Blade - 27" Wootz (I forged this blade from an ingot of wootz made by Greg Thomas Obach). For those not familiar with this steel, here is a good description of what it is and a brief overview of its history Wootz Steel

Grip - 10" elk horn with horned beast head carved in the crown

Guard - Forged wrought iron

Scabbard - Birdseye maple and bronze

I've wanted to push the conceptual side of my work and that's what this is. The blade is Wootz, the guard is wrought iron from the beach, the grip is carved elk antler, and the scabbard is maple and bronze.
I've been wanting to do a piece that incorporates poetry, and also have been needing to express some of the emotion I feel over the way my forest is treated here in NB (my Province in Canada), I live in an increasingly diminishing island of forest surrounded by clear cuts. This also weaves ancient and modern motifs in a mythological frieze on the scabbard. Basically I thought I would make a sword for the Wild.

The blade and overall design of this sword is inspired by German Falchions from the fifteen hundreds, including the cutout barbs on the blade spine which were inspired by an element from a falchion in the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. In the picture below you can see the distinctive dendritic structure in the detail of the blade.

A note on the Scabbard frieze:

The scabbard has a tree carved all the way up it. In the roots of the tree is the wolf or earth beast that the Norse called Fenrir, and which represents the latent, unformed force of nature. He is bound by the Gods with magic dwarf cord, and set under ground until Ragnarok when he will emerge and devour the earth and sky. In the center of the tree is the Earth Mother, pregnant and benevolent, she represents the essence of the world tree itself. Above her the tree emerges into the world of men where the tree is wounded and has three drops of blood coming out of the wound, there is a businessman counting his money next to his briefcase, with the tendrils of a tree branch about to grab him, and there is a logger being strangled by the tree branches.