The seafaring that has taken place on the Baltic Sea over the centuries looks demure when compared to voyages on the great oceans of the world. Yet regardless of its size, the sea is and always will be an environment that has to be treated with awe and respect. Seamen who ignore this principle are sure to be punished quickly.

Even though the Baltic Sea was already somewhat known to the geographers of ancient Greece, the famous cartographers of Scandinavia and the Netherlands were not quite sure of its coastline or the location of islands even in the 16th century. The latter fact is quite understandable, considering the immense number of isles.

The Baltic Sea, being rather cold for most of the year, stormy in autumns and seasonally frozen in its northern region, retained its mysticism up until the end of the 1600s. One of the earliest descriptions of Baltic sea lanes is a travelogue of disputable authorship from the middle of the 8th century. This work, Aethicus Ister's Cosmography, mentions a trade centre on the island of Rifarrica, which imported salt and traded in arms. Some of the historians are of the opinion that the reference is to Revala, or Rävala, the county surrounding present-day Tallinn. The fact that this spot of land was considered an island is not surprising. Even in Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church (from around 1070), a chronicle of a certain Adam of Bremen, which includes several entries on Nordic countries and Estonia, it is noted that Adalbert, Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, appointed Johannes to be Bishop of the islands of the Baltic Sea, these including Curland, or western Latvian Courland, and Aestland, or Estonia.

One better informed about the Baltic Sea than his predecessors, contemporaries and even some of his successors was a Swedish cleric named Olof Månsson, better known as Olaus Magnus. In 1539 he published, in Venice, the Carta Marina, which was a fairly accurate and detailed map of Scandinavia and its neighbouring areas. There one can also find the Estonian coastline, along with its islands, even though they are not depicted with great precision. When compared to the portolan (nautical chart) of Olaus Magnus, which depicted the coastline of the whole of western Europe from Portugal up to the British isles - a portolan dated to the first half of the 16th century and nowadays kept in the collection of the Danish Maritime Museum - one has to admit that the Carta Marina is a level better in accuracy.

olaus magnus' carta marina

Considering the long history of the greatest seaports of the Baltics - Tallinn and Riga - it is somewhat surprising that the earliest known and preserved vistas of these towns, as viewed from the sea, are from the same time. A view of Riga's panorama (an engraving from Sebastian Münster's Cosmography or Description of All Lands) was made in 1550 and a view of Tallinn (a painting by Lambert Glandorf) dates back to 1560. Both panoramas give much more accurate and elaborate information about these towns than any coexistent chart of the sea, islands and coastline of this region.

As a point of comparison, one might consider Lucas Waghenaer's chart Spieghel der Zeevaerdt, from 1584, which unfortunately served as an example for many cartographers from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 17th century. One of them was Janssonius Blaeu, in whose atlas Licht der Zeevaert (1608) one can find a drawing of the Estonian coastline likely influenced by Waghenaer's. It is conspicuous for its enormous Bay of Tallinn, mystical representation of the Väinameri Sea and the triangular shape of the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.

More accurate nautical charts and pilot books appeared only in the middle of the 17th century. For the first time, one can find shallows, as well as facts on sea depth in the charts. The earliest of those (a flat projection) dates from 1644 and was drawn up by a team headed by Swedish hydrographer Johan Månsson. The first cylindrical rectangular chart (or chart made according to Mercator's projection) of the Baltic Sea was produced in 1694 by Admiral Werner von Rosenfeld, who was also the creator of the Swedish pilot service. Based on Rosenfeld's groundwork, the surveyor Petter Gedda from Amsterdam released a rather decent atlas of the Baltic Sea and its coastal countries. At the beginning of the 18th century, however, work in this field fell into oblivion due to the outbreak of the Great Northern War. Mapping of the Estonian coastline resumed only about twenty years later.

In 1757, a study undertaken by Alexey Nagayev, a Russian admiral, resulted in the first atlas of the Baltic Sea, and was accompanied by a pilot book. For its time, the work was thorough in every respect. It remained the most authoritative publication on the matter until 1809, when another admiral of the Russian imperial fleet, Gavriil Sarychev, published his adjusted atlas of the Baltic Sea. The history of nautical charts in the Estonian language begins more than a century later, on March 15, 1921. It was then that Lieutenant Colonel Johan Mey, the newly appointed cartographer of the Topo-hydrographic Department of the General Staff, undertook supervision of work which resulted in charts for all of the Estonian territorial waters.

