Logboat Building in Estonia

Historic photo of a woman delivering milk to the local dairy in a haabjas. (Source).

Logboats remained in common use in Estonia later than anywhere else in Europe. One of their last holdouts was in the country's Soomaa region, a vast wetland notable for its "fifth season", the spring period of ice-melt during which much of the land floods and almost all movement is constrained to watercraft. In the 1960s, however, the Estonian logboat -- called the haabjas -- finally succumbed to the modernization of society and essentially disappeared from practical economic applications. The craft of logboat building was no longer passed from father to son as it had been for generations and was retained only by an aging and steadily shrinking cohort of traditional builders. Some older boats remained in use, however, treasured by their owners and used mainly on special occasions.

Logboats at the Haabjas heritage center in Tori, Estonia.

Enter Aivar Ruukel, a nature guide who lives in the Soomaa. Concerned for the heritage of the haabjas, he began studying their design and construction, interviewing and working with some of the few remaining builders, documenting the process, and learning how to build them himself. Along the way, he encouraged others to join him in working to preserve the heritage of the Estonian logboat, founding a haabjas heritage center in the village of Tori, close to the Soomaa National Park, and campaigning to have the haabjas inscribed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, at which effort he succeeded in 2021.

Ruukel also began running annual haabjas building workshops, which I wrote about in 2008, this blog's first year of publication. Ruukel quickly noticed the post, contacted me to clarify a technical point on which I was unclear, and we remained in sporadic touch until 2023, when we finally met in person at the first Early Watercraft Association Congress in Vila do Conde, Portugal. There, he invited me and Swiss watercraft scholar Béat Arnold to visit Estonia for a future workshop. I had that opportunity last month and was delighted to see Béat there too.

Laying out the logboat on a big aspen log.

It was a fascinating, exciting, and at the same time low-key, affair. Over the course of five days, about 17 men and women worked to build a haabjas under the guidance of Ruukel's friend, master builder Jaan Keerdo. The building site was on the Pärnu River, next to the haabjas heritage center in the tiny, neat village of Tori. Ruukel had previously felled and transported to the site a large aspen trunk, so after introductions and preliminaries, the crew began the construction process by stripping its bark with shovels, axes, and a drawknife.

Master builder Jaan Keerdo (left) and haabjas heritage champion Aivar Ruukel.

Over the next few days, Keerdo directed the work of laying out the main interior and exterior cuts and demonstrating construction methods, while almost all the attendees took turns doing the physical labor. (A few of us chose to observe only, leaving the heavy work to others.) Even with a large and willing team, five days was not enough to complete the process of carving the hull -- not least because we were all novices -- but Keerdo and Ruukel had anticipated this by arranging to have other boats present in various stages of completion. On one of those boats, we learned how to lay out and install the frames, which are fastened into the hull on the lashed-lug principle. To observe and participate in the critical process of expanding the hull, we made use of two other boats that had been under construction by other builders, and which had been submerged in the Pärnu River to soak for several days prior to the workshop. Carving was complete on these boats, but they had yet to be expanded.

Heating the hull along one side only.

Flexible alder rods are used to expand the hull, while brackets at the ends keep their shape and protect them from splitting. 

This, to me, was the most interesting procedure. The hull was placed on the ground and a fire was built alongside its entire length on one side only. As the heat softened the wet wood, sections of "green" black alder branches were inserted into the hull, which was carefully monitored for its developing shape. Brackets were placed over the gunwales at both ends to retain their shape as carved and protect them from splitting. A small amount of water was kept inside the hull and frequently brushed up the sides to keep them moist.

When one side was deemed sufficiently expanded, the hull was rotated 180° so that the other side faced the fire. This approach allows the alder rods to be installed and adjusted from the opposite side while keeping the side being expanded exposed to the fire and moist. According to Keerdo, this method is not traditional but, like several other procedures used during the workshop, was one of his own developments.

Participants had opportunities to paddle haabjas on the Pärnu River beside the building site.

The week featured more than just boatbuilding. We all had opportunities to paddle haabjas of various sizes and designs -- some of which were quite stable, others less so. Some lunches of traditional Estonian country food were served on site, picnic-style and for others we ate as a group at a nearby pub. We hiked a nature trail through the bog in Soomaa National Park, and some of us took a dip in a bog pool, the water of which is unusually fresh and pure due to the acidic peat of the bog. The final day included saunas -- a popular tradition in Estonia.

Three evenings were taken up with presentations in a comfortable meeting room at the Tori village hall, right across the road from the building site. Ruukel and Keerdo handled the first night's affairs, providing valuable input on haabjas traditions and the process in which we were engaged. On the second night, Béat Arnold gave a presentation on commercial logboat building in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), where he had recently completed fieldwork. On night three, I described the logboat use and construction methods of the Indigenous Warrau people of Guyana.

The diversity of the workshop's facilitators and participants was among the event's most engaging and valuable qualities. Participants from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and Alaska (I'm probably missing a couple) brought experience from museum science, heritage protection, traditional carpentry, boat building, archaeology, ethnography, education, tourism, and other fields. Everyone offered worthwhile input and observations on topics ranging from the construction process to its cultural context to the educational and heritage values of the event.

This short video provides a good feel for the experience and people at the workshop.

For information about future workshops and other nature experiences in the Soomaa National Park, contact Aivar Ruukel through his website, Soomaa.com. Tell him Bob sent you!