Why is that? Something in ancient nordic tradition forbiding these weapons?

Oversight. There's a dragon priest dagger though.

Maces or warhammers? I've seen nords whipping their maces out.

Not so much daggers but Nords are one of the races most likely to use a heavy arsenal of weapons and armor. Their culture and society embraces fighting with pure melee style combat and Nords are renown weapon smiths.

The thing is that you find the Ancient weapons being wielded by draugr, and they have issues with blunt weapons that endanger their brittle bones.

In the older games in the series (Daggerfall at least) skeletal enemies had resistance to sharps, but weakness to blunts. The draugr are those guys brought back to (un)life.

It's a shame that this was on oversight really. To me, a Nord is mostly renowned for using a battle axe or war hammer...


These Draugr are ancient Nords of old... The kinsman of Ysgrammor... The brothers of Tongues...

If anything, it would be an oversight if they were included. Listen to Garothmuk gro-Muzgub from Suran. Not all weapons were ubiquitous in the historical cultures of TES. Maces and warhammers are a product of knightly traditions, which ancient Skyrim didn't have.

"Heavy two-handed hammers were developed in the West to counter the defensive protection of the heavily armored Western knight. The iron warhammer has a single head with a balancing spike to penetrate plate armor. The steel warhammer, on the other hand, has two heavy heads, and is designed to batter or knock down an armored opponent."

"The mace is a favored weapon of the Western knight, combined with a standard shield. Dwemer and Daedric maces, superb weapons, but expensive and rare, are prized heirlooms of the Dunmer Great House nobility."

Now daggers are another story:

"Every culture produces some variant on the short multi-purpose weapon called the dagger. Dagger weapons differ dramatically in quality and effectiveness; they are further differentiated by a wide variety of enchantments commonly placed on these easily concealed weapons. Daedric and glass daggers are shockingly efficient weapons, despite their small size and low mass."

In theory, there should be ancient Nordic daggers. But there are, it's just that the only around are the Dragon priests' daggers. Presumably soldiers and hunter relied upon other types of weapons and they weren't as important as concealed weapons because knowing Nords, it was acceptable to walk around everywhere with an axe. There'd little point in giving daggers to draugr at any rate.

Good post on the lore, Quirky, except the bolded part seems to be inaccurate:

Whereas the Steel warhammers actually have a balancing spike like the Iron, as does every warhammer except Dwarven, Dragonbone, and Stalhrim (though one could argue the Stalhrim has somewhat of a spike or point of sorts). Other than unique weps like Volundrang, the only one of the standard warhammers that "has two heavy heads, and is designed to batter or knock down an armored opponent" is the Dwarven, not the Steel.

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Weapons

The quote was from an NPC in Morrowind, a smith and expert armorer. The steel warhammer in Morrowind is double-headed.

I'm still waiting for the Nordic chaingun

Ah...umm...woops! Well I never played Morrowind so...no wonder "...from Suran" didn't strike any bells with me.

Carry on!

Sure. It's an interesting bit of lore, though, and consistent, apart from the change in the shape of the hammers between games, that the eastern provinces favored edged weapons.

So was the http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Iron_Warhammer_(Morrowind) (which was actually just a wooden warhammer with iron bands around it) in TES III.

There were a lot of very minor weapon mistakes or oversights in that game.

Yes it's some interesting lore and quite appreciated if I hadn't have gotten it screwed up with Skyrim lore. D: