A testicle dagger, a style of knife named after the phallic shape of the hilt, dating the mid-1400s has been discovered at Gullberg Fortress in Gothenburg, southwestern Sweden. The dagger has an iron blade and a wood handle made of curly birch decorated with circles. It was found broken — the tip of the blade is gone, and the edge extensively chipped — and in the same excavation layer as crossbow bolts, indicating that it was used in battle conditions.
The hill overlooking the mouth of the Göta River had a fortress as early as the 14th century. For centuries the location was Sweden’s only direct outlet to the North Sea as the rest of the west coast belonged to Denmark-Norway, so it was of great strategic importance. The modern city of Gothenburg was founded in 1621, but when the fort was built, it protected its predecessor city, Lödöse, a Viking settlement that grew into a major trade center by the 13th century.
Gullberg was attacked early and often, and there is evidence of multiple phases of destruction and reconstruction between the 14th and the 17th centuries. It was destroyed for good by Danish troops in 1612. An eyewitness, Cecilia Krakow, who was just 10 years old and lived at the fortress with her mother Emerentia Pauli, described the Danish attack thus:
“At last, 25 or 30 of the Danes entered our cottage, where we children were, and the maid was baking. They sat down around the table and benches and demanded food, for they were tired
and hungry, having gone two days without eating. The maid gave them some cakes. They ate and dried themselves, thinking that the others would surely handle things well at the castle.
But God, and my blessed mother, along with the soldiers’ wives, dragged out barrels and tubs and whatever else they could find, to throw and pull into the passage so that no more of them could enter the courtyard.”
The small stone tower, dubbed the Scounce of the Lion, standing on the hilltop today was built in the 1680s. The fortress site was excavated between 2014 and 2023 as part of a railway construction project. Not surprisingly, the oldest artifacts found in the excavation were weapons, including crossbow bolts and arrowheads. Later weaponry unearthed at Gullberg Balls include lead balls for light cannons and pistols. The cannon balls were made in the fortress and some of them were fired.
Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a cellar and staircase from a 16th century tower. The walls were an astonishing 13 feet wide. Artifacts found in the cellar include beer barrel taps, a sand sprinkler for absorbing excess ink and a sundial. The sundial is a particularly notable find because it’s an engraved slab of limestone and while its pointer is missing, the rest of it is intact.
A selection of the artifacts found in nearly a decade of excavations are now on display at the Historical Museum in Stockholm in its Current Archaeology exhibition which runs through January 2026.
* This article was originally published here
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