A good thread topic!
I believe that the practice of bending or killing a warriors sword for the grave symbolises the death of their own physical form and spirit.
In pre-Christian beliefs, and following into Christianity, the sword is the spirit. Of the realms or Worlds in which we exist and interplay, there are two, the physical and metaphysical, thus providing us with a physical and non-physical spirit.
When ones physical body and spirit died, this was a way to symbolise that to all, that literally, their sword had died.
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