While visiting Germany this year, I was on a quest to find Viking-age swords as a source of inspiration for future work. The first trip took me to Nürnberg where I visited the Germanisches Nationalmuseum which had an amazing weapons collection including two amazing carolingian swords - here is a picture of one of them:
Afterwards, I stopped at Rothenburg ob der Tauber and were completely amazed by the Reichsstadtmuseum which featured the Hermann Baumann collection of historic weapons and armor including this interesting pommel of a Viking-age sword from Danmark dated to the 9th/10th century:
The last part of the trip was to Haithabu where not only the museum was a great experience but also the concurrently happing Viking market with over twenty long boats from Northern Europe. One of the sword pommels I saw there was the following:
I had also hoped to catch a performance of the Wikinger Puppentheater Ygdrasil but unfortunately they did not perform during that weekend.