Willem,
This is a very interesting piece, but by the shear simplicity of it, pinning down a time period and place of origin can be extremely hard. As you yourself noted, we can all make educated guesses at best. The general shape of this blade has been around from the 15th c. up to the 19th. The crudeness of the blade (no insult intended, I really like this type of sword) could either indicate a particular preference to such (certain African swords, particularly Sudanese) vs one made out of desparation (Spanish colonial, colonial American, etc). I agree that the inscription appears to be 'Solingen', who of course, made swords for many European countries, the New World colonies, etc. The horn grip, 'IF' it is original to the piece, reminds me of those found on espada in the west, but also found on African pieces. The straight, double edged, single fullered blade seems to rule out any Asian/Persian/E Indies to me anyways. The simplicity of the sword, its straight blade and cross-guard do resemble some naval types, but the thickened blade, early markings and grip shape don't strike me as naval.
If I had to put in an opinion, I'd say Spanish colonial, because:
-The horn grips resemble espada and hilt of my Brazilian cutlass
-Solingen blades were turning up in the Spanish SW,Caribbean, etc with some frequency during this period
-The primitiveness of the blade is common in this region, which FREQUENTLY recycled old blades.
-The shape reminds me of Spanish parrying daggers (main gauche) and swords. I seem to remember a Spanish dagger with a thickened, 'armor-piercing' blade like yours somewhere, perhaps on this forum???
My .02 cents
