Kidney dagger – Bollock Dagger

The dagger was, alongside the knife, a basic and usually the most accessible tool of self-defense in civilian life during the Middle Ages, as well as a fundamental part of offensive military equipment. The shapes of daggers varied throughout the medieval period depending on the development of armor, regional peculiarities, and fashion trends. Perhaps the longest-lasting and almost universal type of dagger was the so-called bollock dagger (German Nierendolch, French Dague à Couilletes, English Bollock dagger).

Behind this name lies a surprisingly simple weapon, with a smooth grip of circular or slightly oval cross-section that slightly widened and rounded towards the pommel. The pommel didn't always have to be hemispherical; it could also be slightly rounded and covered with a sheet of colored metal. Part of the grip, under the guard made of a metal plate or a thicker metallic segment with protrusions along the blade, consisted of two wooden spherical or ovoid shapes. This assembly, otherwise quite practical for gripping, evoked - whether intentionally or coincidentally - associations with male testes („bollock“), which led to the naming of this type of dagger. The more poetic term "kidney dagger," which was supposed to point out the similarity of the rounded shapes on the guard to kidneys, is a much younger creation of the repressed social morality of the late 19th century.

The blade of the dagger underwent several alternations over the centuries. It usually appeared either as a double-edged blade with a flattened rhomboidal cross-section. Another kind of blade with a triangular cross-section was sharpened on one side along its entire length and on the opposite side had the edge sharpened only perhaps up to ¼ to 1/3 of the blade length at the tip (but sometimes longer), as is the case with modern combat knives and daggers from the 20th and 21st centuries.

And did it say really "over the centuries" in a relation to the bollock dagger? Yes, of course - this type of dagger was indeed enduring. The oldest identified specimens are dated back to the late 13th and early 14th century, and from there onwards, the bollock dagger was widely used across Central and Western Europe until the mid-16th century. Archaeological finds and depictions confirm the presence of this type of dagger in the kingdom of Bohemia from around the second quarter of the 14th century, so it is evident that the aforementioned type of dagger served its purpose not only during the Luxembourg era but also during the Hussite wars and the post-hussite time periods of kings George of Poděbrady and Vladislaus Jagiello. Bollock daggers in various states of preservation have been found, for example, in Prague, Čáslav, Brno, and Hradišťko near Davle. Some of the uncovered specimens have well-preserved handles made of organic material, such as the dagger uncovered during excavations on Veselá Street in Brno. The wearing of bollock daggers persisted well beyond the mid-16th century until the 18th century in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. With regard to visual and structural similarity, it is assumed that the Scottish dirk dagger evolved precisely from the so-called bollock daggers.