The Vikings
Viking ships
A key necessity of any expansion by a tribe or nation is transport, and it's in this area that the Vikings truly excelled. Their broad and flat longship was wonderfully efficient at tackling the harsh conditions of the open sea.
Shallow draft
Rather than cutting through the waves like a traditional deep ‘V’-shaped hull, the flat-bottomed boat simply sat on top of the water and rode the swells and dips of the waves. The shallow draft was remarkably versatile as it allowed the ship to travel along inland waterways with ease – a fully laden boat needed a depth of only a metre in which to float.
It also enabled the ships to land directly on to beaches with no requirement for docks or other structures. This meant that the warriors travelling in them could attack suddenly and without much, if any, warning.
Tough and flexible
In the 1990s, the well-preserved remains of five Viking ships were discovered at Roskilde, west of Copenhagen, which had been the capital of Denmark from the 10th to the 15th century. Scuttled to block part of a fjord, their final resting place on the sea bed, covered in silt, guaranteed their preservation. It is because of these vessels, together with other examples such as the knarr and Oseberg ships discovered in Norway, that we know so much about Viking ship construction.
Made of seasoned oak and pine, the hull of a Viking ship is lap-straked, where planks are overlapped and then riveted together. Internal ribs are attached after the lower parts of the hull have been formed, to force the hull into its familiar shape. The upper planking, or laps, are then added.
Wet wool
The Viking ships were powered by both oars and sail. The oars were constructed of pine, with fairly shallow blades, while the sails were made of wool treated with oil – a remarkable achievement considering how heavy a woollen sweater gets once it's wet!
Although the vessels all had a similar design, the Vikings made them in a variety of sizes. They ranged from 25- to 30-metre (82-98-foot) longboats to longships over 40m (131ft) in length that could carry 100 warriors across the sea at an average speed of 15mph.
The Viking design was both tough and flexible, with the added advantage of being relatively light. This last enabled the ships to be carried overland by their crews between bodies of water, as required.
An icon
It is interesting to note that the each of the Oxford and Cambridge rowers who appeared in the Channel 4 boat race experiment required 6,000 calories a day to perform effectively. For the students, this was provided by high-carbohydrate expedition food packs. For the Vikings, the necessary energy would have been eked out of dried fish.
Modern reconstructions have proved how manageable and seaworthy the Viking designs were. This didn't go unnoticed by the Anglo-Saxons, who built their own ships to a similar pattern. An icon of the Vikings, the longship was a vital tool that enabled the 'people of the north' to establish themselves from North America to Russia and Norway to Africa.
