Fishing with a pine-root trotline with juniper gorges is historically Finnish and some of the old fishermen still use it. When visiting my friend Martti Arkko at his wilderness studio last winter we used this method to get some burbots into our fish soup.

During the winter, the burbot is a common catch—it is not beautiful but tastes good. Burbot roe is also a great delicacy. In Siberia, our ancestors used burbot skin, tanned with human urine, for clothing and other gear.

Leistering with a big, birch-bark torch still keeps old and young Finns alike out late on many summer nights. In fact, using a leister from a boat to kill fish as they sleep was so effective that it was forbidden by law from 1902 until 1941. For modern people, leistering just one dark fall night without wind will furnish so much fish, and resulting new mental power, that it is easy to work until Christmas. Today, you can fish with a leister all year except from April to June, during spawning. Bow fishing is also allowed by law today.

During early spring days, you can shoot large, spawning pikes with a bow as they sun themselves in shallow water. Australian Aborigines do the same thing with atlatl and spears.

The first leister was only a tree branch, after that primitive fishermen made more barbs using wood, antlers, bone etc. In Finland we still use the traditional leisters for our nightly fishing sessions, but a birch bark torch is not used anymore, and iron fireclaws have been replaced by electricity.

In earlier times, fishermen used birch bark fire claws and torches to light the path for night fishing.

Large kiddles, made of pine splinters provided a stable source of fish year round. Old Finns and other finno-ugrian folks made aspen dugout canoes for water travel.

A large fish trap, or kiddle, made of splinters or slats, is almost universal. The kiddle is well-known in Hungary, Central Volga, India and China and was also used by some North American Indian cultures. It is used at the seaside, on lakes and rivers. The oldest splinter kiddle known in Finland is from the Stone Age (9500-1500 B.C.). Seaside fishermen built a new kiddle every spring after the ice melted, but the lakeside ice moved so little that it did not break the kiddle and people could use the same fish trap for many years.

Pine is very easy to split into nice straight splinters about three to six centimeters wide and two to four centimeters long. Kiddle builders also need many piles of wood to make the trunk of the trap. No nails or iron are used in these traps, all bindings are made with birch switches. You can collect fish from kiddles all summer long. First come the pikes, followed by bream. When the perch comes, it brings autumn with it. The oldest written documents of splinter kiddles date to 1,300 years ago and also mention the rights of ownership to fishing waters. The oldest records of such laws in my neighborhood date to 1466.

Pearling is also a part of old Finnish hunting and fishing tradition, and was in its golden years from 1700 to 1850, during which the pearl mussel was fished almost to extinction. The pearl mussel needs salmon to be able to propagate because the mussel larvae lives its first year inside the gills of salmon. Pearl mussels have been protected by law since 1957, but my photographer friend, Rainer Nikkanen, had a special permit for an ethnographic study with photos and film of two old pearl fishing brothers. They opened 500 pearl mussels but found no pearls, it was a pity, but the film and photos were a success.

Finally, we will look at fishing with a tame otter. Fishing with a group of tamed cormorants was very popular in China many centuries ago. And some oriental fishermen still do it to demonstrate ancient fishing techniques for tourists.

At one time otter fur was eagerly procured for hats and collars because good otter skin was so strong it lasted a lifetime. Old Carelian Finns used otter traps and trapped them alive. Young otters were easy to tame, clever and playful, curious and trusting. In some places of North Carelia it was a great pleasure for children to take their tame otters for a winter fishing trip. You simply make a few holes in the ice and the otter does the rest.

By mid-winter, much of the oxygen is gone from the small lakes and the fish seek refuge together in the deepest corner of the lake. One boisterous otter can raise hell out there on the dark lake bottom. But they also fill the baskets full of fresh fish, and everyone (except the fish) is happy.

Children in North Carelia enjoyed taking their tame otters for a winter fishing

Linda Jamison

Primitive Process Pottery

Clay twists, bends and flattens. You can tear clay apart and put it back together again. You can make coils by rolling the clay between your palms. You can make balls by rolling the clay in your hands, and you can make slabs by mashing it flat. The clay’s potential is, literally, in your hands, so it is most important to listen to it’s commands—feel the rhythm, the pulse.

During the past twenty years or more I have wandered among many ancient pot shards in the Southwest without truly appreciating the technology that produced them. Now I walk with renewed understanding that each small shard represents the employment of a large and complex body of technical knowledge concerning the properties of various clays, their most advantageous combinations, the preparation of the materials, structural necessities in the building of vessels and finally, firing to just the precise degree of hardness.

Clay was mined from nearby (and sometimes not-so-nearby) deposits, paints were manufactured from plants and minerals and frequently water had to be transported over great distances to make the clays, slips and paints. Not only were functional vessels produced, finished products of stunning beauty were made with only the most rudimentary tools, and neither the potter’s wheel nor the kiln were used. In spite of this, during the tenth through the sixteenth centuries, highly decorated pottery was manufactured in quantities that would boggle the mind—and made with such skill that many have survived the centuries, retaining all of their original beauty.

I was first introduced to primitive process pottery in 1979 by Samantha (Sam) Winborn. Sam is a talented craftsperson who, as with most modern-day abos, was eager to share her knowledge and skills with anyone who had a mind to learn.

I attended Sam’s workshop at the second annual Rabbit Stick Rendezvous long enough to poke my thumbs into a little ball of clay and shape it into something recognizable, and long enough to determine that this was one art form I could get excited about. The most important thing I gleaned, though, is the conviction that clay is a medium which provides a linking of humanity and earth, because it truly comes alive when you take it to hand. It’s a lump of soil that says “Make something of me.”

Eleven years later I met Wayne Brian, a master primitive potter from Mesa, Arizona. I spent two days hanging around Wayne’s camp pestering him with endless questions, and eventually bought two small effigy pots and a mountain goat canteen—once I held them in my hands I couldn’t imagine parting with them. (Beauty is found not in things, but in the relationship among things, and I definitely related.) Thankfully, while prehistoric pottery is for museums and under-glass viewing of special collections, replicated primitive pottery is for the intimate enjoyment of the potter and the masses.