Valaška
A small axe with a longer handle, a walking, defensive and working tool of Slovak shepherds, a mark of their status and a prop in the men's dance odzemok.
Quick Facts
About the weapon
The valaška is a small axe with a longer handle. Slovak ethnography describes it as a walking, defensive and working tool of shepherds, and also as a dance prop. The earliest mention we have found comes from a 1692 price list of the Zvolen county. The metal parts were forged by village blacksmiths, while shepherds made the handle and its decoration themselves. They adorned it with small geometric and plant motifs, chased, engraved or inlaid with metal; later scenes of shepherd and outlaw life were added. From the end of the 17th century a metal sheath for the blade was compulsory. In the Orava and Spiš regions valaškas appear covered in sheet metal with brass rings, which helped shepherds guide the flock. Wooden valaškas for hunters also existed. As a fighting weapon we have not been able to establish the valaška in the sources used; they record it as a tool, a mark of status and a prop. It is danced with in odzemok, an improvised men's solo dance whose name comes from 'from the ground' and which is danced in Slovakia and in the Moravian region of Valašsko; in some eastern Slovak areas the dancers hold a long staff instead of the valaška. In the group form the dancers perform a mock duel: one aims at the head, the other at the legs. Odzemok opens the first of Antonín Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, op. 72.