Hello everyone!

I'm an archaeologist from Norway working for NIKU (we cover the norwegian Medieval period, spanning roughly from 1000-1536).

Last winter we finished an excavation in the old medieval harbor of Oslo which yielded very interesting results. Two of these were

* a small cluster of what seems to be chain mail. There seems to be some kind of verdigris on the rings, which strikes me as odd because you'd expect the rings to made up pure iron? I might be totally wrong here as I'm no expert in armour, nor weapons.

*two shafts of a bollock dagger. One in what is thought to be made of walrus tooth and one of wood. I'm interested in any information you might have on these types daggers. Stylistically they seem to be early, as the later bollock daggers tend to be more flamboyant?

Both finds were found in a stratigraphical context that would imply a dating to the 14th century.

Any comment which could potentially shed more light over these objects will be very appreciated.

PS: Pictures should be attached

Cheers

K

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The chains haven't been properly cleansed of mud since they are going in for conservation. [ Download ]

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Walrus tooth shaft [ Download ]

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Wooden shaft [ Download ]

I could very well be wrong, but at 9mm outer diameter and 7mm inner diameter, these rings seem on the very large size for mail.

I don't know enough about bollock daggers to comment on that, other that the state of preservation seems really excellent!

For those interested, there are some more photo's of (edit:) another excavation in Oslo here:
https://www.niku.no/en/prosjekter/follobaneprosjektet/

Very cool, photo's include a medieval "log cabin" as well as a wooden road. Preservation conditions for wood must be really, really good there!

Hi Khalil,

The daggers are fantastically preserved and I suspect you are right in that that are very plain and 'workaday' pieces. So yes I suspect that you are right on them being earlier pieces. They probably had metal 'impact plates' at the base of the guard and I think I can see this on the wooden one, though less clear in the ivory one, but probably there.

The shaft and balls being split into two parts makes sense for the ivory one because of material size and this is something you sometimes see in bollock daggers for a few reasons, but for the plain wooden one (box wood?) this is far more unusual though curiously it is a better structural way of making this dagger type.

What is interesting is that these are very plain and I we would imagine the ivory one to be high status, but there is nothing about this piece that suggests anything other than 'workman' so was the ivory common enough to not be worth much up in Scandinavia?

Tod