I WAS WRITING SOMETHING for a
magazine the other day and I mentioned the ancient Viking ship discovered in Gokstad,
Norway, in 1880. I referred to her as “slim and slippery.” Someone objected to
that description, saying the Viking ships were squat and fat and not very far
advanced in the art of design.
Not so, I’m afraid. If you look at
her lines you’ll see that she is, in fact, extraordinary in her beauty and
fineness. She was light and fast and hardly disturbed the water she moved
through.
Frederick K. Lord wrote an article
about the Gokstad ship in The Rudder
magazine in which he said that, considering the forms of contemporaneous ships,
“it seems incredible that a vessel so far ahead of its time could be produced.”
Contemporaneous, in this instance, means somewhere between the 8th and 11th
centuries A.D.
She was a skuta, a type of small
warship mentioned in the Sagas. She was designed mainly to be rowed but she did
carry a squaresail for use when conditions were suitable. “She was built for
speed,” said Lord. “Such a craft must have been very much used, being light,
swift, and handy for short voyages and general purposes.” Her length was close
to 80 feet and her beam was 16 foot 8 inches. She displaced 63,700 pounds and drew
only 3 foot 8 inches of water. She carried about 80 men.
Colin Archer took the lines off her
and no doubt marveled, as many others have done after him, at the advanced
design and construction. “The boats of Norway are today almost exactly like
this old ship,” said Lord, “and such an instance of persistence of type is
without parallel in the history of shipbuilding and affords indisputable proof
of the skill and knowledge of the Norsemen in designing and building ships.
Considering the leading dimensions and type, what designer today would
undertake to improve the lines of this boat? Could he produce a fairer set of
waterlines, buttocks and diagonals?
“Many parts are decorated with
ornamental tracings and carvings and the whole bespeaks the conscientious care
with which these Viking boats were built. Driving down the wind with swelling
sail, shields on gunwale, and crowded with a crew of lion-hearted men dressed
in barbaric splendor, the whole a mass of color — what a sight it must have
been!”
A sight to make a stout-hearted man
quake in his boots and run to lock up his wife and daughters, I should think.
Today’s
Thought
Never
slay more than one man in the same stock, and never break the peace which good
men and true make between thee and others.
— The Icelandic Sagas
Tailpiece
An Italian immigrant was having
trouble with English irregular verbs.
“I can’ta weara my wool skirt any
more,” she said. “I have send it to the cleaners and they shrinked ... shrank
... shrunk ... Oh!” she broke off in desperation. “I putted on weight.”
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday,
Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
