnets or another alternate red stone.
 
So, just to catch you guys up, been working on this a small while, so project has been moving nicely. I did a deep dive on Viking swords, their design and construction, so as to get the style of sword right. If anyone is interested, I used this book as my main source

41+toagJefL._SX371_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
19eac342ca51047b7859b24da1033a09.jpg


I decided on a Geibig type 3 style blade, as to me this is the most aesthetically pleasing, as well as being very accurate to the period I want.

With that I set about drawing up designs to incorporate all the features I wanted, including the gems set into the handle. It was important that the proportions felt and looked right, as well as being accurate. I also had to consider how certain parts were going to be made. I am no blacksmith, by any means, but I can draw up files to convert to dxf, which can then be water jet cut, as well as having some rudimentary 3d modelling skills, of which could then be converted to cnc files.

Anyway, long story short, here is my final design which I'm gonna try to stick to as much as possible

Sword of Gryffindor Design-06.jpg


I am toying with the idea of adding etching to the guards, as well as on the blade. The text on the blade is not finalised, but I do like the font so far. I also like idea of going a little like the ulfberht swords, where they were signed by the maker/workshop on the blade

800px-Lorange_1889_TabI.jpg


I believe these were actually done by laying in different steel, but as I said, not a blacksmith! I did decide that I will not be making the blades themselves, but would hand the construction off to some actual bladesmiths. That way they can be made to spec in spring steel. I sketched up the blade design to send them and sent it.

Sword Blade spec-04.jpg

As you can see, I was very specific in the designing and measurements that were given

There are still some portions to work out, I am unsure on how I will make the pommel and handle sections without a lot of expensive cnc work, however the other parts like the guards will be water jet cut.
 
08.10.21
An update for y'all

If you wanna watch something about this build, I have a Part 1 video over on YouTube


In any case, I also did a render up of my final plan for the sword.

Sword of Gryffindor Design web.jpg


I also have the blades in hand! They came out beautifully.

IMG_4373.JPG


I'm currently working on the guard and handle pieces, getting them all fitting nicely. More to follow!
 
Upper and lower guard pieces were drawn out in Illustrator, then sent to be water jet cut from steel. I took them to my bench top sander and began to clean them up, also adding a bevel to the thinner parts

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Still got a long way to go, and more filing, sanding and polishing on these parts alone....but! loving how they fit together already

244465461_284121566867647_2845649239730672718_n.jpg
 
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Got the handle pieces modelled up in 3D (with my mediocre modelling skills) and had a buddy print these off for me (ignore the colour of course!). These are a second iteration and they fit really well. Got the scale and size dialled in to match how the guard pieces are bevelled. Now I'm going to finish one of them to be a master, and mould it for pewter casting.

254849617_959638891299886_2036442512754546330_n.jpg
 
Very nice! I do like a good Viking sword! I did some blade decoration on a sword I built and found electro etching worked very well after which I put in gold leaf.
That looks great, did you cast the guards and pommel piece in bronze? How is the electro etching for control, did you just go letter by letter?
 
I tried my own casting but it sucked (so I brought the castings from a reenactment supply place.) The etching was fairly easy. I marked out the areas I wanted to etch with nail art masking tape, then painted the blade with nail polish. Once dried I removed the tape and then used saltwater damped cotton buds connected to 2 9v batterys. The only issue was that you soon start under cutting the nail polish mask. The inlay is low enough that it does not get damaged when the sword is used for cutting practice in the garden. The sword is called "ankle bitter" as it contains my kids first lost baby teeth in side the pommel.
 
Late to the party, but I like your take. I'd been thinking about the Four Founders for a while... and then J.K. went off the rails and I felt uncomfortable actively doing anything Potterverse-related. I've been gradually getting back to it, though.

One of the paths my thinking led down was that Hogwarts was founded in the late 800s/early 900s, but we don't really know how old the Founders were at the time. The Anglo-Saxon encroachment into Britannia had been going on for several centuries, but the language was really only solidly established by about the late 700s. Godric, Helga, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and [Slitheren] are all Old English/Anglo-Saxon/Germanic. Rowan is Gælic. Gryffindor is, well, messy. Best etymology I can run on it makes it likely Greek. And Salazar is Basque, so that's a thing...

