I've heard of this dagger before but I had no clue it was so large. 35.2 cm total length, 21.8 cm for just the blade. A little longer and it could almost be called a short sword. Very impressive for meteoric iron.
Is it? Pratchett's sword was hand-forged from meteoric iron, using fairly traditional methods and was "full-sized". (Though he used a combination of surface deposits and meteoric iron, and I'm not sure on the ratio.)
From what I understand, meteoric iron is very difficult to forge, tending to crack. Being able to bring it up to welding temperature helps deal with that, but according to the article this dagger was forged at a lower temperature.
Unrefined meteoric iron is brittle, yes. When you remove the impurities, it works just like normal iron though. But it was the only source of iron available to some cultures for a long time.
Humans originally used meteoric metal became they lacked the ability to mine and smelt the ore themselves. When humanity gained the technological ability to reliably and economically refine iron ore themselves, meteoric metal was discarded (rightfully) as inferior and more trouble than it was worth.
