[Artis Aboltins]

Many internet stores offer "replicas" of this type of knife as typical for iron age and viking period scandinavian womans tool. However, so far I have been unable to locate any existant finds in any of major museums. Perharps someone can point me to an apropriate source?

And here is the image of the knife in question:

[Mikael Ranelius]

It's a typical reenactorism. There are a few Iron age, pre-viking findings of somewhat similar knives, but there is no proof that they where exclusively used by women.or that they survived into the viking age for that matter.

Iron age krumkniv ("crooked knife") from Sweden (as close as you get):

http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/fid.asp?fid=371926&g=1

As far as I know, these knives predates the vikings with some 500-1000 years. In fact there is nothing to suggest that Norse viking age women used anything other than the same kind of knife that the men did.

[Dmitry Z~G]

Ahh, the timeless Scandinavian design. The IKEA of its period!
This WWI trench knife was fashioned by a nameless French soldier from the German barbed wire picket. It was [surprisingly] called a...'nail'.

[Artis Aboltins]

Thanks for replays, guys, it confirmed what I thought was the case

[Peter Johnsson]

This is the kind of knife you would expect a well to do woman to carry as part of her set with Key, shears and knife hanging from chains (a Gotlandic find):

[Artis Aboltins]

Thanks, Peter, that is exactly the sort of knife I would expect a woman of the period to have - but since more and more of those strange all-metal knives have been seen to show up in the reenactment community I decided to investigate their origin, as people have been asking me about making those but our group's internal regulations are quite strict regarding historical accuracy so I did not wanted to go with just making something that does not have an actual facts backing it. And so it would appear that this design have no evidence of being used in the period, meaning I will recomend people to use something else that has actual findings proving it's existence.

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

The story I've been told behind that knife (though a much more elegant version) is that it was designed by a famous dutch smith some 30 years ago, who has been selling them at Viking markets since. It proved very popular, so as it happens a lot at these markets, everybody else started copying it and many Viking reenactors bought them and usr them. But it has no historical origins before those 30 years ago. A lot of Viking reenactment is more fantasy then history, using it's own material culture that unfortunately has little to do with history. There are exceptions of course.

[Artis Aboltins]

That reminds me quite a lot of the story behind the "chairs" so many of the reenactors of this period use - the ones that are made of the two planks forming a roughly X as on this image . As far as I know similar chairs are in use by some african tribes, but nothing ever have been found that would indicate that people would have been using those during Iron Age or VIking period in northern Europe...

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Heh, when I saw them I instantly thought "Hey, African chairs" I know, you do have to fill in gaps. But many gaps can be filled with archeological data if you look for it. But as long as people keep copying eachother rather then opening a few books, things will remain in fantasy world.

[Mikael Ranelius]

Ah, those chairs, I was actually thinking of them yesterday as I wrote my reply! Also a reenactorism of course, like so many other things associated with the Vikings. Truth is that the world of viking reenactment is a virtual minefield of reenactorisms, myths, factoids, and misconceptions, and that's the main reason I haven't really dared to approach reenacting that period.

[Howard Burdett]

I thought those were referred to as Blacksmith's Knives.

[Arne Focke]

The only form of knife i know that bears at least a little resemblance to the knife in question is a shaving knife from the bronze age. Sorry i don't have a picture at hand, but the shape of the blade is different anyway. Only the overall concept of having an all metal knife with a twisted handle is the same.

Now we could speculate... if it is a shaving kife and we "want" to call it a womans knife... does that mean women in the bronze age already shaved their legs?
Lets better not go there!

[Lin Robinson]

[Douglas S]

[Andrew W]

That's a tricky question, because a lot of the older archeology operated under the assumption that certain items or styles of dress were highly gendered (assumptions like brooches worn in specific places indicate women, swords always indicate men, jewelry (except for things like arm rings) always mean women...), and once made, these assumptions were rarely backed up with osteological evidence (at times, the osteological evidence was actually overruled by the gendered interpretation of the grave goods when the reports were being written). So I'm highly suspicious of claims that certain styles of knife 'were women's knives.' Often, we only know that some were found in some women's graves, and more were found in graves that were attributed to women because a 'woman's' knife was in the grave. This doesn't mean a man wouldn't carry or use one.

[Dmitry Z~G]

[Elling Polden]

The knife posted by Peter is a woman's knife by virtue of the way it is worn, not by the type of the knife. Such knifes would usually be carried in a belt loop. However, women did not wear belts, so this one is suspended from one of the brooches on the dress by a chain.

When it comes to stuff being attributed to differnet sexes, the most amusing one is the Thor hammers. These are almost exclusively found in women's graves. When they are found in in men's graves, they are usually found in the hand. Sometimes, single brooches are found in the same way, representing a memento to a deceased husband. (amulets are for women and weaklings, anyhow.)

[Peter Johnsson]

[Andrew W]

Effros, Merovingian mortuary archaeology and the making of the early Middle Ages [2003]), has a good discussion of some of the dangers of taking identifications of graves as 'male' or 'female' at face value (especially those done in the late 19th or early 20th century). These identifications were more often based on assumptions of what men and women would have worn than a scientific analysis of the sex as revealed by the skeletal remains. Thor's hammers might be found around the neck in women's graves; but those graves might just as easily have been identified as belonging to women because there were Thor's hammers around their necks. Effros examines a number of specific examples, like that of the early 20th century archeologist Fremersdorf:

[Timo Nieminen]

I don't think it's all that uncertain. At least not when done reasonably - gender-identifying graves on the basis of the grave-goods in total, rather than on a single item. If there are two distinct sets of grave good in adult graves, with a close-to-50/50 split, a gender distinction is a good guess. When preconceptions allow one to reasonably guess which of the two genders is which, it's a fair guess.

Of course, you want available osteological evidence to support this generally, rather than disconfirm it.

If one keeps in mind the provisional nature of the conclusion, "women's knife" is a perfectly good description. Only goes wrong when this is read as "iron-clad truth". (Alas, a common enough failing in public reading, even of stuff from the hard sciences!)

Somewhat different when it comes to exceptional graves. What to make of the Suontaka sword? Does the general "female" nature of the grave goods mean that the grave occupant was female? Was the sword hers? Etc. Given more of a pattern, one can be more certain (e.g., Sarmation/Sauromation female "warrior" graves).

(Social distinctions are harder to deal with than gender distinctions, since social status is a little more fluid than gender status (which is again more fluid than gender per se). Can be done, e.g., Pearson et al., "Social Ranking in the Kingdom of Old Silla, Korea: Analysis of Burials", J. Anthropological Archaeology 8, 1-50, 1989.)