The Viking sagas, so often laconic in chronicling the deeds of men, grow eloquent in describing the vessels in which the Norsemen set out to win the world. One saga relates how "gold shone on the prows and silver flashed on the variously shaped ships. So great, in fact, was the magnificence of the fleet that, if its lord had desired to conquer any peoples, the ships alone would have terrified the enemy."
Vet it has been only within the last 100 years, as archeologists have probed into the large burial mounds scattered up and dowTi the Scandinavian coastline, that the world has gained any concrete knowledge of the Vikings’ ships. For the VTkings, supreme seafarers that they were, carried their ships with them to the grave for use in the next world. A few’ of these have been uncovered in a near-miraculous state of preser’ation after a millennium in the earth.
Of the fabled gold and silver, alas, there was none. Possibly, grave robbers carried it off centuries before. Yet the ships themselves were ample enough testimony to the Viking shipbuilders’ genius: long, lean, marvelously crafted and obviously seaworthy vessels of a sort never seen before, with astonishingly few components — keel, stem, stern, ribs and a dozen or so strakes on each side.
Two of these ships, one found at Gokstad, Norway, the other at nearby Oseberg, show’ different aspects of Viking shipbuilding. While the Gokstad ship (pages 37 and 39) was clearly a warship, the Oseberg ship (at right) appears to have been intended as a ceremonial and short-range craft suited more for the coastal transportation of an important personage than for lengthy ocean voyages.
Experts base their judgment not on its size. At 71 feet, w’ith a 17-foot beam and a depth of three feet from keel to gunwale, it w’as as large as many blue-w’ater ships. Rather, there w’as a certain economy of construction, evidenced by a thin keel, a jointed stern and unshuttered oar holes, that indicated light duty. The vessel, as would befit a Viking of wealth, was also superbly carv’ed from curled stem to stern W’ith an intricate frieze depicting stylized animals struggling up from the w'ater line. Wrote one historian: “No one who has ever looked at the Oseberg ship herself can ever again think of the Ninth Century Norsemen as completely vile and soulless barbarians.’’
The swan-necked prow of the Oseberg ship rises 16 feet above the deck in the vaulted halls of the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo, Norway, where the 1,100-year-oId vessel stands as a monument to the skill and artistry of the craftsmen who built it. The racks mounted at either gunwale hold the 30 oars that were deployed through the oar holes cut in both sides of the ship.
In the early new year of 1880. some country people on the Gokstad farm in Sandar. Norway, started poking into a large barrow of earth that since time out of mind had been known as the King’s Mound. It stood on a flat, treeless plain and was understood to be the tomb of a great Viking king. N’o one had dared disturb the mound before, but now curiosity got the better of superstition.
News of the venture spread to Oslo, where the government wisely decided not to let the e. xcavation go unsupervised. The project was placed under the direction of an eminent Norwegian antiquarian. N. Nicolaysen—and not a moment too soon. Two days after Nicolaysen arrived on the scene, the prow of a huge wooden ship was unearthed.
The enormous oaken craft was the first complete Viking ship ever uncovered. Its wood had not rotted away because most moisture had been sealed out by a dense covering of blue clay packed around the vessel. When the Oseberg ship was discovered nearly 20 years later, it too owed its preservation to the blue clay.
Both ships were in need of repair: however, the weight of the clay and earth had fractured numerous ribs and strakes. The vessels were disassembled and treated with alum to give the wood e. xtra hardness. The timbers were then joined together again. .At last, when all was complete, the ships were saturated with linseed oil and finally sealed with two coats of heavy marine spar varnish.
Thp /iligreed stern of the 0.spberg ship emerges from the bed of. Vonx egian blue cloy in uhirh it hos rested for centuries. The plonking of the ship's port side, missing from the excoeoted vessel. u ould ho p been robbeted into the grooxx* along the inside of the sternpost.
A millennium's sleep underground hos left this large sleigh from the Oseberg ship badly fractured but still recognizable.
Its tix o sections, the elaborately chiseled riding bo. and the undercorriage ix ith ix ooden runners*, ix ere held together ix ith the rope shoix n here entix ining them.
Under the intent scrutiny of a party of genteel onlookers, the exhumers of the Xinth Century' Gokstad ship carefully chip clay away from the side planking. The burial chamber is visible behind the mast.
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The Gokstad ship: a fighting craft supreme
At 76 feet from stem to stern and 17'A feet in the beam, the Gokstad ship was only a bit larger than the ceremonial Ose-berg ship. Yet she is believed to have been a very efficient Viking longship. as the Norsemen called their warships.
Spare of any ornamentation and protected by a higher freeboard, she was trimmer and more durably crafted than the less seaworthy Oseberg ship. Her great keel—cut from a single oak trunk 80 feet long—was intentionally bowed amidships so that in battle she could be spun about virtually on herown axis. Yet with 16 oars on a side, she was only a medium-sized warship compared with the vessels that, according to the sagas, mounted 35 oars on each side and must have reached over 150 feet in length.
Nevertheless, the Gokstad ship could go anywhere her masters desired—as was admirably demonstrated in 1893 by a Norwegian seafarer named Magnus Andersen. Captain Andersen commissioned the construction of an exact copy of the Gokstad ship and boldly sailed her across the Atlantic from Bergen to Newfoundland. The 3.000-mile trip took 27 days, and the vessel achieved speeds as high as 11 knots.
The 24-foot spruce-wood gangplank from the Gokstod ship, a section of which is shojvn here, jvos incised with notches for traction ond ivas attached to the ship by means of a square hole at one end.
This baler ivas cut from a single piece of wood and wos attached to a long handle, jvhich enabled the Vikings to reach into any part of the hull through gaps in the floor boards intentionally left open.
As c/eon of line os a poir of nutshells, tjvo smjll boots found ot Gokstad shojv the some meticulous attention to lightness of weight ond groce/ul shope os longer I'iking vessels. The 21-foot croft in the foreground mounted tjvo sets o/oors. The other had three sets ond ivas 31 feet long.
The swooping lines of the Gokstad ship’s pionking converge of the stem to form a beaklike prow that towered perhaps nine feet above the wafer line. Some o/ the 32 oar ports are visible on either side.
World History
