Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Introductory Chapters By the late Professor York Powell - III. The Wicking Fleets
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sweeps that were the chief motive power of the
galley, and could drive the bronze-beaked prow, that
was fixed to the curving end of the keel close to the
water, at a deadly rate into the enemy’s quarter, or
through his extended oarage. From this model the
Scandinavian took the mast, sail, rudder, and possibly
oar, but he did not servilely copy the build, which
was unsuited to the Northern Sea, though admirably
adapted to the Mediterranean, where it had been
perfected by the Greeks.
The finds of the last fifty years enable us to see
for ourselves what manner of ships the Norwegian
sailors – who were the first sailors to make long runs
out of sight of land, and to cross the North Sea and
Atlantic regularly year by year – built and sailed.
From the Nydam boats of the latter part of the
third century, by which time the type was already
formed, to the Gokstad ship of the eighth century,
which represents it in its perfection, the chain of
evidence is complete for Sweden and Norway and
the Baltic coasts. We can see before us in these
craft, the very kind of ship such as the Byzantine
historians tell us threatened new Rome, the great
city, Mickle-garth, from the middle of the ninth to
the middle of the tenth centuries, built with planks
on a keel of a single tree sixty feet or more in length:
masted, ruddered, holding from twenty to forty men,
with weapons, water, and food. The Nordland boat
of the Norwegian fisherman to-day is almost identical
in all essentials to the wicking ship of a thousand
years ago.
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