Criticism
Historians have criticized the usage of the term Viking ship in connection to Draken. Professor Eldar Heide points out that the ship is not constructed based on any finds from the Viking age., but rather descriptions in the Norse Sagas that have been viewed as inaccurate since the 1980s.
Helde points out that the framework was based on the misunderstood representation of Viking Age ships that we find among historians in the 12th–14th centuries. Draken was supposed to be 1. a Viking ship, 2. the longest in the world, and 3. have excellent seaworthiness.
The combination of this does not work. A very long, narrow and low-boarded ship could have been built, based on ship finds from the end of the Viking Age. But such a ship could not sail to America, which was an overarching goal in the Draken project.
Therefore, the ship was made wide and high-boarded in addition, and thus ended up far outside the Viking Age. Actually, it ended up in a parallel universe, because ships like the Draken hardly existed in Snorri's time, either.
The boat builders took the Gokstad ship, from 890 (23.8 m long), and scaled and adjusted it up until it had dimensions that could agree with what Snorri describes.
There are no warships from the Viking Age (small or long, narrow, low-board), and no cargo ships from the Viking Age (short, wide, high-board). But it is also not a floating fortress from the 13th century, with all the novelty that such ships had. Instead, it is a construction from 2012.
Viking Age ships in the Sagas from the 12th–14th centuries has been known and accepted among researchers since Rikke Malmros published the article "Leding og skjaldekvad" in 1985. [7]
She examined skald poems from the Viking Age that had lived in oral tradition until written down in the 13th century. There she saw that the skalds in the Viking Age praised warships for being light and fast – that is, shallow and small or slender. The skald stanzas agree with the archaeology, and Draken contradicts both source types. [8]
The early details of the history of the Faroe Islands are unclear. It is possible that Brendan, an Irish monk, sailed past the islands during his North Atlantic voyage in the 6th century. He saw an 'Island of Sheep' and a 'Paradise of Birds', which some say could be the Faroes with its dense bird population and sheep. This does suggest however that other sailors had got there before him, to bring the sheep. Norsemen settled the Faroe Islands in the 9th or 10th century. The islands were officially converted to Christianity around the year 1000, and became a part of the Kingdom of Norway in 1035. Norwegian rule on the islands continued until 1380, when the islands became part of the dual Denmark–Norway kingdom, under king Olaf II of Denmark.
Longships were a type of specialised Scandinavian warships that have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by the Norsemen for commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age, many of the longship's characteristics were adopted by other cultures, like Anglo-Saxons, and continued to influence shipbuilding for centuries.
The Viking Age was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period. The Scandinavians of the Viking Age are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen, although few of them were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy.
Harald Fairhair was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from c. 872 to 930 and was the first King of Norway. Supposedly, two of his sons, Eric Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good, succeeded Harald to become kings after his death.
Harald Sigurdsson, also known as Harald III of Norway and given the epithet Hardrada in the sagas, was King of Norway from 1046 to 1066. He unsuccessfully claimed the Danish throne until 1064 and the English throne in 1066. Before becoming king, Harald spent 15 years in exile as a mercenary and military commander in Kievan Rus' and chief of the Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Empire. In his chronicle, Adam of Bremen called him the "Thunderbolt of the North".
The Norsemen were a North Germanic linguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the predecessor of the modern Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway, who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, as well as Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.
Viking ships were marine vessels of unique structure, used in Scandinavia from the Viking Age throughout the Middle Ages. The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for, but they were generally characterized as being slender and flexible boats, with symmetrical ends with true keel. They were clinker built, which is the overlapping of planks riveted together. Some might have had a dragon's head or other circular object protruding from the bow and stern for design, although this is only inferred from historical sources. Viking ships were used both for military purposes and for long-distance trade, exploration and colonization.
The institution known as leiðangr, leidang (Norwegian), leding (Danish), ledung (Swedish), expeditio (Latin) or sometimes lething (English), was a form of conscription to organize coastal fleets for seasonal excursions and in defense of the realm typical for medieval Scandinavians and, later, a public levy of free farmers. In Anglo-Saxon England, a different system was used to achieve similar ends, and was known as the fyrd.
