Well I could probably spend forever improving and refining this, but I’ve decided to call it finished. So here it is:
Done entirely in Blender of course 
I plan to do a Yafray/HDRI render once I get it HDRI working properly. Feel free to help me troubleshoot here
Very Very nice… It could use some enviroment mapping, but still good… And yet again, nice attention to detail
Nice job there. I have to agree with DMBadCat with the environment mapping. especially on the blade of the sword.
Great Modeling.
Nick V
Andy83, superb level of detailing. Looks most impressive. :o
Really like the jewel in the handle.
Sonix.
Super sweet modeling there dude, I love this :o
But you do have some aliasing issues you need to address if you want to make this picture look more outstanding:
Try rendering it with Mblur turned on and OSA set at 16 samples, this will effectivley give you 256 samples and will cut out a lot of the aliasing (especially around the swords hilt)
Also, rendering at two - four times the size and scaling down in photoshop will cut out almost all of the aliasing and make the picture look a lot sharper…Combine these two together and Boom, Sweet image 
Anyway, beautiful modeling.
WOW! great attention to detail. This came out very ver very nice!
so who’s this nibelungos guy? 
Should I niggle about the textures. No I shouldn’t.
Great modelling, great detail, great job.
Nibelung was the king of the Nibelungen ( “tribe” in anordic saga) and had a treasure which was stolen by Siegfried. Besides the treasure Siegfried became heir of the Nibelungen together with the Burgundians.
Siegfried himself killed an dragon, had a bath in his blood, and became nearly invulnerable. Because one leave of a tree coverd his shoulder, only this part was vulnerabel. Finally Siegfried was killed by Hagen of Tronje, hit by an arrow at his shoulder.
Outside Germany they are perhaps known by the operas Richard Wagner
“Ring der Nibelungen”
:Z :Z :Z :Z :Z d*nm it deserves more stonzies! it’s great, only thing i’d change is the silver thing between (and a little lower) of the two snake heads for a demon head. anyway awesome dude! oh! the thing that’s in the blade after the snake heads looks wierd, but your blade itself looks better than the original Nibelungos
Maybe some day I can be that good. 
Cool, can’t wait for a HDRI Yafray rendering
Stefano
The model is excellent, the handle model is even fantastic.
It isn’t the best picture however because the texturing isn’t good. The blade looks untextured. The handle looks quite untextured too, but the detail on the model compensates a little there.
I’d suggest painting some nice rusted matalic textures, and add scratches etc,… Then use an enviromentmap, or render in yafray. Make the blade look more like metal, and let the gold parts look more like gold.
But like I said, this model is really great, and deserves to be ‘finished’.
I just want to run someone through with it already.
I’m still planning to render this in Yafray with HDRI, which will make the metal reflective. However I’m having problems getting HDRI working properly.
I did rush the texturing a little because I’d spent so long modeling I just wanted to get it finished. UV mapping would have made it look a lot better, but the model is complex and it would have taken ages.
For those of you that want to have a go at improving it or just want a look at the blend file, I’ll make it available shortly.
Here’s the .blend file (2.2MB). Enjoy 
http://mysite.reblended.com/andy83/sword.blend
Edit: new link to file
Thanx for sharing
Such a generosity is uncommon 8)
Stefano
Great texturing! I never thought of using Magic that way, thanks for sharing the .blend
Martin
I hope you don´t mind, andy.
Awesome modeling. Just couldn´t resist playing with it.
Super modeling and perfect yaf… . This is realy pro stuff… Nice work
no yaf just blend. I´m very conservative. But thx
Didn´t change any modeling except using the subsurf button for the blade.
Wow that’s great work nico. Brings it very close to photorealism.
I was having problems getting the blade to look good, it has too many vertices I think. Auto smooth and sub surfs don’t work too well on it.
I might come back and refine the model myself at a later stage, just need a short break from it.
Feel free to make changes and play around with the blend file those of you that want to. I’d like to see the results of this