Magical Charms, Rats and a Piece of Paper
What if there's a magical sphere around the ship? A protective charm created by carefully placing amulets in chosen places, against evil spirits? Placed and cast there by the sailors who once sailed this ship, back then in the 14th century?
A friend sent me a link to a Wikipedia site about concealed shoes. This was after my latest blog post about the mystery of 30 left foot shoes we've found here, on board our ship, from under planks and in between frames, pretty much everywhere.
Of course there are shoes among the finds, how couldn’t there be, but we've been wondering about how come they're single ones and so dispersed in various areas. Even way up in the sides. As if tucked in between the beams and planks, in each part of the ship. Why? Where are their pairs?
Maybe they aren't there. Maybe they never were. Maybe they're there alone like that on purpose.
Maybe they’re magical charms. Maybe they’re there to protect the ship and sailors from demons, witches and evil spirits. Maybe they’re amulets.
'Well, left-foot shoes bring luck, and they're often found in old buildings', my friend wrote, and sent the Wikipedia link. Maybe this is a twist of the same superstitious practice?
And indeed, it turns out there's an age-old practice of concealing shoes in buildings. They're tucked inside structures and plastered in the walls. They're pairless and used, worn out. That's important. They need to be somebody's, made and worn to fit someone, whose presence is still there in that shoe, maybe even their smell. To keep away the evil, whatever that might be. Surely something very real and present, in the mindset and reality of Medieval people.
This goes way back. I read that there could be dozens of such single shoes in a single building.
But was this really done on ships? After searching the net and asking AI, I didn't find a direct reference to hidden magical charm shoes in Hanseatic Ships, but that doesn't mean there weren't any. We don't have many Hanseatic Cogs, preserved like this one. Knowledge is scarce.
These were people who came from towns around the Baltic, where this practice certainly existed, and these ships were their homes for long stretches of time, when sailing was slow, especially with such a single-sailed vessel requiring certain wind conditions to sail. There was plenty of waiting, during nights when there wasn't any sailing because of wholly lightless conditions, and when the wind wasn't right. Of course they nestled in, as well as possible. Made the ship their home. With magical charms and all.
That late December day I didn't find a shoe but a small bundle of something fabricy, half open. Upon carefully inspecting it, I recognized the beautiful natural symmetry of a tiny skull in it. A rat's skull.
A magical item perhaps, I thought, a rat's skull wrapped in fabric, hidden under the ships planks.
There was another bundle, a bigger one, of same woolly mesh-like material. Longish shape, something in it. Bone here too? Many of them maybe, small thin ones?
No, it’s not something wrapped, I realized after talking to my colleagues. This just might be the rat. Not bundled and wrapped in anything but the very animal, whose skin and fur had half mummified and metamorphosed to this soft bundle.
There it lay, under the planks, in between the frames. Head loose. There was another one, to my delight. At least it didn't die alone. Poor things. This was times just after the Black Death ravaged Europe but surely these didnt carry any of it, no, that would be a horrible greeting from times gone by.
The day of excavating and conserving lingered on, with the typical stillness. Timeless, as it often is towards the end of day, after hours of intense work on the embrace of our good ship. There’s often certain tranquility in the air.
Tallinn presented itself wholly gray that day. Misty rainy. The chimney outside Patarei prison reflected on one of the numerous ponds formed because of melting snow. A black wet Christmas about to happen. A good place and time and mood to think about magical charms and rats of medieval times.
We don't know much about superstitions and beliefs of sailors of those days. 'The past is a foreign country', David Lowenthal wrote. They did things differently. Indeed.
And then, when sitting on the bosom of this 14th century ship, it suddenly made perfect sense to me. Of course. Of course they protected the ship thus, by numerous single shoes tucked in between the planks, in all areas possible. Even way up in the sides, where they wouldn't have naturally drifted, I don't think so.
She is heavily protected, the ship, by a charm, a magical sphere created by those shoes. They aren’t just random leftovers of sailors escaping a sinking ship but very carefully and rationally placed practical items of necessary use. They're means to survive, on long sea voyages.
This makes sense. To them but to me too, explains the way I've always felt in there. The weird feeling of being safe and welcome. A feeling totally imaginary yet wholly real.
Maybe the rats are parts of the same charm? I read somewhere that such things have been found together with concealed shoes. Maybe there's something else too.
And indeed, just before wrapping the day up, a piece of something thin whitish brown appeared, just kind of drifted from under a plank, as if blown there for me to reach and take.
Paper? Really?
A piece of notepaper forgotten from the archaeologists who first excavated the ship on the finding site maybe?
No, that's not it. Can’t be. It came from under the sand and through centuries. This is something medieval. A piece of paper, very thin, sharp edged. Except on one corner where it's torn. Very flexible but doesn't break. Peculiar stripes on it, as if musical scores. Or then it's reeds glued together, to make this material to write on. Could this be papyrus, made of reeds? What would piece of papyrus do in a Hanseatic Ship? Surely the paper they had at the time would have been something much coarser and lumpier?
What is it? And, what’s on it? A message from the past? Not much is visible, but there must be something. Can’t be blank, why would it be? What is it?
Sailing instructions? Captain’s last words? Or a spell? An element of that sophisticated magical protection made of shoes and perhaps something else?
What is it?
That is for science to find out, as is the whole story of the shoes. And rats, what’s in them, what have they eaten and what that means. The whole story, which unfolds slowly when specialists of different fields come together to study this what we are preserving here.
What I just wrote is theorizing and studying instincts and feelings based on knowledge and understanding of history and humanity. Spirituality. My moods. Trusting on gut-feeling.
Perhaps it’s wholly imaginary. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t true and real, to me, right now.
So real, that it feels kind of bad now, dismantling the strong protection, one shoe at a time. What’ll happen when the charm is totally dismantled, the spell broken?
All photos: Eero Ehanti