Authors: Neil Oliver
Another familiar English word is derived from the practices of the Norse sailors. A modified paddle, called the ‘steer-board’ (the Vikings would have said
styra
– to steer), was the means by which the craft was steered. Mounted always on the right-hand side of the hull, towards the stern, it performed the same function as a rudder. The familiar maritime word for the right-hand side of any vessel – the ‘starboard’ – is thus a corruption of the Vikings’ steer-board.
The mast, anything up to 60 feet high and usually crafted from the tall, straight trunk of a pine tree, was mounted exactly in the centre of the ship – ‘amidships’ – meaning it could be sailed backwards or forwards at will. One or two crossbars supported the weight of as much as 1,000 square feet of sail, and rigging too served to keep it firmly in place. Held in position by a wedge of wood, the mast could be lowered towards the stern when the sail was not in use. These new ships of the Scandinavian design were structurally stronger than anything that had gone before; and since the hull was stronger it could support a larger mast and sail that in turn provided a greater turn of speed. If the wind dropped or, worse still, was against their direction of travel, the men had no option but to take to the oars. These were pushed through closable holes in the sides of the ship and then, seated either upon specially fitted benches or simply on the chests and boxes that contained each man’s personal belongings, they set themselves to hard, rhythmic rowing that could propel them almost as fast as the sail.
While the world has long since grown familiar with the iconic idea of the Viking ship, there were in fact several different types of vessel, employed for specific types of voyage. The craft pulled hastily ashore on the beach at Lindisfarne by heavily armed, ruthless raiders was a
drakkar
– a quintessential ‘long ship’ – and the sort that most fully conforms to the description above. Subsquently labelled dragon ships by their victims and enemies (after the carved dragons many had for their figureheads), they were fast-moving ships of war designed and used by fighting men. By the standards of the day they were large vessels – as much as 120 feet long and able to carry perhaps 80 armed men at a time when the English chroniclers were accustomed to describing bands even 30-strong as ‘armies’. The easily raised and lowered sail offered valuable flexibility for military manoeuvres and for seizing the element of surprise in lightning attacks; combined with a spectacularly shallow draught, it made it easy to pass beneath bridges and across shallow rivers. Also invaluable was the option of switching at will between sail and oars. If the dragon heads were not enough to strike fear into the hearts of those watching the approach of such vessels, the warriors also placed their shields into specially designed shield-battens fitted onto the outer edge of the topmost strake. If anyone doubted the violent intent of the men pulling on the oars, the sight of the brazenly painted shields, appearing like dragons’ scales, would have made it plain bloodshed was in the offing.
The advantages of the dragon ships were certainly numerous, but it is worth bearing in mind that speed had been achieved at a heavy price. Such craft had relatively little space either for provisions or cargo (or rather booty) and offered next to nothing by way of shelter for the crew.
Some of the best insights into Viking ship-building technology came in 1962, with the discovery of the wrecks of
five Viking ships in the harbour at Skuldelev, by Roskilde, in Denmark. They had been deliberately scuttled nearly 10 centuries before, in a bid to block access to the Roskilde fjord, and their millennia in the mud of the seabed ensured remarkable preservation. In 2004 a reconstruction of one of them set out upon the 1,000-nautical-mile journey from Roskilde to Dublin – where Viking craftsmen had built the original vessel (known to archaeologists as Skuldelev 2) all those years before. Named the
Sea Stallion
, she is the product of four years of painstaking work by modern craftsmen carefully replicating the techniques of their ancient predecessors.