A skald, or skáld is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed to honor kings, but were sometimes ex tempore. They include both extended works and single verses (lausavísur). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings, which require some knowledge of Norse mythology, and heiti, which are formal nouns used in place of more prosaic synonyms. Dróttkvætt metre is a type of skaldic verse form that most often use internal rhyme and alliteration.
The Battle of Svolder was a large naval battle during the Viking age, fought in September 1000 in the western Baltic Sea between King Olaf of Norway and an alliance of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden and Olaf's enemies in Norway. The backdrop of the battle was the unification of Norway into a single independent state after longstanding Danish efforts to control the country, combined with the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
Lord of the Isles or King of the Isles (Scottish Gaelic: Triath nan Eilean or Rìgh Innse Gall; Latin: Dominus Insularum) is a title of nobility in the Baronage of Scotland with historical roots that go back beyond the Kingdom of Scotland. It began with Somerled in the 12th century and thereafter the title was held by a series of his descendants, the Norse-Gaelic rulers of the Isle of Man and Argyll and the islands of Scotland in the Middle Ages. They wielded sea-power with fleets of galleys (birlinns). Although they were, at times, nominal vassals of the kings of Norway, Ireland, or Scotland, the island chiefs remained functionally independent for many centuries. Their territory included much of Argyll, the Isles of Arran, Bute, Islay, the Isle of Man, Hebrides, Knoydart, Ardnamurchan, and the Kintyre peninsula. At their height they were the greatest landowners and most powerful lords after the kings of England and Scotland.
Agder is a county and traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the early 1900s, the term Sørlandet has been commonly used for this region, sometimes with the inclusion of neighbouring Rogaland. Before that time, the area was considered a part of Western Norway.
The Gokstad ship is a 9th-century Viking ship found in a burial mound at Gokstad in Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway. It is displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway. It is the largest preserved Viking ship in Norway.
The settlement of Iceland is generally believed to have begun in the second half of the ninth century, when Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. The reasons for the migration are uncertain: later in the Middle Ages Icelanders themselves tended to cite civil strife brought about by the ambitions of the Norwegian king Harald I of Norway, but modern historians focus on deeper factors, such as a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia. Unlike Great Britain and Ireland, Iceland was unsettled land and could be claimed without conflict with existing inhabitants.
Ketil Thorkelsson, better known by his nickname Ketil Trout or Ketil Salmon was a Norwegian military commander (hersir) of the late ninth century who settled in Iceland around 900 CE. He appears in Egils saga, the Landnámabók, and other Icelandic sources.
The raven banner was a flag, possibly totemic in nature, flown by various Viking chieftains and other Scandinavian rulers during the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. Period description simply describes it as a war banner with a raven mark on it, although no complete visual description or depiction of the raven banner is known from the time. Norse and European period artwork, however, depicts war banners as roughly triangular, with a rounded outside edge on which there hung a series of tabs or tassels, some with a resemblance to ornately carved "weather-vanes" used aboard Viking longships, indicating that some raven banners may have been constructed in a similar manner.
Viking ship replicas are one of the more common types of ship replica. Viking, the first Viking ship replica, was built by the Rødsverven shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway. In 1893 it sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Chicago in the United States for the World's Columbian Exposition. Formerly located in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois, the Viking is currently undergoing conservation in Geneva, Illinois, United States.
The Earls of Møre were a dynasty of powerful noblemen in Norway dating to the unification of Norway in the 9th century. The first earl of Møre was Rognvald Eysteinsson, a close friend and ally of King Harald I of Norway. He is called by the byname Rognvald Mørejarl in the Heimskringla and Orkneyinga saga.
Thórir 'the Silent' Rǫgnvaldsson was a ninth-century Viking and the second Jarl of Møre.
The Hedeby 1, also known as the Ship from Haithabu Harbour, was a Viking longship that was excavated from the harbor of Hedeby, a Viking trading center located near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Norway
