Viking Longships: How They Were Built and Sailed
Viking longships were long, shallow ships driven by oars and one square sail, which carried Norse crews from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland and North America.
A Viking longship was a long, narrow, shallow-draft ship, driven by oars and a single square sail. Its light, flexible hull could cross open sea, run up rivers and be pulled onto a beach. Norse crews used these ships during the Viking Age, roughly from 793 to 1066, for raiding, trading and settling new lands, from Scandinavia to Britain, Iceland, Greenland and North America.
What were the main parts of a longship?
A longship's performance came from a small number of parts, each doing a specific job. The table lists the main ones.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Keel | A single timber along the bottom that resists sideways drift |
| Strakes | Overlapping planks that form a light, flexible outer skin |
| Frames | Ribs fitted inside the planking that stiffen the hull |
| Mast and square sail | Catch the wind from behind or from the side |
| Oars | Drive the ship in calm weather and move it in harbour |
| Steering oar | A broad oar on the right side of the stern; its name gave the word starboard |
The planks, called strakes, overlap like the boards of a clapboard wall and are fastened edge to edge with iron rivets. This clinker or lapstrake method produced a skin that bends slightly with the waves rather than resisting them rigidly. The frames were added after the planking was set, so the hull was shaped first and then stiffened from inside.
How was a longship built and sailed?
The keel is the part that keeps the ship on course. A sail pushes a ship sideways as well as forward, and the sideways drift is called leeway. A long keel below the waterline resists that drift, so the force of the wind turns into forward motion rather than slipping across the water.
The square sail was woven from wool and hung from a yard, a spar across the mast that the crew could raise, lower and turn. It gave the most power when the wind came from behind or from the side. Square-rigged ships of this kind could not sail as close to the wind as a modern sailing boat, so crews rowed when the wind was against them or when they needed to manoeuvre. The Gokstad ship, excavated in southern Norway in 1880, was about 23 to 24 metres long and had sixteen oar positions on each side.
Shallow draft mattered as much as speed. A longship needed only about a metre of water, so it could travel up rivers and be run onto a gravel beach without a harbour. Deeper vessels could not reach those places, which gave the longship a reach that its size did not suggest.
How did Viking sailors find their way?
Navigation depended on the sun, the stars, the direction of swell, and the behaviour of birds near land. Icelandic sagas, which were written down long after the events they describe, tell of sailors who released birds to find land. The magnetic compass reached Northern Europe only later, and there is no clear evidence that Viking crews used one.
One debated idea is the sunstone. Some sagas mention a stone used to find the sun on cloudy days, and some scholars have proposed that it was a crystal that splits light, letting a navigator locate the sun through cloud. The idea has supporters and critics, and no such stone has been identified with certainty among the finds.
How far did longships reach?
Norse sailors settled the Faroe Islands and Iceland, with Iceland settled from the late 800s. Around 985 Erik the Red led settlers to Greenland. Around the year 1000 a small Norse settlement was established at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland, which archaeologists have confirmed as a Norse site.
Such voyages required steady course-keeping over open water. Later navigators solved that problem with instruments, such as the compass and satellite positioning. Viking crews relied on the sky, the sea and the land instead. The hull's ability to flex under load is a matter of material behaviour, described in stress and strain.
Tags
engineering history medieval history navigation
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