Written by Dr. Karen Hardy
On a recent trip to Helsinki, I went to the visit the Museum of Finland and came across the ANTREA NET.
Around 10,000 years ago, a fisherman set off to drop a net in a lake in Karelia, in the far north-east of Europe. Something happened and his boat capsized. The net, together with stone weights and floats, sank to the bottom and gradually became covered in mud.
Over time, the lake dried out and became a marshy area, and in 1913 a farmer came across fragments of the net embedded in the mud, together with 18 bark floats and 31 stone weights. It is one of the oldest known fishing nets in the world. It is made from willow bast and includes knots, today called Russian knots, that are still used by fishermen today.
The net, which consists of around 2.6 kilometres of twisted cordage, the floats and the weights can be found today in the Museum of Finland, in Helsinki.
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| Floats & Weights Credit: Dr. Hardy |
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| Net fragments in clay Credit: Dr. Hardy |
