Dear Mr. Cornwell, I am greatly enjoying the Saxon Tales, and I also enjoyed The Winter King and Agincourt. You have obviously put some serious time into doing scholarly research about all aspects of your subject matter. So I have one question about a technical detail mentioned in the Saxon Tales that doesn’t jibe with my own studies. In several places, including, for example, the re-hilting of Serpent-Breath in Lords of the North, you describe the grips of swords of that era as being made in two pieces riveted to the tang. I have a lot of literature on swords, and I have seen a lot of specimens in museums, but I have never seen a medieval or Viking sword made that way, either in pictures or in actual specimens. The handles of many old swords have rotted away, leaving the bare tangs visible for inspection. I have never seen a sword from that era with rivet holes through its tang. In The Sword in the Age of Chivalry, R. Ewart Oakeshott, perhaps the leading scholar of the medieval sword in the 20th Century, describes how grips were made. In one method, the grip was made in one piece and a central hole was bored through it, with the final exact fit accomplished by heating the tang and burning the hole out; in the other method (the “moulded method”), the grip was made in two halves and fitted around the tang. The two halves touched, rather than being slabs on the sides of the tang as in some modern cutlery. The moulded method seems to have been the more common method in the Viking period. Oakeshott doesn’t say how the halves were secured together, but I infer that they were glued. His illustration does not show rivets. Also, the grips were wrapped with wire or some other covering, which would have helped to hold the halves together. The pommel was fitted over the upper part of the tang (sometimes shrink-fitted by heating), and the end of the tang was peened over the top of the pommel to hold everything together. I have an embarrassing number of sword replicas made that way. In The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, H. R. Ellis Davidson describes how some Viking-era pommels were made in pieces riveted together. But the rivets in such pommels do not pass through the tang. They are oriented parallel to the tang, and they just pin the pieces of the pommel together. The hilt is still held together by the peened end of the tang. Are you aware of any specific example of a Viking-era or medieval sword in which the grip is held on by rivets through the tang? If so, I would be interested in knowing about it. Still, though, thanks for a rousing bunch of stories. Sincerely, William Terry