Real or not: the famous viking women knife

[HWooldridge]

From a utilitarian perspective, they provide a useful function.  I made a small one as an exercise and gave it to my oldest son, who is a groundskeeper for a local family with large land holdings.  With no instruction or prompting from me, he naturally tied a string through the handle loop and hung it around his neck to use daily for clipping plants and general cutting purposes.  The loop knife seems to be one of the first "tactical" designs developed many moons ago...no matter the initial land of origin.

[arftist]

As a proud Norwegian I hate to say this, but the Danes and the Swedes were also large players as both Varangians and also bladesmiths and the Swedes had the advantage (still) of having the highest quality iron ore in the world.