At the base, the sword is 2.25 inches (5.7 cm) wide at the point, the sword is 0.75 inches (1.9 cm) long. The blade is 4 feet 4 inches (132 cm) long with the hilt, the sword is 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm) long. The Wallace Sword currently on display in Stirling, Scotland weighs 5.95 pounds (2.7 kg). (Though the two kingdoms would become increasingly intertwined due to royal marriages until they merged to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.)Ī depiction of Wallace from H E Marshall's 'Scotland's Story', published in 1906. At the end of both wars, the Kingdom of Scotland maintained its independence from the Kingdom of England. A Scottish knight, Wallace was instrumental in the Wars of Scottish Independence, initially as a military leader and then as a symbolic figure. Today, William Wallace (1270-1305) is probably most familiar to people as the man portrayed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart. It’s a fascinating tale – if it is the real sword. Over the next 700 years, the sword changed many hands before coming to rest in the Hall of Heroes gallery of the National Wallace Memorial. The Wallace Sword would have been in use at least until the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, possibly until Wallace’s death in 1305.

Currently, controversy swirls around the authenticity of one such artifact, the sword of the Scottish revolutionary William Wallace.

However, sometimes, fabulous artifacts from history manage to survive intact across the millennia. Many times, evidence of fantastic finds vanishes, leaving behind only legends (think the Tulli Papyrus or Robin Hood’s Hideout).

Wallace the brave original