10. Put a Ritual Dagger Into Her Sheath
While this may sound like an innuendo, it is a quite literal ritual form of courting from Finland. Traditionally, when a girl reached the marriageable age in Finland, her father would gift her a sheath to fit a puukko knife, which is a type of short utility knife. The girl would then wear the sheath in her girdle whenever she went out and about. An interested suitor would come up to her and slip the knife into her sheath. If she kept it, it meant she was interested. If she returned it, it was a no.
Other Nordic countries shared similar traditions built around the sheathing of knives to denote interest. The idea of giving a woman a token of affection that she could either keep or return to signal her level of interest is found throughout many cultures and eras. When one thinks about it, our modern engagement rings serve a very similar purpose, with the ring typically being returned if an engagement is called off.
Presumably, the full sheath was also a way of indicating to other men that a woman was actively courting someone. An additional benefit of many courtship gifts was indicating to other potential partners that someone was involved. Perhaps in a display of sexism, such tokens were often only worn by women leaving men free to court additional women while the intended wives were marked as “taken.”