Anyway. We know the school is in Moray, in the Scottish Highlands, near where the town of Dufftown was established in the 19th century. That region was unified by the House of Alpin into the first unified Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. Right around or a bit before when the school was founded. Rowling's lore says that the founders picked the spot they did to place the school far from Muggles, because of their fear and persecution of witches. Welllllll... There's been activity in the region since at least the 6th century, and most people of the era in Britannia were pagan and valued their witches and wizards. So there's that.

So all of that led to me pondering where the founders came from and why. I can see Helga being descended from Saxons who came over over the course of several centuries. We know Godric and Salazar were friends prior, despite their differing views on Muggles. I can see both of them being around in southern Anglè-Land, and encountering Helga there. Rowena seems more likely to be from the North, possibly of mixed Gælic and Anglo-Saxon descent.

So I feel like, while Helga and Rowena likely originated on and stayed on or close to the island of Great Britain, Salazar and Godric may have spent more time on the continent. Not necessarily from Europe proper, but with more connections there. So Godric's sword might have been just about anything decent or better-than-decent of the period from the 7th to 11th centuries (I give the Wizarding World credit for being a little ahead of the Muggles in certain artisanal respects during this period). I like the sword you used for inspiration. There were two I had narrowed my thinking down to...

If we were to want to create something evocative of the sword from the films, but be a bit more historically accurate, we could use this one as a starting point. There are numerous contemporary replicas of varying levels of quality. The one pictured is one of the best out there. The original, from what I've been able to dig up, seems to date to the 10th century, but I can't find verification of that. It's a sword to honor King Solomon, so it might actually date a couple centuries later, to the First Crusade and the Crusader Kingdom(s) in the Middle East...

0004311_sword-of-king-solomon-by-marto.jpeg


If we wanted to stick with a more Northern-European origin, the best one I've found is a replica Viking sword of a style in use from the 7th to 11th centuries...

Cold Steel Viking Sword -- 7th-11th century.jpg


Either of these, I feel -- with nicer, "goblin-wrought" furniture and the rubies and all that -- would be good candidates for what Godric would have carried... but nor for duelling, as J.K. says. Duelling with swords wasn't really a thing in Europe until the Renaissance. And, from what the books (and, later, films) establish, wizards duel with magic, not swords. So I would not expect him to have a duelling sword.

The one you're making is gorgeous and appropriate also. I appreciate the thought you've also put into it and wanted to share my ruminations. :)
 
If we were to want to create something evocative of the sword from the films, but be a bit more historically accurate, we could use this one as a starting point. There are numerous contemporary replicas of varying levels of quality. The one pictured is one of the best out there. The original, from what I've been able to dig up, seems to date to the 10th century, but I can't find verification of that. It's a sword to honor King Solomon, so it might actually date a couple centuries later, to the First Crusade and the Crusader Kingdom(s) in the Middle East...

View attachment 1639239

If we wanted to stick with a more Northern-European origin, the best one I've found is a replica Viking sword of a style in use from the 7th to 11th centuries...

View attachment 1639240

Unfortunately neither of these would be considered Historically Accurate... It would want to be something single handed, and the grips of that time period weren't made to be held like a baseball bat, so the grip would look uncomfortably short.

Something more like this in the grip.
DT10Viking07.jpg


or this

main-image.jpg


You kinda.. shake the sword's hand rather than grab it

I never ever ever liked the film prop, it looked too gaudy and flimsy, to be honest. It was supposed to be a dueling sword.

"The question of why a wizard would need a sword, though often asked, is easily answered. In the days before the International Statute of Secrecy, when wizards mingled freely with Muggles, they would use swords to defend themselves just as often as wands. Indeed, it was considered unsporting to use a wand against a Muggle sword (which is not to say it was never done). Many gifted wizards were also accomplished duelists in the conventional sense, Gryffindor among them." -- JK herself

However, it's a Goblin made sword, who knows what it would look like? I suspect Gryffindor had it made to be somewhat normal looking, though, if he wanted to walk among the Muggles.
 
