[Excerpt from a book on sailing traditions and scrimshaw]
Bonecharms, a sailor’s blessing, they say.
The carving itself is a practice from long back, passed from salty-dogs to young greenhorns still finding their sea legs. In old times, sailors cut into the tusks of ice seals and into the arm-long fangs of the bears that roamed the islets north of Tyvia.
Once the whaling trade began, the practitioners began engraving the bones of those great beasts, rendering charms that sing in the night and grant some small boon, increasing a lover’s vigor or providing defense against pregnancy.