Although Professor of Anthropology at the University of Louisville John Haleís lecture on the Viking longships, held Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. in Scovel Hall, was billed as illustrated, the brightness of the morning and the snow outside rendered his slides all but useless.† Even without the illustrations, however, Haleís lecture, entitled ìDragons of the North: The World of Viking Longships,” was quite animated.
Though the focal point of the talk was the Viking longships, it touched upon a variety of aspects of Viking life and history, as well as the archeological history of the discovery of Viking ships.† The Norse tribes collectively referred to as Vikings were active as a civilization from about 800 C.E. until about 1100 C.E.† During this time, Hale argued, it was their unique and formidable sailing craft, more than anything else, that accounted for their fearsomeness and effectiveness at raiding, looting, and pillaging as well as exploration and commerce.
Unlike traditional European sailing vessels, Viking ships were open, like scaled up canoes.
ìThere was no ëbelow decks,í” said Hale. ìThere were no decks. This was a different kind of ship.”
Because Vikings were either burned or buried with their ships, the vessels disappeared from service rather quickly after the Vikings fell, victims of a changing political climate and deforestation of their own lands.† As a result, by the late 19th century, no one remembered what a Viking ship looked like depictions from that time showing† European-style ships with square sails.
This is part of what makes Viking ships so interesting for archeologists.† Because of the great care Vikings in Norway took with the burial of their dead in ships, especially royalty, some of the ships have been found incredibly well-preserved. In particular, Hale discussed a royal yacht found at Oseberg, the beginning of Viking ship archeology.
Another huge find discussed by Hale was a collection of sunken ships found in a fjord at Roskilde.† The site contained each of the four major types of Viking vessel, all of them well-preserved, making it a veritable ìSears-Roebuck catalogue of Viking ships,” in Haleís words.
The Oseberg ship, the Roskilde ships and other finds revealed Viking ships to be remarkable unique vessels.† While European wooden ships depended on their ribbed planks for strength and support, the strength of Viking ships is in their skin óthe planks that go down the length of the ship.
This was accomplished by cutting trees radially to ensure the uniformity of planks and by overlapping the planks, making the space between them, a strong point rather than† a weak one.
Much of the controversy about Viking longships has been related to the discovery of America ó could a Viking ship have crossed the Atlantic to North America?† Ancient sagas describe Leif Erikson discovering a land called Vinland, likely the coast of Canada, around 1000 C.E ó nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus.† Hale described several cases of ìexperimental archeology,” wherein scholars reconstructed or restored Viking longships using period tools and attempted, successfully, to sail them across the ocean.† Finally the matter was put to rest when a Norwegian couple discovered a Viking ship in Newfoundland after a voyage to trace Eriksonís original route from the Saga.
Haleís particular work, which he discussed towards the end of the talk, traces the evolutionary roots of the canoe-like design of the longship.† Although the design had formerly been traced back to the Inuits, Hale said that he noticed similar designs used by peoples from the Pacific islands to central Africa, which he described as ìa worldwide tradition that had been completely forgotten.”
Why ìDragons of the North?” Hale explained that the Viking poets described their longships as dragons, the sail as their wing and that the long tall keel was often crafted to resemble a dragon head.