The Vikings

by Robert Wernick

  However much he loved fighting and warships, the Viking lived on the sea for many other reasons as well and devised vessels to suit his needs. When he turned his genius for design and construction from warships to ships for long-distance trade and exploration - and, eventually, for emigration to the farthest reaches of the ocean - he produced a boat equally remarkable: stouter and sturdier, designed to brave the worst seas in search of landfalls far beyond any other Westerners’ wildest dreams.

  These were the hafskip - haf meaning the ocean, and skip, of course, meaning ship. The hafskip was built with the same construction methods as the fighting langskip - high-curved stem and stern and lapstrake planking - but it was only half as long. And the hafskip was by its very nature more seaworthy. The longship was built as an instrument of combat. Long, narrow, and lined with oars for close-quarter maneuvering, it had little room for cargo. The hafskip, by contrast, was built to carry dozens of men and women, plus all their belongings and provisions, for a period of weeks or even months at sea.

  To accommodate these passengers and ample cargo, the hafskip was designed to be deep and beamy, with stouter ribs and thicker planks and a higher freeboard to keep waves from washing over the sides in northern ocean storms. Compared with the light and flexible longship, the hafskip was a heavy-displacement vessel. In light airs, the longship was faster because it took a good wind to press a heavily laden hafskip up to her top hull speed. But once out in the violent gales of the North Atlantic, the hafskip was at home. In towering seas and howling winds when a longship might be forced beyond the limitations of its design, the hafskip remained secure, driving through the seas at speeds of ten knots and more.

  There were a few oar positions in the bow and stern quarters, but they were only to stroke in and out of fjords and other narrow anchorages. The foredeck and afterdeck were planked over, and there was a substantial hold amidships. Cargo was piled everywhere and covered with ox hides. Sometimes the ship’s boat, a simple lapstrake rowboat, was carried on board, sometimes towed behind.

  These admirable hafskips were built in two basic forms: the stubby byrdingr, which was a small vessel - generally less than forty feet long - used for coastal trading, and the slightly larger knarr, which was about fifty feet in length and fifteen feet in the beam. It was this knarr that became the primary Viking ocean voyager, and the care and maintenance of this stout-hearted vessel preoccupied everyone who was fortunate enough to serve as its master.

  In a thirteenth century compendium of Norse folklore called the King’s Mirror, a father gives his son some advice about the maintenance and proper handling of an oceangoing knarr: “If you are preparing to carry on trade beyond the seas and you sail your own ship, have it thoroughly coated with tar in the autumn and, if possible, keep it tarred all winter. But if the ship is placed on timbers too late to be coated in the fall, tar it when spring opens and let it dry thoroughly afterward. Always buy shares in good vessels or in none at all. Keep your ship attractive, for then capable men will join you, and it will be well manned. Be sure to have your ship ready when summer begins, and do your traveling while the season is best. Keep reliable tackle on shipboard at all times, and never remain out at sea in late autumn, if you can avoid it.”

  The father continues: “Whenever you travel at sea, keep on board two or three hundred ells” - since an ell then measured over eighteen inches, this meant about 330 to 500 feet - “of wool of a sort suitable for mending sails, if that should be necessary, a large number of needles, and a supply of thread and cord. You will always need to carry a supply of nails, both spikes and rivets, of such sizes as your ship demands; also good boat hooks and broadaxes, gouges and augers, and all such other tools as ship carpenters make use of. All these things that I have now named you must remember to carry with you on shipboard, whenever you sail on a trading vessel and the ship is your own.”

  The conversation between father and son then turns from maintenance and equipment to questions of prudent seamanship. The son inquires when - how early in spring and how late in the fall - it is possible to make such a passage. “The seas are not all alike,” answers the father, “nor are they all of equal extent. Small seas have no great perils, and one may risk crossing them at almost any time; for one has to make sure of fair winds to last a day or two only, which is not difficult for men who understand the weather. But where travel is beset with greater perils, whether because the sea is wide and full of dangerous currents, or because the prow points toward shores where the harbors are rendered insecure by rocks, breakers, shallows, or sandbars - whenever the situation is such, one needs to use great caution; and no one should venture to travel over such waters when the season is late. It seems to me that one should hardly venture overseas later than the beginning of October. For at that time the sea begins to grow very restless, and the tempests always increase in violence as autumn passes and winter approaches. Men may venture out upon almost any sea except the largest as early as the beginning of April. For after the sixteenth of March, the days lengthen, the sun rises higher, and the nights grow shorter.”

  The author sagely adds: “The man who is to be a trader will have to brave many perils, sometimes at sea and sometimes in heathen lands, but nearly always among alien peoples; and it must be his constant purpose to act discreetly wherever he happens to be. On the sea, he must be alert and fearless.”

  The Norse gods who ruled the waves provided an excellent reason for caution. Aegir and his wife Ran were personifications of the ocean’s capacity for good and ill. When properly propitiated, Aegir could offer up the riches of the sea. But when angered, he could make even the stoutest Viking quail. In Fridthjofs Saga, it was suggested that the prudent sailor always should carry a piece of gold, so that if caught in a storm he would not be empty-handed when he drowned and came into the presence of Aegir’s wife. He could cross her palm with gold, thus assuring his entrance into Valhalla. A good captain was supposed to see to it that all his men had this gift of gold - even if it meant distributing it from his own purse.