Unfortunately neither of these would be considered Historically Accurate...
Despite the fact they're reproductions of actual swords from the periods I specified?

The Viking sword is a good contender, but I like to think the Wizarding world, with goblin help/craftmanship, might have been a bit ahead of the Muggle curve, design-wise, hence including a sword that -- in the real world -- cane a hundred or two years after the Founding. Perhaps with a shorter hilt, or some of the "common-sense" alterations made later on to protect fingers as war-swords began to transition into rapiers -- like finger guards or martingales. Something like a fancier version of this, maybe:

Swept-hilt Rapier Sword.jpg


Point is (get it? ...I'll see myself out), the real-world rules don't necessarily apply to what was developed when in the Wizarding World. J.K. says Godric was a duellist when duelling wasn't a thing yet in Europe (amongst all the other stuff she got factually stupid-wrong). Maybe better to say, he was skilled at defending himself through mundane means if attacked by a Muggle with a sword, to the point that he was a bit like Musashi and could easily defeat any attacker, with style and lack of strenuous exertion. It all implies, to me, someone who'd have a more advanced weapon and style than was in common usage in the Muggle world at the time.

I never ever ever liked the film prop, it looked too gaudy and flimsy, to be honest. It was supposed to be a dueling sword.

It was such a mall ninja wall hanger I cringed the whole time it was onscreen in Chamber of Secrets. And as far as something he could wear among "normies", I don't know the Wizards would've cared that much. The invading Saxons, compared with what they had access to, would've regarded Arthur's steel Roman spatha as otherworldly and magical, even if it wasn't.
 
It was such a mall ninja wall hanger I cringed the whole time it was onscreen in Chamber of Secrets. And as far as something he could wear among "normies", I don't know the Wizards would've cared that much. The invading Saxons, compared with what they had access to, would've regarded Arthur's steel Roman spatha as otherworldly and magical, even if it wasn't.

This is closer to what I wanted it to be,

but if you go to the main Albion site, you can find examples of viking and anglo Saxon and other swords of that time period.

Remember, though, there were more than just Viking and Anglo Saxon swords in the 10th century.
 
"Reproductions" is the key word.

These are reproductions of what someone assumed a sword looks like.
Whoooff. Easy, there. I didn't offer those up because they were "someone's assumption". I can run that Viking sword back to the period I cited, and the sword honoring King Solomon is a reconstruction based on surviving fragments and references that date to the Crusader Kingdoms in Jersualem -- basically a 12th-century version of a mall-ninja sword... meant to be a decorative/display piece, rather than a functional combat sword. It still would've been made by a swordsmith, though, and its furniture embellished versions of existing practice.

"Reproduction" doesn't mean "wild uneducated speculation". I myself have a reproduction that is a faithful duplicate of an original dating to c.1600 in the military museum in Prague. Not something guessed at by a fantasy novel cover artist.

This is closer to what I wanted it to be,

but if you go to the main Albion site, you can find examples of viking and anglo Saxon and other swords of that time period.

Remember, though, there were more than just Viking and Anglo Saxon swords in the 10th century.
I've seen a lot of Viking and Anglo Saxon swords of the period. Some simple, some ornate, some with actual damascus steel blades (since they sailed all the way up the Danube and traded in Eastern Europe and the Near East), some crude and primitive, some way more advanced than we gave them credit for... That one you linked there is also a nice one, as was Buckethead's original inspiration. I just went on a different tangent, feeling Godric would tend toward something that looked a bit later period, due to skill level and personal style -- something that would lend itself more to a style described as "duellist", rather than "war sword". The motions are very different. Even by the 13th century, martingales had been added because of the need to protect fingers commonly hooked over the quillons for leverage, which is what evolved into the rapier.

It would also favor a more Germanic duelling stance, which is not dissimilar from the magical duelling stance, and one that traditional Viking/Anglo-Saxon guards would be more uncomfortable for. A stance that would allow one to stand their ground and adroitly deflect some 9th-century Muggle who came running at you with a seax.
 

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