This article shall work through some of the statistics found among the examples on the Norwegian Museum website. Upon this website there are close to five hundred examples of Tessak. Around three hundred of whom have full measurements for sword length, blade length and blade width with which to give a fair representation of the sword as found in Norway.

In 1604 King Christian IV enacted the “Den norske Landslov”. This was an update of the Norwegian laws and was partially based on the earlier laws put in place by Magnus VI Lagebøte's. A part of this law was the requirement of all farmers to own weapons in accordance with the size of their properties. Starting in the late 1580s King Christian IV had already been importing swords from Germany to supply at cost to his Norwegian subjects and with this law the importation was widely expanded. The most popular weapon was the Tessak (also known as Dussack, Dussage, etc).



The Tessak is a basket-hilted sword that had come into being in the 16th century. Originally found in Central Europe it quickly spread through Northern Europe during the century. This sword seems to be an evolution on the already popular Messer.

Per Terje Norheim has proposed the following typology for the Tessak. This typology is based upon the hilts of the Tessaks found in the museums of Norway. It is not meant to be an exact typology of all Tessaks found across Europe.