  Aegir’s nine daughters were the waves of the sea, called by such forbidding names as Howler and Grasper, and no Viking wanted to spend a night in their arms.

  The thunder god Thor also needed to be placated by Vikings at sea because he controlled the weather, and whether a sailor ended up in the grips of Aegir or Ran and their daughters often depended upon Thor’s having been appeased by sacrifices before the voyage or proper oaths from the helmsman’s position.

  In addition to the hazards of the weather, ocean voyages posed more prosaic problems, especially when knarrs were venturing out loaded with emigrants on a colonizing expedition to the countless islands off the coasts of Scotland, to the shores of Ireland or, later, to the new-found lands across the wild northern waters.

  That the Vikings succeeded in these epic voyages was attributable not only to their magnificent blue-water sailing vessels. They were superlative navigators as well - venturing boldly out to explore the unknown, and then repeating their voyages almost casually, with a certainty of direction that was nothing short of phenomenal. What lay behind all Viking seafaring was the Norseman’s instinct for the sea, a sense that seemed uncanny to the other peoples of the time, but it was, in reality, a prodigious body of hard-earned knowledge accumulated throughout centuries of nautical life.

  The Vikings drew significant meaning from the look of cloud formations, from changes in winds and wave patterns, from ocean currents and ground swells, from sea fogs, water colors, and temperatures. They could read information from the habits of sea birds, were alert to the over-water migration of certain land birds, and they tracked the movements of fish and whales that came down from the north. Seasoned Viking navigators could tell when they were approaching the Faroe Islands by the swell building up over the banks surrounding the group. They would know they were nearing Greenland because of the abrupt change in the temperature of the water as they entered the polar current, by the pronounced change in the water’s color
from ocean blue to green, and by the occasional appearance of drift ice.

  The Vikings were masters of the relentless currents that swirled around in the North Atlantic and polar waters. The Norwegian Current surged powerfully up the coast of Norway toward the Lofoten Islands, tending to convey ships in its path swiftly toward Iceland. From Iceland, ships setting a westward course were carried along by the Irminger Current and then whisked southward by the East and West Greenland Currents; finally, they were propelled down the coast of North America by the Labrador Current.

  Prevailing winds generally helped them on their way as well, blowing northward between Norway and Iceland, and southward between Iceland and Greenland. The elaborately decorated wind vanes mounted on the prows and mastheads of Viking ships testify to the sailors’ keen sensitivity to every errant puff, for it was only by taking full advantage of both the wind and the currents that rapid ocean passages could be made without tragedy.

  In a later day, mariners would have magnetic compasses and sophisticated speed-measuring devices to help them navigate with precision. But, in Viking times, the compass had not yet reached Western Europe from the Orient. As for computing speed, the only way the Vikings might have managed that would have been to toss a chip of wood into the sea and count how long it took to travel the vessel’s length to the stern or by watching bubbles float by.

  Viking seafarers employed a primitive celestial navigation to help them determine course and distance. At night, Polaris, the North Star, was the primary cosmic indicator. This star was usually visible overhead, circling tightly around the pole below, and thus a boon beyond price to mariners. On clear nights, it required only a method of determining the angle of Polaris off the bow to set an approximate course. By holding a steady ninety-degree angle from Polaris, for example, the Vikings could be sure that they were heading directly east or west. Later, this would be known as latitude sailing - and its ramifications for the Vikings were enormous, especially on their immense western voyages of exploration and trade across hundreds of miles of open ocean.

  No one venturing down the coast of Scandinavia could fail to note as well that the altitude of Polaris from the horizon would decrease as the ship sailed southward and that the reverse would hold true on a journey north. So by measuring the altitude of this star, Viking navigators could determine with considerable accuracy how far north or south they had traveled.

  Employing the sun as a navigational tool was somewhat more complex. In the depths of winter, when the sun barely rose at all, it was useless as a directional beacon. But then only the most foolhardy Viking ventured far from land at that time of the year, with its bitter cold and monstrous storms. In the summertime, however, when the sun was above the horizon for a great part of the day and night, the Vikings made full use of it.

  As was the case with Polaris, the height of the sun as it arced across the sky would change as the vessel sailed south or north. On a southerly heading, the altitude of the sun would increase, and the reverse would also hold true on a northerly course. The sun could also indicate the direction as it traveled from east to west. To measure these values and apply them to navigation, the Vikings devised three pioneering navigational instruments that they called the sun board, the sunstone, and the sun shadow board. The sun board appears to have been a dial on which were marked compass points, radiating from a hole in the center. With the help of a pointer mounted on the dial, the Vikings were able to take a course bearing from the sun as it rose in the east or set in the west and to maintain any course simply by checking this crude triangulation each day. From Viking accounts, it is known that Norse navigators were accustomed also to taking a sighting at noon when the sun reached the north-south meridian. Thus, although he had no magnetic compass, the Viking could make a reasonably accurate determination of his compass bearings each day.

