title: Evolution of the Handle Covering of Early Medieval Swordsin the Baltic States and Ancient Rus'
abstract: The proposed article traces the stages of the evolution of the handle covering of double-edged swords of Western European warriors throughout the first millennium AD. The conclusions obtained in the article are as follows. 1. The tradition of forming the details of double-edged Western European swords of the early Middle Ages goes back to the Roman cavalry (in Byzantium − infantry) spata. An example of this is the preservation of the originally ergonomic detail of the handle design - three trans
journal: Izvestia of Smolensk State University