Some fish oil and a spoon

It's been a while since our last posting here. So what's been going on? How have we cherished the medieval beauty that is the Lootsi Cog?

Well, it's been different. I mean really. Each time we've been working there, it's been somewhat unique. She keeps changing, that's for sure, and so does the climate around. So do we, I guess, as we learn something new every day we're here and spend time with this ship.

Digging, cleaning, documenting, taking care of the Lootsi cog Photo: Eero Ehanti

At the start we had the mushroom and tiny plants blossoming, when all was very humid and warm. Summer, that was, and freshly excavated shipwreck. Plenty of sand to block planks and beams from drying. Not enough ventilation. That's a killer combination for everything organic to flourish.

But we dealt with that, sweating our days away in the humid tent, removing sand and treating the most mushroomy areas with water-alcohol solution to kill the unwanted growth. We kept the doors open to let fresh breeze from the beautiful Tallinn Bay blow gently through the tent, aiding the ship's long settling-in process to the conditions above ground. After all, it's a condition she hasn't faced in some 700 years.

Last time it wasn't any more the mushrooms, but humidity challenges nevertheless. Water was dripping from the ceiling. Not a leaking roof situation but condensation. The air's getting cooler outside, and the tent's construction allows condensation to form in between the steel frames and tarpaulin. Something to deal with. It's not very dramatic at this point but later on when the drying proceeds, we can't have this.

Something else was different this time, too. The smell. A new one. Especially towards the bow. What's that? Dunno. Quite pleasant. Something's happening and that's fine. Should be like this, in a long conservation project such as this. It's very special ship, and she will definitely undergo various stages, in our loving care.

Another newish smell, fish oil! Yes, indeed, the very same healthy stuff many of us were forced to swallow as kids. We use it here. Not ingesting it ourselves but as one of the elements in our creative potion we use to stabilize the iron fastenings of the rudder.

The rudder fixtures. Those are huge and very important parts of this ship and something to worry about, because they're firmly attached to the wood. They're not just nailed and bolted in place but merged tightly there because of lumpy corrosion crusts formed within the centuries underground. There's no way we can separate the iron from wood, which would have been ideal conservation-wise. This is because methods of stabilizing iron and wood are very contrasting and potentially harmful to each other, which is why separating the two materials would have been good. But as it is, we need to deal with them together, and do it pretty fast, as the iron areas we have exposed by pneumatic hammers and glass bead blowing, started weeping right away.

Heikki cleaning one of the rudder fixtures. Photo: Eero Ehanti

Tears of suffering, in a way. But from the material's point of view, it's not suffering but relaxing really. The iron forged so forcefully from stable ores wishes and tries to return back to a stable form. This is corrosion, very simply put, which can take many forms. Weeping in this case, teardrops on our unique rudder fastenings.

Wiping the tears away isn't enough, the reason for them must be eliminated. Iron must be stabilized by removing the salts that are causing the corrosion cycle, which is not easily done in this case because of the reason just explained. Another approach is to use an inhibitor to stop the corrosion. Blocking the harmful chlorides and others inside there, so to say. But how?

For this, we consulted literature, and eventually our dear colleagues around the world. The recipe we eventually utilized comes from Australia, from our esteemed colleague Dr Ian MacLeod, one of the primal pioneers in this field, our teacher and mentor, whom we greatly admire. It involves a solution containing fish oil among other things in several layers, and adjusting the pH of areas being treated with a base paste.

So this is what we've been applying on that huge iron fastening, the only one cleaned so far. Some beautiful nailheads as well, which we cleaned to expose perfectly preserved sharp surfaces.

It's like straight from the blacksmith's anvil, that surface on those early 14th century nails! Some of them anyway, many are very corroded, mineralized thoroughly.

The touch of a 14th century blacksmith. It's here, and I can sense it when touching those nailheads and rudder fastenings. I can sense one of the sailors as well. Or two. Because of the finds we've made here when doing our endless but very enjoyable cleaning. There was the shoe we talked about in the previous posting, and then a spoon we unearthed a while ago. A perfectly round wooden spoon. Wow, what a cool find! It's strangely round actually, the shape of that spoon. But a spoon it is, no question about that.

Those finds, they brought the people who worked on this ship very much alive to me. The ones who made it, sailed it, walked on it, ate onboard. Lived their lives once, right here.

Now, I'm bound to be a bit spiritual these days. I mean I have a fine western training in conservation and museum studies, and I do understand quite a bit about material-science aspects of cultural heritage. But I do realize that objects are not only materials but carry many meanings and significance beyond the physical form and function they present. Those might be hard to describe. But they're there, I know, which is why I grabbed that spoon that day, very gently, held it in my hand, to feel the person who once used it. And I got it.

It's a window to the depths of humanity, as is every museum object, and every humanmade item.

Understanding the depths of humanity. That's what Orhan Pamuk says in his Modest Museum Manifesto to be one of the reasons museums exist.

This ship is local to Tallinn, where she sank, but global because of the trade routes she once took, in her turn, after millennia of seafaring. It's very deeply human because of the shoe and spoon found on it. And it's meaningfully spiritual because of reasons I cannot explain.

This time in Tallinn, I had a drink in the roof bar of Fotografiska museum. It was a slowish night, and the bartender had time to chat with me, hear my stories of a shipwreck we're conserving in Lennusadam. He took interest all right, that fine young man, which I rewarded by inviting him the next day to see the ship himself, walk on it, feel it.

And he came, thankfully, together with his partner. They walked in, and they were amazed, in awe. Very careful first, as most people are around museum things (that's how we are taught to behave around cultural heritage). 'Can we really, climb on it?!' Yes you can.

They were full of admiration and respect. A bit scared, too, I learned at some point. They got it. What it is in there to get, in that tent, beside and inside the ship. It's different for each one of us, based on our experience, training, culture and feelings at that moment. The latter the most, I believe. For my dear guests at that time, it was something highly spiritual. Something to be awed about but a bit cautious as well.

'Do you have ghosts here, have you encountered them?', she asked.

Yes and no. I haven't seen anything, but I have felt something definitely. An overwhelming warm sensation around and near and inside this ancient ship. We are definitely welcome here, treating her so lovingly. I know it and have never felt scared in here. Not once. Although I could, easily. It's a huge humanmade fragile but very heavy structure. And I'm under it often. What if the whole thing falls on me?

She doesn't. The supports are well designed and done, our protective gear appropriate.

I have also felt the presence of that sailor who ate with the spoon we unearthed that day, and the one who wore that pointed shoe of somewhat dandyish twist. (I know, I'm perhaps mixing practicality to style here, but what can I say, that's how I see things.)

'Maybe you liberated that sailor when you freed the shoe trapped under the planks?', they told me, and I loved hearing that. I'd like to think so definitely.

Be well and free, salty dog.

Everybody sees this so differently and nobody's experience is the only right one. All feelings and thoughts are true and respected here, inside the tent we're working in and where everybody's welcome to visit.

'Like looking at the history's universe, right here!', said the director of the Finnish Institute in Estonia, Hannele Valkeeniemi, who I was happy to welcome in the tent that very same day. It's a fine thing to say when facing such a ship and it's very much to the point. It contains multitudes indeed, what we have here.

She got it too, when placing her fine red armyinsh boot on the plank, to admire and photograph its enormity, in so many ways. She got it, too, her take on the Lootsi Cog.

We look forward cooperating with the Finnish Institute in Estonia in making this ship and our work more accessible and known.