  Under overcast skies or in dense fog, the Viking made use of a remarkable calcite mineral crystal named cordierite, the Norse sunstone, found in Scandinavia and Iceland. When a crystal of cordierite is held at right angles to the plane of polarized light from the sun, the crystal instantly changes from yellow to dark blue. Probably first used as a decorative element in Norse jewelry, the sunstone was a real boon to Viking seafarers. Even in a thick fog or under a cloudy sky, a navigator in mid-ocean could pinpoint the exact position of the invisible sun by rotating a chunk of cordierite until it suddenly turned dark blue. Since it produced the same color change even when the sun was as much as seven degrees below the horizon, the navigator could continue to take sightings after sunset.

  But for general course settings during daylight hours, Vikings relied most heavily on the sun shadow board. This device, which allowed them to determine their latitude and then sail along that latitude over vast, ocean stretches to their destination, appears to have been a wooden disc marked with concentric circles that were the rough equivalent of latitudes. In the center of the disc was a vertical staff - similar to the one on a sundial - that could be pushed up and down to make it taller or shorter according to the position of the sun in the sky. When the staff was set at the proper height for the sun’s declination in mid-August, for example, the shadow cast by the sun at noon when it reached its zenith, would fall on a particular circle. By keeping the sun’s shadow on that same circle each noon, the navigator could maintain his latitude. If the shadow fell to one side of the circle or the other, the helmsman could tell how much he should steer north or south to get back on course. To keep the instrument level at sea, a sailor was assigned to hold it floating in a bowl of water.

  The sun shadow board became the heart of Viking daylight latitude sailing, and all directions given to Norse navigators concerned themselves with reckonings to and from pivotal points of geography where latitude sailing could begin. A vessel would sail roughly north or south until it reached a pivotal point, and then it would sail east or west to its destination - or to another pivotal point. The Norsemen were aided immensely by the location of Scandinavia. The latitude of the Horns in Iceland was the same as that of Trondheim Fjord in Norway. From Bergen in Norway, a ship could sail on the same latitude to the Shetland Islands and Cape Farewell in Greenland; the Orkney Islands were on the same latitude as Stavanger, Norway. By holding to any given Polaris angle or sun shadow length for the duration of the voyage, a Viking sailor could maintain his prescribed course to within just a few miles of his destination. At that point, he could watch for natural phenomena - perhaps a darker variety of sea birds known to inhabit the waters around southern Iceland or an increase in puffins, which would indicate the proximity of the Faroe Islands with their extensive colonies of sea birds. One of the sagas tells of a ship’s crew that “drifted southward across the ocean so that they had birds from Ireland.” And as they approached Greenland, they could identify the iceblink, the reflection in the sky of the ice cap.

  Thus did the Vikings construct their majestic ships and for centuries navigate them by the sun and stars across the northern seas and oceans. The Western world would not see mariners to equal or surpass them until the Middle Ages passed into the Renaissance and Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator ushered in the great age of exploration at the close of the fifteenth century.

  And what of the Long Serpent? What fate befell that magnificent vessel, the epitome of Viking design, the pride of shipwright Thorberg, the joy of Norway’s King Olaf Tryggvason? The record does not indicate whether he took her on any overseas raids or ocean voyages - possibly not, for he may have regarded her as too great a treasure to risk on such ventures. In fact, she seems to have been employed mainly as a royal ship of state to carry King Olaf on various ceremonial cruises around Scandinavian waters. And it is an irony of history that this was her role when she finally came to combat and became a prize in one of the many ambushes and sea battles that pitted Viking fleet against Viking fleet throughout the age of the Norsemen.

  This battle occurred barely two years after the Long Serpent was built in Trondheim Fjord. Olaf had made many ene
mies in the course of a long and bloody career, and his foes - Denmark’s King Sweyn, Sweden’s King Olaf, and a disaffected Norwegian noble named Eirik - brought their warriors and their fleets together and plotted to lay a trap for the Norwegian monarch. The conspirators agreed that, if they were successful, they would divide the kingdom of Norway among themselves - and whosoever captured the prized Long Serpent could keep her as his own.

  At the time, the Norwegian king was cruising the southern Baltic in the Long Serpent with a fleet of eleven dragon ships and numerous smaller longships and supply vessels. He had gone to Rogaland in southern Norway to conclude the marriage of a sister to a local jarl. Following that, he was spending the summer renewing old acquaintances in Vinland on the south coast of the Baltic.

  When all was in readiness to carry out the ruse, Olaf’s enemies prepared to lure him into their ambush. They dispatched a Viking named Sigvald, the ruler of an island off Vinland, to lead the unsuspecting Olaf astray. When the Norwegian fleet was ready to set sail for home, Sigvald persuaded Olaf in the Long Serpent to follow him on a devious journey through the unfamiliar waters: “For I know where the water is deepest between the islands and in the sounds, and these large ships require the deepest.” The shallow-draft vessels of King Olaf’s fleet, not requiring such deep waters, sailed into the Baltic.