Can You Classify the Conan Swords?

The old school movie swords? They're pretty much pure fantasy designs made for looks rather then practicality. Though, if you just look at how the blades are shaped, they tend to be primarily cutters - either broad-bladed double edged swords with central fullers, resembling iron age/viking swords, or stout sabers. Since armor seems to have somewhat scarce in the setting, the best apparently being chainmail, that type of swords make a lot of sense. Also, with the notable exception of the long odachi-like swords Conan trains with at the start of the movie, most of the swords are rather short. This might be a cultural preference or an inherent limitation of the common forging technology or both, hard to tell.

In the comics you see similar trends, though the swords look a lot more like sensible, practical weapons in general. You basically get two main types of swords: either curved sabers resembling middle eastern scimitars, or double edged broadswords. The blades on the later tend to have flattened diamond cross-sections, resembling Roman spathae or Oakeshott Type XVIII blades. Single-handers are more common then two-handers, and on both the sabers and the broadswords the guards are almost universially curved towards the blade. Conan tended to use either of these two sword types depending on context.

Can't really comment on the novels. I do own the "phone book" Conan omnibus but I'm sorta embarassed to admit I've never read it.

Are we talking the movies? Or the original R.E. Howard stories?

In the 1982 movie, the Atlantean sword has a bastard sword design with bits and pieces borrowed from various European cultures: the Vikings and other European cultures had crosspiece and blade etching, Scottish claymores and German zwiehanders had a third-hand grip. For its shape and size . . . well, it looks like it *could* be most closely related to a medieval bastard sword, and that's stretching the boundaries of believability, there. Valeria's sword is more Asian in design; my guess is that it most closely resembles a Chinese oxtail dao with an elongated handle. Subotai's short sword: Also similar to an oxtail dao, but half the length. (Note: I'm no expert in sword design, so take these guesses with a grain of salt .) The weapons the villains used, on the other hand --the two-handed hammer, and the three-headed axe-- pure fantasy. I can't think of an historical correlation for those.

Howard's stories, on the other hand, have Conan using historically accurate weaponry: scimitars, tulwars, short swords, and so on-- basically, whatever he was carrying at the moment, or could get his hands on. Nothing as exotic in design or description as Samson's swords from the 1982 movie. Consider these descriptions from "The Tower Of The Elephant":

"There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame--for men wore steel openly in the Maul."

"His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smoldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead. From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard."

. . . as for the most recent Marcus Nispel film? This thing: www.filmswords.com/conan/conan3dmain.htm --Eh, it's a medieval-ish bastard sword.

--Edward