Norway girl discovers 3,700-year-old dagger

Elise is a mere 8-year-old girl from Osoyro in Norway yet she is making headlines and for all the right reasons. A smithsonianmag.com report stated that this student of Our Children’s School hit the limelight when on her visit to the playground she found an artefact that got her international attention.

Bending to pick up a shard of glass, this small rock immediately caught her attention and her teacher, Karen Drange, on realising its potential importance, informed the Vestland County Council.

Lo and behold the five-inch-long object which Elise found was not an ordinary and everyday item. It was a flint dagger which belonged to the Neolithic era. This period started in this region around 2,400 BCE and witnessed human beings moving from their primary occupation of hunting and gathering to farming.

As per Laura Geggel of Live Science this type of dagger “is often found with sacrificial finds”.

Further, as flint is not found in Norway, the scholars think this 3,700-year-old dagger was made somewhere else, possibly Denmark.

When asked to describe her discovery, Elise was succinct and said: “It was nice.”

Following Elise’s find, the school grounds were dug up for exploration and as no artefacts connected with the dagger could be found, it strengthened the thinking that the tool had come to Norway from outside.

Experts and archaeologists who have examined the dagger have described it as a rare find and beautiful. It will be closely studied at the University Museum of Bergen to know more about Neolithic life and people in Norway.

Interestingly, Elise is not the only child to discover relics and artefacts connected with the past. Saga Vanecek in 2018 as an eight-year-old child had found a sword in a Swedish lake that was from the Iron Age.

Likewise, six years old Imri Elya in 2020 had spotted a 3,500-year-old Canaanite tablet when she went hiking with his family in Israel.