Seal Hunters from Runö

September 24th. Last night we had a further taste of the Equinox in a northerly gale with heavy rain. This morning, however, though the wind continued, the sky cleared, the sun shone, and I made up my mind to sail this evening, if the weather held and the barometer, now slowly rising, did not take another dive. In the meantime I determined to use Sunday morning by repaying the visit of the men of Runö. I had promised to photograph their ship.

I saw the men of Runö about a mile away on shore, conspicuous in their pale homespuns, and, slinging my camera on my back, was blown along the pier and almost off it as I hurried in pursuit of them. “These men live on a little island,” said I to myself, “therefore they cannot be good walkers. At any rate I, who have spent half my life afoot on the fells of England, ought to be able to catch up with them.” Catch them I did, but after a long struggle, though they did not seem to be hurrying. The older, shorter man was using his carved stick as a staff, the younger was turning in his toes as he walked, and yet they kept up a steady pace, as regular as animals. Trotting beside them was a boy, whose dress proclaimed him of the mainland. The men of Runö were, I think, wandering round on this Sunday morning to see what they could gather from the people of the continent. When at last I caught them, they had stopped at one of the few inhabited cottages, and the young one, after greeting me with joy and agreeing at once to take me to then ship, bitterly complained that the house was shut up and no one was at home. He pointed to the sun and to my camera case, remembering that I had told him yesterday that I could photograph his ship only if there was a good sun.

We set off across country, the men of Runö swearing that it was not far to the ship. We passed through the grounds of a mined country house, a fine place before the war, but now a desolate shell; then out over wide marshland, and, after half an hour’s walking, they pointed to a white mast against the shadow of a distant wood. The men of Runö and I walked our natural pace, and the Estonian boy trotted at our heels. As we walked we talked, a sort of Volapuk or Esperanto, composed of German, Swedish and Russian words stirred well together with a lot of goodwill. We understood one another excellently. They explained that the rig of their boat was not like that of the Estonians, but was a traditional rig from older times than man can remember, and peculiar to Runö. They told me that they had a fine gun, that there were pike in some water to the left of us, that they had shot good duck in a bight on the other side, and so on. I told them that we were sailing in the evening, but they both vehemently protested. “No, no! It will blow again a great storm in the night, but in the morning will be clear weather and a fair wind for Riga.” I pointed to the clear blue sky overhead, but they would have none of it. “Man fran Runö kens wetter. Bettra i morgen. Clockan fem segel. En gud wind till Riga,” and so on, with such insistence that I made up my mind to wait till morning and see if the men of Runö knew the weather as well as they thought they did.

Talking so, we came through a little wood to a tiny natural harbour, where their ship lay at anchor, a strange ship indeed, bigger than Racundra, but not much, with a long bowsprit, a foremast with a high spritsail, and a mainmast of great length, exactly in the middle of the ship, with a marked rake towards the stern, a short gaff and a very long boom projecting far over the counter. Drawn up on the grassy shore were two little boats shaped like narrow spoons, that could, I should think, be used either with oars or with a single paddle like a canoe. I took a photograph of the ship as she lay there, with the little boats on the shore, and each man ran of his own accord to be photographed each by his own little boat, which, as they explained, each had made for himself. The Estonian boy wanted to be photographed also, but they would have none of this and drove him away, saying that he was not from Runö and therefore should not be in the picture. He ran off angrily into the woods, and we saw him no more. Then we all three got into one of the little boats, and the younger man ferried us out to the ship. I sat in the stern, the younger man rowed in the bows, and the elder squatted in the bottom by way of ballast. The ship had her name in blue and white elaborately painted on her counter: “Juba: Runö.” They brought the boat stern foremost under the counter and I scrambled up and in.

Whatever the Juba might want in cleanliness, and she wanted a good deal, she made up in strength. She was built in 1911 on Runö. The elder man had taken part in the building. Her planking was of oak, two inches thick, I judged, and her ribs⁠—square-sided ribs of ash or elm, I could not be certain from their description which they meant⁠—were enormously heavy. The counter was partially decked, the whole of the midships portion was open, while the forepart of the ship was decked over with a high curved roof, making a very roomy forecastle. In front of the mainmast were two big barrels, one full of seal-fat, the other of seal-flesh. A skin was drying in the sun. In the covered forecastle, a great space, bigger even than Racundra’s prided cabin, were stowed a great mass of sails and all kinds of gear. They burrow under the sails to sleep. There were shelves along the sides with rough wooden spoons and boxes which they decorate with fire, scraps of leather, partly made shoes, hanks of yarn and fishing-tackle. They brought out their seal-gun, a muzzle-loading flintlock that might have been used by the Jacobites. They had made a case for it of sealskin with the hair outside. The elder man had also a Japanese rifle, but they both agreed that the ancient flint was “bettra.” I asked them if they were going to sell the sealskin in Arensburg. “No,” they said; “the sealskins are wanted for the making of shoes for the people of Runö.” They showed me their own furry shoes, with up-pointed tips and worked leather borders, very fine shoes indeed, for this was Sunday, and just as today they were wearing the newest of pale homespun jackets, with trousers like straight tubes to match, so they were wearing new shoes, both shoes and clothes being identical with those they had worn yesterday except for their newness. Everything they wore they had made themselves on the island or in their ship, with the exception of their caps. The elder had a cap of plain blue, the younger a Newmarket check cloth cap, faded almost white, with holes through which shreds of pink silk lining showed, but still a fine thing from foreign parts and worn with Sunday clothes in simple pride.

They told me they came every year to this particular little inlet. I asked how many years⁠—twenty? Far more. The older man said that his father had brought him there the first time he came. I have no doubt that for not ten or twenty but for several hundred years a little ship of strange rig has anchored there and emptied out of its hold the little spoon-shaped sealing boats, and simple men in pale clothes bound with black, with ornamental shoes of sealskin. These men, perhaps better than any other Europeans except the Laplanders, continue into our times the life their forebears lived in the Middle Ages and earlier. Steam has meant nothing to them except a visit from a steamboat once a year. The Iron Age brought them knives and iron boat-fastenings (though even now they often build without). A flintlock gun, a Japanese rifle, that rare treasure of a Newmarket cap: what are these but trifles? They could kill seals and cover their heads without these things. One thing of real value to them dropped from civilization they had indeed upon the Juba, and they brought it to me in its box and opened its dark magic with proper reverence. It was an old dry compass from a maker in Wapping, taken, no doubt, from some ship wrecked fifty years ago on the rocky western shores of their island.

We parted with high mutual esteem, expressed by an exchange. I gave them the old pipe I was smoking. The elder man gave me a worn tobacco-pouch. “Fran England till Runö. Fran Runö till England,” he said, carefully stowing my pipe upon his crowded shelf. Then there was tremendous handshaking and bowing and taking off of caps. After which the younger man took me ashore. I had got his name, and he begged me to send him the pictures, addressed simply “Arensburg for Runö.” “We shall get them next summer when the steamer comes.”