Northern Europe
Dugout boats have been found in Scandinavia and Germany. In German, the craft are known as einbaum (one-tree). These boats were used for fishing and transport on calmer bodies of water. Dugouts require no metal parts or shipbuilding expertise, and were likely common amongst farming folk in Northern Europe until large trees suitable for making this type of watercraft became scarce. Length was limited to the size of trees in the old-growth forests -- up to 10 metres (33 ft) in length. Later models increased freeboard (and seaworthiness) by lashing additional boards to the side of the boat. Eventually, the dugout portion was reduced to a solid keel, and the lashed boards on the sides became a Lapstrake hull.
In Northern Europe, the tradition of making dugout canoes survived into the 20th and 21st centuries only in Estonia, where seasonal floods in Soomaa, a 390 km² wilderness area, make conventional means of transportation impossible. In recent decades a new surge of interest in making dugouts (Estonian haabjas) has revitalized the ancient tradition.
Read more about this topic: Dugout (boat)
Famous quotes containing the words northern and/or europe:
“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)