Viking ship

“ But besides Norway these ships have been found elsewhere. Even in England relics of a Viking ship 48 feet long, 9 feet 9 inches wide, and 4 feet high were found near Snape in Suffolk during the year 1862. Viking remains have also been discovered in the Orkneys. In 1875 an enormous specimen was found at Botley, a charming little place up the river Hamble which flows out into Southampton Water opposite Calshot. This was probably a Danish ship and a relic of one of her nation’s incursions against our shores. ”

“ This helped fix the determination of the Norwegians to “show” the anti-Viking party. For there was the Gokstad ship unearthed but a few years before. And [197] from this vessel was modeled the Viking, exactly like this ship of the ninth century in size and pattern, except that the stern and bow were restored and finished off with a carved wooden dragon’s head and tail, splendidly gilded, after the style of the ancient Scandinavian ships. Manned with a picked crew of Norwegian sailors, the Viking was sailed and rowed over the wide Atlantic. ”

“ The ships of the vikings, if we may judge from the few specimens preserved in the museums of Denmark and Norway, though well built of their kind, were not much better than large open boats, undecked, averaging about seventy feet long, and drawing not more than four feet of water. They had only one mast with a square sail, and they trusted rather to rowing than to sailing for their progress. Except on the largest ships, about fifteen or sixteen men at a time, with a like number relieving them, and sixty or seventy fighting men, or a hundred in all, may have been the complement of a viking ship. ”

“ The ship was indeed in process of development throughout all these ages. The stages of this growth are obscure, and belong rather to the domain of the archæologist than to that of the historian. We still possess an example of the original type in the Viking ship which was dug up from the burial mound at Gókkstad in Norway. ”

“ To us members of the Anglo-Saxon race, the importance of the forces at work during the period we are about to consider cannot be lightly estimated. The influence of the Viking, or double-ended type of ship, dominated the whole of the coast-line from Norway to the land as far south as the northern shores of Spain, right from the period that followed the construction of mere dug-outs, until almost the close of the fifteenth century of our era. ”

“ All her decks were crowded with scarlet-cloaked men, and the sunlight which made the ship so bright flashed also from helm and spear and mail coat from stem to stern. And at that sight every tale of viking cruelty they had heard came into their minds, and they were overcome with terror, so that I thought that several would have cast themselves into the sea, away from the terrible ship, choosing rather death by water than by the sword. But I saw some half dozen whose faces set hard with other thoughts than these, and they turned to seek their weapons from under the fore deck. ”

“ Also the hull is heavier than and not so sharp as in the earlier Viking ships.
To us who live in a world so supercivilized that the Norseman’s wildest dreams could not have approached the commonplaces of modern life, it is difficult to imagine a crew of these stern and brawny men, fifty or sixty strong, perhaps, with their barbaric helmets temporarily laid aside, with their shields hung along the gunwales, and with their great backs bending in unison to the oars. ”

“ The Viking became a tramp ship, they picked up what freights they could get, and the old ports knew them no longer. The vessel barely paid her way; operating expenses were retrenched on every hand, there was no money left for upkeep, and Captain Bradley saw her literally falling to pieces before his eyes. But the old hull remained sound.
He lived a blank life; but he continued to live, which was something. The old days were indeed passing, and with them the ships and the men. Sailors were not what they used to be; business ethics was not what it used to be. ”

“ But the fact that whole tribes were able to make so long a migration by sea indicates in any case a high development of navigation, and again it is on the Baltic that we first find it.
The Viking ship from Oseberg, near Tönsberg (ninth century)
The shipbuilding and seamanship of the Norwegians mark a new epoch in the history both of navigation and discovery, and with their voyages the knowledge of northern lands and waters was at once completely changed. ”

“ The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe, where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of twelve or fifteen centuries ago.
Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then rendered possible. ”

“ As a consequence of the Danish-Norwegian immigrations, the art of ship-building must also have necessarily developed itself in a similar manner in England, on whose eastern and north-western coasts the descendants of the Vikings had everywhere spread themselves, both by the sea and on the rivers. Christianity certainly put an end to the life of the Viking. ”

“ The sea-going ships of these peoples, intended especially for sailing, would naturally be considerably shorter and broader in the beam than the Viking class of ship, which relied principally on oars for propulsion, and was rather too long and narrow to sail well under ordinary conditions of weather. ”

“ The treacherous waters of the North Sea or Baltic, the existence of dangerous sand banks and rushing tides, were an unfair match for delicately designed craft accustomed to sun-speckled seas. Although the Viking craft had their full complement of rowers, yet they were far abler ships than the over-oared boats of Greece and those of the early days of Rome. Right down to the time of the Spanish Armada, and after, the tendency was ever for the galley or galleass—the rowed ship rather than the sailing ship—to linger as long as possible, whereas in the North the reverse has been the case. ”

“ Until about forty years ago their fishing boat was exactly a Norwegian “yawl,” the most obvious descendant from the lines of a Viking ship. Indeed, until about the year 1860 all the larger fishing boats of the Shetlands were imported in boards direct from Norway ready for putting together [14] at Lerwick. The type is still farther preserved in the whale-boats that are despatched from the mother ships in various parts of the world to harpoon the cachalot. ”

“ We must therefore believe, either that the Scandinavians developed their methods of shipbuilding quite independently, or that they had communication with the Mediterranean by some other route than the sea. Now in many important features there is such a great resemblance between the Norwegian Viking ships and pictorial representations of Greek ships, and of even earlier Egyptian and Assyrian ships, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some connection must have existed. ”

