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WELCOME BACK TO THE MUSEUM AND PLEASE MIND YOUR HEAD  (groan !  /*ouch */).

            WELCOME TO THE       VIKING NAVY PAGE !

                          Twelve thousand years ago, human beings slowly made their way into northwestern Europe, hunting the animals and gathering the plants that began to occupy lands left bare by the melting glaciers of the last ice age. For the next twelve millennia, the land and the surrounding sea in what is now called Scandinavia would shape a people who would eventually become known as the Vikings.

                 In the Viking age sea battles  were merely land battles fought at sea, with the hulls roped together to form vast floating plat­forms.

SHIPS

                    Years ago, archaeologists did not believe dragon prowled Viking ships existed. They thought these ships, often mentioned in Viking sagas and other historical writings, were as fictional as dragons themselves. It was believed the people who fell prey to Viking raids exaggerated their stories to make the Vikings appear worse than they were.

                  This belief in Vikings ships changed in 1880. A whole ship was excavated in a burial mound on Gokstad farm in Sandar, Norway. Although it was not the legendary longship or dragon ship, the find did dispel some of the doubts about the shipbuilding abilities of the Vikings. By studying this ship and many others discovered since, we have gained a better understanding of the design and construction of Vikings ships and have a greater appreciation of the builders' skills.

CONSTRUCTION

            Long, lean and above all flexible, the hulls were usually of oak planks that had been split from felled trunks.  With axe and adze, the planks were trimmed to shape then riveted together with iron nails.  At the junction of the planks, a thin rope of twisted animal hair soaked in pitch (boiled pine tree sap) was trapped.  This acted as a flexible waterproofing membrane. 

TYPES OF SHIPS

           It is important to understand that there were many different types of ship.  Each was designed and built with a specific role in mind, although naturally any vessel might well be used for duties for which it was never intended.

               There were the great Drakkars, the Dragon ships that were over a hundred feet long and had crews of more than a hundred men.  Designed for war, they were narrow and fast but not designed for weeks at sea in the open ocean. The longest Drakkar ever built was the Ormand Laang, the Long Serpent.  Measuring over one hundred and sixty feet in length, the bow and stern posts would twist out of line by six feet in a heavy sea and gave the ship its name.

                    There were Karvs, a sort of multi purpose ship that could trade and/or raid and it is one of these ships that was found at the end of the last century at Gokstad in Sweden.  The find gave birth to many replicas, based upon this well-preserved hull.  In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the first of these was sailed across the Atlantic to the World’s Fair in Chicago.  I understand that the hull is still to be seen by the shore of Lake Michigan and is itself one of the oldest ships on the North American continent!

                    The importance of the ship to the Scandinavians of a thousand years ago cannot be overstated.  Truly, without them, there would have been no Viking age and Europe would be a very different place today.

Well that concludes our journey this time ,hope to see you next time  AND PLEASE FOR GOD'S  SAKE MIND YOUR HEAD .         

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