As part of a project for the BBC, I travelled with a television crew to intercept the
Sea Stallion
, as she made her way across the North Sea, at a point some scores of miles north of the Orkney Islands. Etched into my memory is the moment we first caught sight of our quarry, from the rain-lashed deck of the modern vessel we had boarded many hours before in Kirkwall. Suddenly, on the horizon and still some miles distant, appeared a glimpse of a lost world. Reconstruction she might have been but she was a dragon ship just the same. The best part of a hundred feet long, her fragile-seeming silhouette was heartbreaking and heart-stirring at the same time. Rather than dragon ship, perhaps there was somehow more of the dragon
fly
in the way her long, lean hull sat so lightly upon the swell, as if ready to take flight at any moment. Our own ship seemed only utilitarian by comparison, built just to get a job done and lacking anything in the way of panache or flair. As we drew closer we could see that the
Sea Stallion
’s sail, bulging with the weight of the wind, was brightly, arrogantly striped – orange and yellow. Her gunwales too were painted in rainbow colours.
Almost garish to modern eyes, it seemed the paint-job was of the sort that would indeed have been fashionable a thousand years ago. Included within the
Encomium Emmae Reginae
(written by a monk working in the monastery of St Omer, in Flanders, in the 1040s and styled to honour Queen Emma of Normandy) is an account of a visit to Normandy in 1013 by the fleet commanded by King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark:
When at length they were all gathered, they went onboard the towered ships, having picked out by observation each man his own leader on the brazen prows. On one side lions moulded in gold were to be seen on the ships, on the other birds on the tops of the masts indicated by their movements the winds as they blew, or dragons of various kinds poured fire from their nostrils. Here there were glittering men of solid gold or silver nearly comparable to live ones, there bulls with necks raised high and legs outstretched were fashioned leaping and roaring like live ones. One might see dolphins moulded in electrum, and centaurs in the same metal, recalling the ancient fable. In addition I might describe to you many examples of the same embossing, if the names of the monsters which were fashioned there were known to me. But why should I now dwell upon the sides of the ships, which were not only painted with ornate colours but were covered with gold and silver figures? The royal vessel excelled the others in beauty as much as the king preceded the soldiers in the honour of his proper dignity, concerning which it is better that I be silent than that I speak inadequately. Placing their confidence in such a fleet, when the signal was suddenly given, they set out gladly, and, as they had been ordered, placed themselves round about the royal vessel with level prows, some in front and some behind. The blue water, smitten by many oars, might be seen foaming far and wide, and the sunlight, cast back in the gleam of metal, spread a double radiance in the air.
After much jockeying for position, at a speed of 10 knots or so, our vessel came alongside the dragon ship just long enough for me and the camera crew to clamber aboard. All in a moment we became aware just how demanding a craft the
Sea Stallion
actually was. She was crewed by volunteers – some with an interest in sailing, together with the necessary skills, and some without. But seasoned or not, their condition, after many days at sea, made clear just how uncomfortable and trying an experience the crossing was proving to be for people used to the comforts of the twenty-first century.
Since she was making good headway under sail, the crew was mostly redundant – no pulling on the oars required – and so were doing their best simply to protect themselves from the drenching spray from waves crashing relentlessly against the hull. With only stretched tarpaulins for shelter, every man and woman aboard, together, it seemed, with all of their belongings and provisions, was utterly soaked. Within minutes I became aware how the salt water stung the eyes and worked its way past the collars and cuffs of even the best modern sailing gear. Nothing could have been more wet, or colder for that matter – not even if the vessel had been proceeding underwater. These were proud Scandinavians in the main, as keen to be aboard as any man or woman alive, and yet the prevailing mood could only fairly be described as one of abject misery. They were days out from Denmark and facing many more ahead before landfall in Dublin. It might well have been one of the experiences of a lifetime – but surely better looked back upon later, rather than truly enjoyed at the time. The hour I spent aboard was more than enough to demonstrate at least some of the physical and mental challenges posed by those voyages made long ago. It struck me forcibly that by the time the ancient Vikings made landfall on the British Isles, their mood would have been harsh and unforgiving, to say the least.
Although they travelled aboard the most technically advanced vessels of the age, the Vikings nonetheless pitted themselves against some of the most dangerous stretches of water on Earth. Staying in sight of land as much as possible minimised perilous time spent in the open sea. From a suitable point of departure on the Danish west coast to a destination on the east coast of Britain is a journey of no more than a day and a half (weather and winds permitting, of course). The more legendary, though eminently achievable, crossing of the Atlantic would have exploited the possibility of using Iceland and Greenland as stepping stones along the way; and a journey from Norway to Iceland could have been broken with lay-overs in the Faroes or on Shetland.
