Daggers with balls

In most cases, a knife was not considered a harmful weapon until it was actually used as such. An exception was daggers – knives designed to inflict harm. According to the Laws of the Land, carrying a dagger was punishable by a fine. Nevertheless, archaeological finds from both towns and countryside suggest that daggers were quite common despite the prohibition. This may indicate that the law was difficult to enforce. However, we do not know exactly how the Laws of the Land defined a dagger, and some of them may have been in the grey area against utility knives. Some daggers were probably also for military use. A common type was the so-called “bollock daggers”, which had explicit carved testicles at the lower end of the handle. The blade and the scabbard were well-known symbols of the male and female genitalia, respectively. The bold design was also supposed to demonstrate courage and manliness. European medieval art shows that these daggers were meant to be worn visibly – not only to be rowdy, but also to warn that one was able to defend oneself. The Laws of the Land did not forbid self-defence.