For two centuries the chronicles of France and England are filled up with mourning at the devastation spread by Viking marauders. Referred to as flinging babies from spear to spear for sport, they razed monasteries, ripped defenseless villages apart. Nearby the close of the ninth century, wherever these sea raiders struck, there is no road “that has been not littered with dead, including priests, women, and children… it seemed that most Christian people would perish.”
Have been these wild men of rugged stature and barbaric ways? Whence did they come?
They were Scandinavians. Vik in old Norse means “fjord”; ing means “son of’ – a Viking was a son of the fjords. His home was a harsh land of high mountains and deep inlets where in actuality the readiest way of transport was by water.
It was a largely unproductive land, offering little to its ambitious warrior sons. So it had been
natural they should turn to the sea.
Young chieftains coming old were assigned longships so they could prove their fitness to lead; overpopulation provided the followers. What better way to create one’s fortune than to “go viking” -plunder England’s farmlands across the North Sea or sack an interface on the continent?
Sea roving like this demanded the swiftest and sturdiest of ships. Savage storms swept the North Sea and battered Norway’s rock-bound coasts. If caught away from a haven, ships had to stay at sea to survive; they could seldom be beached.
And swift and sturdy ships the ocean rovers had, for the Vikings were the most effective naval architects of these day, Because of those chieftains whose ships were buried with them, we realize much about their craft.
Two especially fine vessels have now been dug from grave mounds at the Gokstad and Oseberg farms in Norway. Both date from the ninth century and are preserved in Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum.
Far earlier is the famed Nydam boat, dug out of a bog in Jutland and now in a museum in Schleswig, Germany. Dating from early fourth century, it’s 76 feet long having an ll-foot beam. Strangely enough it apparently have been scuttled, for holes were slashed in it, and bundles of loot lay nearby. You are able to almost start to see the burly raiders, hotly pursued, tossing the plunder overboard, then sinking their ship. They preferred to die by their own hand as opposed to give their enemies the satisfaction of capturing and killing them. All three of these ships are long, shallow double-enders.
Unlike carvel-built Mediterranean and Indian Ocean vessels, whose planks are fitted edge to edge over a figure with caulking in between, Norse ships were clinker-built of overlapped planks. This allowed more caulking to be tucked into the joints and made hulls tighter. Shipwrights adzed the planks out of logs, leaving a cleat at intervals. Then light ribs were inserted and lashed to the cleats with withes.
A Viking ship had only a single bank of oars, for its sail was used more compared to sail in a Mediterranean galley. It was strongly sewn and best shipping agency in bangladesh often beautifully decorated by Viking women. The yard, though swung athwartships in the types of square-rigged vessels, could be braced quickly to the fore-and-aft line.
Such ships could sail near the wind, but their shallow draft and insufficient a deep keel might make them make considerable leeway. They were steered with a deep oar fastened to the starboard quarter. With a 40-inch tiller one man could turn the blade easily in the roughest seas.
An awning in the forepart of the ship sheltered the fighting men on the longer passages. The sailors slept in leather sleeping bags and kept their weapons handy beneath the thwarts from that they rowed. They took along bronze cooking pots, but prepared their meals ashore whenever possible because of the danger from fires aboard.
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