Maritime Wood

Launching day came at last. Traditionally, launching a heavy boat has been a task for the entire male population of the valley, with a 100-year-old, jointly owned boat wagon as the vehicle for transport to the sea. The extension to the boatshed was dismantled, and the floor had to be excavated to a depth of 4’ so that the stem tops would clear the crossbeams. The heavy hull was lowered down into the trench, placed on rollers, and then pulled out of the shed by many helping hands and two tractors. As the hull was too large for the boat wagon, a large truck was used for the trip to the sea. The last leg down from road to shore was hands, shoulders, and the hull’s own momentum; a number of people came home that day with pine tar across the back of sweater or jacket.

Details in Viking Age rigging are a matter of much debate, and the rigging of the knarr was based on a full evaluation of all sources; practical experiments undertaken with the replica have helped weed out some of the theories. The reconstructed rigging has a sail area of 85 square meters (about 279 square feet) on a fairly low mast, so the sail is nearly square. For the first trips, modern synthetic fibers were used for sail and ropes, but hemp ropes and a wool sail were rigged when the crew had more experience in handling the ship.

The first trip was in the summer of 1983, around the North Sea, mainly in light winds. Autumn trips along the Norwegian west coast showed that the knarr is in her element in a very stiff breeze. With 13 tons of stone ballast, there is still plenty of freeboard, and Thorset confidently tackled the North Atlantic in the early summer of 1984 with a selected crew.

All the lands settled by Vikings were to be visited, so the trip was taken in stages first to the Faroe Islands, then to Iceland, on to Greenland, and finally to the Norse settlement found and excavated by Helge Ingstad at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Good weather prevailed [or most of the trip, but the ship had its first trial when underway from Greenland to Newfoundland. A full gale from the north made it necessary to run under bare pole for several hours; fortunately, both vessel and crew came through the test with no mishap.

As far as Newfoundland, all sailing was done in the wake of the Vikings. We know from archaeological and literary sources that Vikings sailed here 1,000 years ago. The trip proved that ships of this type are well adapted to sailing these waters. On from Newfoundland, the aim of the trip is to show that a Viking ship is capable of circumnavigating the globe, and also that sailing a modern replica is a good means of promoting Norway abroad. At the time of this writing, November 1985, the ship is in Australian waters, with an expected arrival back home in the early summer of 1986.

According to Jørn Løset, who ancestors where boat builders in the 13th Century, he also hosts the website Vikingskip.com which is an excellent source for more information and stories about the age of the Vikings.

The sad faith of the ship was, which name was Saga Siglar - "The Saga Sailor" in English, it came safely back to Norway after sailing around the globe as referred before. A few years later it was wrecked and sunk in a storm in the Mediterranean Ocean, close to Seville in Spain. The storm was threatening, so the crew had to lower the sail and went only by its small diesel engine. After a while it got some rope tangled into the propeller, so the engine halted. Some hours later the ship was thrown over by some very huge waves.

What happened was that without power, the rudder was raised from the water when the ship was on top of the wave. The ship was then thrown in right angle with wave direction, and was crushed by the next wave. Luckily the entire crew was rescued.

The accident illustrates a weak point with the Viking ships - the side mounted rudder. It can be pivoted along four axes to some extent, in addition to be turned around its own vertical axis. But when lifted from the water, it can't keep up with a rear mounted rudder which still would have water contact in such a situation.