Swords

[Sir Langon]

Ok, the new Weapon of the Week is the sword, but since sword is such a broad topic, I will divide it into several categories starting with the short sword.

The sword was the original tool of war, it is one of the only weapons in existence with but one purpose, to kill. The short swords were the first design dating back to the time of Troy and the Greeks, the reason why it was short was because they hadn't refined their forging methods.
In ancient Greece and Rome, every soldier had a sword because they were supplied by their governments so that when it came time to call up the army, they wouldn't have to scrounge for weapons. The Romans called their short sword a Gladius, which is Latin for, well, sword. In these ancient armies though, the sword was a secondary weapon with the spear being their primary weapon because of the utilization of the pilum hails by the Romans and the phalanx by the Greeks.
In Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works, not much is said of short swords except for the fact that the hobbits, because of their size, were equipped with short swords which served them very well. The most notable of all short swords in LotR is Sting. Originally made in Gondolin for the Goblin wars, it was really just a large dagger, but Bilbo made it famous, or infamous to his foes, because of it's keen edge and the fact that it glows when orcs are near. Frodo inherited the sword and carried it to Orodruin and back, but he didn't us it very much because of his role of Ringbearer. Later in LotR Sam takes the sword and slays a number of orcs and Uruk-hai when he storms Cirith Ungol to save Frodo after fighting off Shelob and mortally wounding her.

[Sir Langon]

The next weapon is the Arming Sword.

The arming sword was the upgrade to the Gladius, it was longer, sharper, probably lighter due to new forging techniques, and it was definitely deadlier. While every Roman Soldier had a Gladius, the only medieval soldiers that carried swords were Men-at-Arms and Knights. These were elite soldiers that trained every day and were extremely deadly. The standard Arming Sword was approximately 2-2 1/2 feet long with a single hilt, meaning that it was used with one hand.
In LotR the only armies to use standardized Arming Swords were the armies of Gondor, Rohan, Numenor, and the early Elven armies. These soldiers all had standardized weapons that were perfected and therefore deadly. In the LotR movies, the best examples of Arming Swords were used by the army of Gondor, because the Rohan swords were usually shorter and of slightly varying design.

As usual, you can post any questions and I will answer ASAP.

[Sir Langon]

This week's weapon is the Longsword.

The longsword was a common sword towards the end of the middle ages. The standard measurement for a longsword differed from man to man as the measurement of the entire sword was from the ground to the bottom of the ribcage.
While it seems that there would be no especially graceful way to use the longsword, it had many techniques and was certainly not an easy weapon to learn to use. The main technique is seen by Aragorn as he fights in LotR. But this isn't the only technique. One technique that isn't very common is called half-swording. In this technique, the wielder grabs the hilt in one hand and the ricasso(bottom of the blade) so that he would be able to use it in close quarters easily. The main medieval technique is quite surprising because of the size of the sword; the technique is to use a dagger and the longsword simultaneously. This was possible because of the advanced forging techniques used when making a longsword.

The most notable user of a longsword in LotR is Aragorn, but others do exist. Of those, the most important are Elendil, the Nazgul, and the Mouth of Sauron. These master swordsmen are seen fighting throughout the movies (MoS only in the extended version of RotK). Also, because of Tolkien's description of the 1st age Elven blades as being long, it can be assumed that the Elves also used the longsword, hence the references of Aragorn's style being similar to that of the Elves.