Seven spike fishing spear

Fishing is one of the oldest methods of obtaining food. No specialized tools were used at first; instead, people made use of various kinds of equipment such as baskets, pitchforks or sheets. Among the very first tools developed specifically for fishing were all sorts of thrusting implements, including fishing spears, known as ości or ościenie. The most popular thrusting tools used in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in Pomerania were multi-pronged spears. They were considered more useful than single-prong spears because of their greater effectiveness in catching smaller fish and that was important given the ever-dwindling population of large species. One of the thirty-two tools of this type in the collection of the Department of Ethnography of Pomerania of the National Museum in Szczecin is a seven-pronged spear made at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Mielno, in Łobez poviat. The tool resembles a pitchfork, with barbed prongs radiating out from the base and reinforced with a wire woven between them. Originally, the spear was attached to a long handle, which has not survived to the present day.

Agnieszka Słowińska