And now for something different ....

It is too dark, cold and wet to venture out today in Newburgh on Ythan. And so, I bring you an extraordinary artifact which was discovered in the attic of a fisherman's cottage in Buchanhaven, Peterhead in 2004. It had probably been brought back from the Arctic by Peterhead whalers in the late 1800s.
The object is a cross member from a small Inuit sledge. Wood is scarce in the far North and the Inuit people had to make use of whatever material that could find, in this case the penis bone (known to scientists as a baculum, but as an Oosik to the Inuit) from a small walrus. A groove has been carved into each end of the bone to allow it to be bound tightly onto the two runners of the sledge. The age of the bone is unknown, it could be 19th century or it might have been excavated from an ancient site in which case it could be several hundreds of years old.