Celtic Two-Handers

[Reverend Joe]

Just to throw a little into the mix... is it possible that the swords in the above pic could have lost part of the metal support in the handle? It's a bit of a stretch, but if you consider that:
1) several of the shorter swords have noticeably longer handle supports,
2) the supports on the long swords are also rather straight and skinny, so it would be harder for someone to notice a piece missing, as opposed to the triangular-shaped supports and
3) again, they are rather long and skinny, so it would be easier for a piece to break off to begin with...
maybe they used to have longer metal supports. And again, we have no idea how long the wooden handles were.

Edit: the more I look at them, the more I am sure those swords used to have longer hilts. I will put up a pic in a moment showing you what I mean.

Edit 2:



Observe the swords I have pointed out; in particular, the ones on the right almost certainly have fully intact hilts, as indicated by the knob at the back. Observe that these hilts are longer than those of the three swords on the far left, especially scale-wise; while it is arguable that this is simply a different style, I simply can't see how this could be the case without those swords being totally unwieldy. True, they could have been specially wrought for champions, or possibly ceremonial, but I just think it's more likely that they at least had much longer wooden hilts.