The Vikings also made use of a number of relatively simple navigational techniques to help them reach their destinations. As well as observing and making reference to the movement of the lights in the sky – principally the sun and the moon – they also made use of a primitive type of astrolabe to estimate latitude. Calculation of longitude was many centuries beyond them, but there was also the experience acquired by others and passed on, generation after generation. Speed through the water – and therefore distance travelled – might be estimated by taking account of the force and direction of the wind. There were also more subtle cues and hints: the rhythm and timing of waves against the stern, variations in water colour as they approached land, the presence or absence of birds and the behaviour of fish and other sea creatures. All of it provided crucial information that could, in the hands of experienced mariners, make the difference between life and death in the open sea.
Added to the technical difficulties of navigation – of attempting to work out where they were, how far they had travelled and how much of the journey might still remain – there was also the ever-present threat of shipwreck. Voyages across stretches
of the North Atlantic certainly exposed those Viking sailors to storms, icebergs and hidden reefs. When Eirik the Red set out from Iceland, making for Greenland, he was at the head of a fleet of 25 ships. Only 15 completed the journey while the rest – vessels, passengers and crew – were lost.
If drakkar like the
Sea Stallion
were the warships, it was vessels of a substantially different shape that were employed in the business of moving large cargoes – or many passengers. The Vikings called them
knarr
and they were generally shorter and broader, with high sides to afford more protection from the swell and room fore and aft for all manner of goods. While they might have been rowed for short distances, or while moving about within harbours, these were primarily sailing ships. Since they were wider the knarr were also slower, as well as less manoeuvrable. But what they lacked in speed and agility they more than made up for by being better suited to the wild waters of the North Atlantic. The dragon ships carried warriors as far as the British Isles, that much is demonstrably true; but it was the more businesslike merchant ships that would, in time, carry Viking men (not to mention women, livestock, cargo and belongings) on their great voyages of colonisation to Iceland, Greenland and beyond.
The skill of the ship-builders is amply demonstrated by two Norwegian vessels consigned to the ground 12 centuries ago as part of high-status burials and now on display in the Viking Ship Museum, in Oslo. The Oseberg Ship is arguably the more celebrated of the two and was found during the excavation in 1904–5 of a huge burial mound beside the Oslo Fjord. Dendrochronology revealed the trees used in its construction were felled in the autumn of
AD
834. Nearly 70 feet in length and 17 feet wide, it is clinker-built and of a type known to Viking ship specialists as a
karv
, a versatile vessel that could have been used either as a small warship or for transporting cargo. She has
a dozen strakes on each side and measures over four feet high amidships between her keel and her gunwales. What makes the Oseberg Ship especially memorable, however, is the quality of the carving featured on the timbers of both the bow and the stern. Appearing as an endless line of interwoven animals and other designs, the artistry is even reminiscent of the later styling known to art historians as Romanesque. Certainly nothing greater or more accomplished has survived the Viking Age.
The Oseberg Ship secured its immortality on land rather than at sea, however, and was the centrepiece for the funeral of two women. The younger of the pair is thought by some to be the Ynglinga Queen Aase, mother of Halfdan the Black, founder of the Norwegian royal dynasty, and it follows, therefore, that the elder woman was a servant or slave dispatched as company for her mistress, or indeed owner.
More recently, scientists have examined the DNA of the younger woman and found evidence that she may have been born far to the east of Scandinavia, even as far away as the Middle East. Since the elder woman seems to have died of cancer – revealed by telltale marks on some of her bones – a quite different explanation suggests itself. Some archaeologists are now allowing for the possibility that it was the elder woman who was the mistress and the young foreigner her slave girl. If so, she might have been sacrificed so as to accompany her owner into the next world.