“ The rudder is so big that often a dozen men have to work on it. Many junks have colored sails.
WEGIAN SHIPS. Old Viking ships that sailed from Norway had both oars and brightly decorated sails. Vikings were such good seamen they crossed the Atlantic in their open ships. Norwegians are still seafarers. Boys who want to be sailors get training on a sailing ship.
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Lars used to work on a tanker that brought oil from the Persian Gulf. When he went ashore there, he saw boats just like the earliest ones that men invented thousands of years ago. ”

“ They bent and set the heavy new sails. Soon the spanker went, and was replaced. Captain Bradley was driving the ship without mercy; for the wind was hauling inch by inch into the east, heading them off toward the dangerous lee shore. The Viking stood the strain; her seaworthiness had never been put to a harder test, had never shown itself so handsomely. She had been built in a day when work and honour had gone hand in hand. ”

“ To beguile the time of waiting, Viking set out in a well-manned dragon ship; and, cruising about the northern and southern seas, he met with countless adventures. During this time he was particularly persecuted by the slain giant's kin, who were adepts in magic, and caused him to encounter innumerable perils by land and by sea.
Aided and abetted by his bosom friend, Halfdan, Viking escaped every danger, slew many of his foes, and, after recovering his promised bride, Hunvor, whom the enemy had carried off to India, he settled down in Sweden. ”

“ Viking also believed in the cold, and the races and gambols he had up and down the deck, when he could induce anyone to throw a belaying-pin for him were wild in the extreme.
Moreover, he had a football, which Duncan had presented him with, and he got no end of fun out of this. He threw it in front of him, he hurled it along in front of him, and swung it about, and one day, when he fairly tossed it overboard, he made no bother about the matter, but rushing astern, jumped right overboard after it, quite regardless of the fact that the ship was going on at the rate of eight knots an hour. ”

“ He received the title of king by right as soon as he took command of a ship's crew, though he need not have any land or kingdom. Vikings were merely pirates; they might be peasants and vikings by turn, and won their names from the inlets, the viks or wicks, where they harbored their ships. A sea-king must be a viking, but naturally very few of the vikings were sea-kings. ”

“ Fig. 26 shows the Viking-like ship beyond all doubt. Frequently these carvings are represented in groups and it has been thought that they record naval battles fought in the vicinity, the several representations of ships denoting fleets. The human figures perhaps are there [111] as an eternal memorial of their admirals who perished or distinguished themselves in the fight. There are two kinds of craft in these carvings, Magnússon [39] points out. First there is the ship with the very high stem, and stern, and there is the other kind of vessel which lacks just these features. ”

“ How they fought and drove [11] the Viking; how that the Viking led them along the coast till, our men weary with rowing, there came two fresh ships from a bay, hidden, friends of the Viking; and how that Lord Sigmund died in the fight, and how that our men fled north, while the Vikings shouted; and our ship ye have seen!
“On the sixth day after this, at the sunrise, let the ship be ready with new oars; the ship’s men will stay here to rest. I shall take the men that I call my guard; those who hunt bears with me in the forest. ”

“ He promised to do all that he might towards making a good warrior and seaman of me; and he was ever thereafter as a foster father to me, for my own had died in the hall with Vemund. It was his wish to make amends thus, if he could, for the loss his folk had caused me.
Of the next five years I need speak little, for in them I learned the viking's craft well. We won the Orkneys from those who held them, and my first fight was in Einar's ship, against two of the viking's vessels. After that we dwelt in Sigurd's great house in Kirkwall, and made many raids on the Sutherland and Caithness shores. ”

“ Vessels of the type of the Viking ships were built in Denmark at a very early date. In 1865 three boats were discovered buried in a peat bog in Jutland. Danish antiquaries consider that they were built about the fifth century of our era. The largest is 70 ft. in length and of such an excellent type that boats of somewhat similar form and construction are in universal use to this day all round the coasts of Norway.64 Such an instance of persistency in type is without parallel in the history of shipbuilding, and is a wonderful proof of the skill of the Norsemen in designing and building vessels. ”

“ There I put the pilot's seat and a strong tiller for the rudder. On the breast and sides I carved the dragon's scales. Then I painted it all black and on the tip of every scale I put gold. I called her 'Waverunner.' There she sat on the rollers, as fair a ship as I ever saw.
"The night that it was finished I went to my father's feast. After the meats were eaten and the mead-horns came round, I stood up from my bench and raised my drinking-horn [3] high and spoke with a great voice:
"'This is my vow: I will sail to Norway and I will harry the coast and fill my boat with riches. ”

“ The second class is more valuable still, and far more picturesque, for thanks to the burial customs of the old sea-chiefs, there have been excavated from certain mounds in Norway, wonderful old Viking ships in a state of preservation that is remarkable when we consider how many centuries they have lain under the earth. Therefore, fortunate as we deemed ourselves in being able to have such sources of information as models and reproductions of the ships of Southern Europe, we are far more happy in our present section for we can go to the fountain head direct—the ships themselves. ”

“ I understand that we will be victorious in our expeditions against the Vikings, for, as my father said to me, the following of the raven is a good omen.”
Finally they sighted the coast of Svithjod, and came to a long and somewhat high promontory and they cast anchor there. Afterwards they put tents upon their ships for the night. The lamps were lighted, and the men, to pass away the time before they went to sleep, played chess; the chess-board used on board of vessels had a hole in each square, and each piece a peg to make it fast, so that the rolling of the ship could not upset the game. ”