King Arthur Sword Letter Opener

Description of the Product

This letteropener is named after the legendary king Arthur. If King Arthur actually existed, many historians would place him as a war leader of the early 6th C. Britain, seeking to halt the invasion of the Saxons, a warring Germanic tribe, after the fall of Rome. There are many indications that England did, after a time of much strife, have a brief period of peace and prosperity in what is now called "The Dark Ages". The Arthurian legends feature the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin the magician, and the Holy Grail, and the fabled sword, Excalibur.

Excalibur is a legendary sword with magical powers and stories about it have been told since early Celtic folklore, and are still widely shared in popular culture today. In some stories King Arthur gets his sword from the Lady of the Lake and in others Arthur was the only person that was able to pull the sword from the stone. And although strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, Arthur as the owner of Excalibur was able to gain the throne of Britain and became a true king.

In addition to the sword, this letter opener features other symbols connected to Arthur as well, such as his coat of arms, the three crowns. As heraldry only started in the late 1100’s, Arthur would have pre-dated his coat of arms by over half a millennia. But we mustn’t let facts spoil a perfectly good story, and that’s what they thought in medieval Europe too. As it was expected of all notables of the time to have their own coat of arms, these were then retroactively attributed to many real, as well as fictional, people from the past, from king David and Jesus onwards. At first these arms were arbitrary, and changed from author to author, but eventually the arms of major figures in history, such as the three crowns of king Arthur, became fixed. The reason for the triple-crown is unknown, as there are many three things the crowns could symbolize, for example the three realms of Britain: Logres, Cambria and Alba, (or as they now are known, England, Wales and Scotland). Three crowns is a notable heraldic symbol outside Arthurian legends as well, for example Three Crowns, Tre Kronor, have been the arms of Sweden from the 1330’s onwards.

As well as the crown pommel and the coat of arms, the letter opener has two dragons. In the legends two dragons, white for the (anglo)saxons and red for the welsh, fight over the lordship of the British Isles. In Merlins prophesies the red dragon will prevail, foreshadowing the arrival of Arthur and the liberation of the realm from under the yoke of the white saxon dragon. Dragon also features in the name Pendragon, an epiteth which Arthur inherited from his father, meaning head-dragon, or chief leader.

• Overall length 26 cm
• Silver Finish hilt
• Stainless Steel Blade
• Made by Marto of Toledo