The Pernik sword is an early medieval double-edged iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

 sword

Sword

A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...

 unearthed in the ruins of the medieval fortress of Krakra

Krakra of Pernik

Krakra of Pernik , also known as Krakra Voevoda or simply Krakra, was an 11th-century feudal lord in the First Bulgarian Empire whose domain encompassed 36 fortresses in what is today southwestern Bulgaria, with his capital at Pernik...

 near Pernik

Pernik

Pernik is a city in western Bulgaria with a population of 81,052 . It is the main city of Pernik Province and lies on both banks of the Struma River in the Pernik Valley between the Viskyar, Vitosha and Golo Bardo mountains.Originally the site of a Thracian fortress founded in the 4th century BC,...

, western Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, on 1 January 1921. It bears an inscription in silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 inlay on the blade. The sword is preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Bulgaria

National Archaeological Museum (Bulgaria)

The National Archaeological Museum is an archaeological museum in the centre of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It occupies the building of the largest and oldest former Ottoman mosque in the city, Büyük camii , built from stone around 1474 under Mehmed II...

 in Sofia

Sofia

Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

 under inventory number 2044. The sword is 96 centimetres (37.8 in) in length and up to 4.5 cm (1.8 in) in width.

The inscription, written in the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

, was long considered incomprehensible. It reads as follows:
In 2005, however, decipherment was claimed by a Bulgarian research group, reading an early West Germanic language (Austro-Bavarian

Austro-Bavarian

Bavarian , also Austro-Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the south east of the German language area.-History and origin:...

 or Lombardic

Lombardic language

Lombardic or Langobardic is the extinct language of the Lombards , the Germanic speaking people who settled in Italy in the 6th century. The language declined rapidly already in the 7th century as the invaders quickly adopted the Latin vernacular spoken by the local Roman population. E.g...

 of ca. the 6th to 8th century), with a meaning of "I do not await eternity, I am eternity" (hvil, cognate to English while and German Weile). If the parsing is plausible or at least the identification of the written language is correct, the text is of great importance to the history of Germanic languages

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

.

External links

• http://www.balkanmediaacademy.bg/activity_en.htm Archived version
• http://www.balkanmediaacademy.bg/1mech-5.jpg Archived version
• http://www.g-geschichte.de/EX/Extra/pdfRossenInterview.pdf (in German)