This discovery is a rare oddity, as the knife was found alone, without accompanying artifacts, and is made of stone not sourced from Norway.
An 8-year-old girl named Elise, from Norway, found a peculiar gray-brown stone while playing at her school in Vestland County, in the western part of the country. The gray-brown object turned out to be a prehistoric dagger crafted by people during the Stone Age approximately 3,700 years ago.
3700-year-old stone dagger.
Elise brought her discovery to her teacher. The teacher noticed that the 12 cm long tool looked quite ancient and summoned archaeologists from the Vestland County Council to examine the artifact.
Based on its shape, the dagger may date back to the Middle Stone Age or the Neolithic period, when prehistoric humans began shaping stone tools and utilizing domesticated plants and animals, building permanent villages, and developing crafts.
Since daggers of this type are very rare, often discovered alongside sacrificial items, the Vestland County Council collaborated with the University Museum of Vestland in Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city, to investigate the area further. However, no additional evidence from the Stone Age has been found to date.
Nevertheless, another question has arisen regarding the type of stone that makes up the dagger. Researchers indicate that flint is a type of hard sedimentary rock that does not occur naturally in Norway, suggesting that the dagger likely came from neighboring Denmark across the North Sea. Previous findings of flint artifacts in Norway have been explained as a result of stone movement during the Ice Age or subsequent trade.
The Stone Age, which includes the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, spanned from 10,000 BC to 1,800 BC in Norway. The earliest Stone Age people lived along the country’s coastline, fishing in the sea and hunting game.
To do so, they needed tools, which is why they used stone and bone to make spears, axes, bows and arrows, harpoons, and fishing hooks. Some local hunter-gatherers settled permanently to farm around 2400 BC.
