Surviving examples of these Merovingian-period swords have notably been found in the context of the Scandinavian Germanic Iron Age (Vendel period).

Examples include the magic sword of Högni, named Dáinnleif after the dwarf Dáinn (Skáldskaparmál), Skofnung and Hviting, two sword-names from the Kormáks saga, Nægling and Hrunting from Beowulf, and Mimung forged by Wayland the Smith.

From the early 3rd century, legionaries and cavalrymen began to wear their swords on the left side, perhaps because the scutum had been abandoned and the spatha had replaced the gladius.

[5] An early type of recognizably Germanic sword is the so-called "Krefeld-type" (also Krefeld-Gellep), named for a find in late Roman era military burials at Gelduba castle, Krefeld (Gellep grave 43).

A native industry producing "Germanic swords" then emerges from the 5th century, contemporary with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

The Germanic spatha did not replace the native seax, sometimes referred to as gladius or ensis "sword", but technically a single-edged weapon or knife.

Ring-swords came into fashion in the last phase of the Migration period (or the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, in the 6th and 7th centuries.

They were found in Vendel era Scandinavia, Finland and in Anglo-Saxon England as well as on the Continent (Saxony, Francia, Alemannia, Langobardia).

[10] The design appears to have originated in the late 5th century, possibly with the early Merovingians, and quickly spread to England (from the earliest phase of Anglo-Saxon presence) and Scandinavia.

The Beowulf poem uses the term hring-mæl, literally "ring-sword" or "ring-ornament",[11] and scholars who interpret this as referring to this type of sword can point to it as one indication that the Beowulf poet was still drawing from an unbroken tradition of the pagan period, as ring-swords disappeared from the archaeological record with Christianization, by the late 7th century.