High quality steel would not dissolve.
High quality steel would not dissolve.
What type of steel would it have been made from?
Something nice from lots of charcoal and quench hardened?
A bit early for wootz?
“High quality steel would not dissolve.”
actually, steel will corrode faster and more completely than iron. And the pattern welded steel in a Dark Ages Norse sword will rust more readily than modern homogeneous steel.
Moreover, from the picture, it appears that this artifact is more of a sword shaped hunk of rust than an intact sword. This is often the case with weapons finds this old. It will need extensive conservation (Can you say ‘Naval Jelly’, boys and girls.)
I was reading about a nutrino detector site in Japan. They use ultra pure water. Ocassionally, guys in a raft have to float out into a tank to do maintenance on things. One worker dropped a tool in the water a few years back.
A scheduled cleaning of the tank required it to be drained. They found that the tool that had dropped previously, had completely dissolved. Apparently, even dipping your hand in the water for any length of time is considered unwise.
Water: the universal solvent.