Contrary to the widespread notion, there is no strong evidence that the Baltic Sea was travelled only in daylight and within sight of the shoreline, even in the Middle Ages and during the Vikings' time. According to the Ynglinga saga, the crossing of the high seas with a large fleet was not a problem for Swedish King Ingvar, when he wanted to loot Estonia around the year 600. However, the possibility that his fleet travelled along the Swedish coast, then set a course for the Åland Islands and then crossed the Baltic Sea either from there or from somewhere in the Gulf of Finland cannot be excluded. No matter how recklessly the high seas were crossed in those days, it saved no one from looting and counter-attacks. Efforts to secure the shoreline were already underway at that time on both sides of the Baltic. A centuries-long problem with the Estonians, one that preceded the crusade here in the 13th century, is noted by Saxo Grammaticus, a chronicler of the Danish court, in his Gesta Danorum, written before 1018. It is stated there that Danish King Knud I had, in his youth, worked hard on subduing the Sembs (a Prussian tribe) and 'the terrible piracy' of the Estonians. In 1170 or 1171 Danish King Valdemar I had to gather his entire fleet in order to curb the incursions the Estonians and Courlanders had made on the island of Öland. It is unconfirmed, but entirely possible that sixteen years later some of the same looters were found in action right at the Swedish capital of Sigtuna, where they burnt down the city and killed Johannes, Archbishop of Uppsala. In 1936 a fictional version of the achievements of Estonian pagan ancestors was created by August Mälk in his historical novel Masters of the Baltic Sea. He writes, 'By the evening they had almost reached land, but darkness fell too fast. There was no longer any use for landmarks, and sheltering inlets could not be found. Indeed, on their way to Visby and Denmark they had often travelled here, this way and the other, along the coast of Gotland - sometimes around the northern, sometimes the southern end, but now that it was dark, even the best knower of the coast and the forest contours would not know the right way, just as a sounder could not tell it with his rope...'

chart of the baltic sea by admiral nagayev

We also have no definitive information as to what data and navigational knowledge the crusaders of Bishop Albert used when they reached the mouth of the River Väina with 23 ships, in the summer of 1200. It is doubtful that their sailing instructions were taken from Scandinavian sagas and runic inscriptions that tell us of the Sea-Vikings' trips to the eastern Baltics from the 9th to 12th century, and of the campaigns against the Courlanders by semi-legendary Swedish King Björn II in the middle of the 9th century. It is likely that useful information came from German merchants and seafarers who, in the last quarter of the 12th century, had become frequent guests of the Livonians, who lived then at the lower reaches of the River Väina. Their acquaintance with each other (initially quite militant in nature) occured in 1158, when a storm drove some merchant ships from Bremen, which had intended to sail to Visby, into the mouth of the River Daugava. This occasion has been described vividly in the Later Livonian Verse Chronicle from the end of the 13th century. Among other things, it is mentioned there that peaceful negotiations were achieved thanks to several Livonians who knew German, Danish and Swedish.

Among other early sailing instructions for the Baltic Sea, a description of the fleet's sea lane from Denmark to Tallinn by Danish king Valdemar II Sejr (the Victor), from 1219, is particularly noteworthy. This description, sometimes called King Valdemar's Sea Lane, is distinguished for the profundity with which the course is described, as well as for the descriptions of the tragic consequences the fleet's arrival had for Estonians - the people of northern Estonia were defeated at the foot of Toompea Castle on 15 June.

Valdemar's sea lane ran along the Swedish coast northward, from there across the gullet of the North Sea to the Åland Islands and then from Hanko across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn. It was apparently only one of the possible sailing courses, however, since centuries-long experience made it possible to set straight courses over the Baltic Sea then, even though ships did not always reach the exact desired destination or their precise location could not be recognized by the sight of the coastline.

Therefore the attainments of locally recruited pilots and skippers remained important until fairly recent times. Primitive charts or existing travelogues and notes had to be regarded with reservations for several centuries and it was always safer to have someone on board who had already been in the region. This point is also confirmed by the famous German scholar and diplomat Adam Olearius (Ölschläger) in his travelogue New Updated Travelogue of a Journey to Moscovia and Persia (1656). It is mentioned therein that, having set out from Hamburg on November 6, 1633, a digression was soon made to Travemünde, in order to board Michael Kordes, who knew the Caspian Sea well. At the very least, the help of pilots was needed when approaching Dünamünde (Daugavriga), in order to proceed to Riga from there. And when the travellers' keel scraped against the shallow seabed at the southern end of Öland, in the autumn of 1635, they did not dare continue their voyage from Kalmar to Tallinn without a new Swedish helmsman and pilot.

There is nothing odd in this incident - in spite of the immense progress of technical navigation, mistakes occur at sea even today. Looked at from the sea, even familiar territory looks quite unusual and experience is the only thing that helps to get the quarters right and to orientate in the greyish blue lines of land. This is the way it was when the Baltic Sea was just beginning to be marked on nautical charts and this is the way it is still, in our super-modern age equipped with GPS and satellite charts.

Urmas Dresen (1958), Head of the Estonian Maritime Museum and underwater archaeologist, author of several nautical exhibitions and compilations