Real Viking Ship Completes North Atlantic Crossing | Hacker News Reader

Real Viking Ship Completes North Atlantic Crossing

gcaptain.com

52 pointsprotomyth35 comments

This is really cool. That voyage must be pretty brutal compared to modern sailing vessels - if you look at this video [1], the galley is basically a sink with a tarp over it :). I wonder if the ship has an inboard engine or a GPS for safety reasons. I imagine that turning this thing around in a crew overboard scenario would be pretty much impossible with a square-rigged sail and no engine.

[1] http://www.drakenexpeditionamerica.com/2016/06/07/cooking-on...

For what it is worth, there is a support ship. http://www.drakenexpeditionamerica.com/2016/06/16/the-beauty...:

"Along this voyage we have the opportunity to have a media team documenting the adventure. There is one photographer on the ship and 2 photographers and producers on our support vessel. That allows us to have stunning pictures of our beautiful ship and of the crew trying to tame the Dragon in the seas."

They also seem to carry modern life vests all the time. That, at least, gives them some chance of survival in case of a man overboard situation. In Viking times in those waters, I guess going overboard was a death sentence, even if you could swim.

It does look like it has some modern equipment, probably for the reasons you mention. In this picture you can see a wheel, some throttle controls, and some screens which I'm guessing are for GPS and/or sonar. It's still an amazing feat, much respect.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3888/14916240637_e3f3afb9c7_b....

It would be interesting to see how much of the structure is modern as well. It isn't unusual to see fiberglass and other modern materials on replica ships like this.

None of it, according to TFA.

Fun fact: The ship's name Harald Hårfager is the name of a great Viking king, whose name literally means "Fabulous Hair Harald". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Fairhair

Look, I love the pictures, and the spirit of the endeavor. I don't so much love this:

>Draken Harald Hårfagre is actually not a replica, rather a real-life Viking ship built based ancient Norwegian boat building techniques dug up from the history books and archaeological findings

So... a replica. A very faithful replica, made with care to historical accuracy.

Replica tends to mean modern thing that looks like original but has quite a few modern parts and built with modern techniques. Kits cars builders have made the word replica problematic.

I think, "Historically accurate replica, made with exquisite care" would avoid that trap.

Maybe. Every time I hear replica, I see some kit car on a modern chassis, so I might be a bit biased.

That gave me pause, too. I think they mean it's not a replica because there's no original -- or rather, it is the original. That is, it's not a copy of any particular Viking-era ship found buried in mud or whatever; it's an entirely new ship, made using documented (and inferred) methods from the era. It's as if someone made a ship that was quite like, yet also distinctly different from, HMS Victory (or the Santa Maria, or whatever historical vessel floats your, er, boat): not a replica, more a sister-ship.

It's a new ship, using the same methods, not a copy of an old ship. It's not a duplicate of a previous vessel but a new bespoke vessel.

Given that it is neither a copy of an original or unique work (Starry Night or the Statue of Liberty, for example) nor a scale model, I think that it is not a replica. It is a genuine, modern Viking ship. However I suppose you could argue it is not a true Viking ship as there are simply no more Vikings. It is a ship built in the Viking style and manner.

I was puzzled by that as well. It sounds like what they mean is that they tried to replicate the construction methods, not merely the exterior form of a Viking ship, or replicate a specific Viking ship.

There is a fairly detailed set of rules about restoration vs replica vs original. Things built with the same materials using the same tools and techniques are "originals". I did a bit of research on this when trying to buy an original Scottish Claymore sword. I had a great discussion with a curator at the British Museum (which has an excellent arms and armor exhibit) about my conundrum and he suggested having one forged, in the same way and with the same materials, was in fact getting an original. The difference being that it didn't have a "past" or sets of stories to go with it, but as I was looking for something that would have its own stories that wasn't the important bit. He referred me to a craftsman that I commissioned to make one, it took about 9 months from start to finish.

Then there are "restorations" which are original parts with non-original parts. The Hiller Air museum had a docent who was working on restoring a WWII P-40 which had the original number plate, firewall and seat frames, but the rest was fabricated using more modern means. The plane would still be a P40 but as a restoration it would be a mix of older and newer parts some of which had been manufactured using techniques or materials that were unavailable during the war, so not "original".

That's cool. Do you have any pictures of the sword or process?

Strange choice of language. What word do they use for things that are "original" in the ordinary sense of the word? Surely there's something less awkward than "original with a past"?

There are "historically significant" artifacts which are things that are both original and something about them was also historically important or interesting. And of course artifacts that are historically insignificant but original and so sometimes good examples of items from the time. The Steamboat Arabia museum has a lot of stuff you would find in the 1850's version of WalMart, none of it is historically significant but the items are great examples of what the stuff people were talking about when they wrote letters and books probably looked and felt like.

The key is separating the item (which can be an original, a re-creation[1], a restored original, or a replica) and the context (the item's history)

[1] I believe, but am not sure, that this was the term for something made with the original materials but using different techniques. Some things like Samurai swords have a gap where it was lost how they were made, and so all you get are recreations of swords of that type rather than new original swords. And yes, I know, its all semantics really, but archivists are nothing if not sticklers about details.

That's not the distinction I'm talking about. I'm talking about the distinction between an object that actually was created at the relevant time period, and one that was created later to mimic one (perhaps indistinguishably so).

That is the thing though, there is no distinction. Try the following thought experiment, "Hagar the shipwright makes a boat for Eric the Red, then trips and falls into a frozen lake where he is frozen for 1500 years, when he is discovered he is thawed out, whereupon he goes to the same forest he always goes to, cuts down the same kinds of trees he always cuts down, and builds another boat." Both boats are original, one is "old" and one is "new", but their time of creation has no impact on their originality.

You are perhaps seeking a distinction that does not exist.

No. We have a continuum of examples connecting almost all distinction we draw. The existence of continuums is not evidence against the supreme usefulness of identifying extremely bimodal distributions. Ring species do not negate the meaningfulness of species. "Number of parts replaced" interpolates between restorations and original, but it doesn't invalidate the distinction. Hypothetical time-traveling vikings does not invalidate the distinction between "original", as the word is commonly understood, and "original", as you've insisted it should be used.

There was a crossing from Trondheim, Norway to the Isle of Man in 1979 and the ship is now housed at the House of Manannin. It's hard to imagine what being on one of these things would be like for any length of time.

There's a very old BBC article on the voyage here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/content/articles/2009/07/02/o...

Really looking forward to seeing this when it reaches Bay City, Michigan in two weeks.

(And, leaving an ad in a very unlikely place, my band is part of the International Maritime Music portion of the Bay City Tall Ship Celebration.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Severin#The_Brendan_Voyage...

That is also a great book and similar adventure.

Why do they say "approximately 32 crew members"? One would think an accurate head count could be achieved for this ship.

I'm sure it varies from time to time depending upon the voyage.

Qualified guess: As the support ship presumably had some creature comforts missing on the replica viking ship, they probably rotated the crew - say, four days on the replica, a day for a shower and some proper sleep on the support ship, another four days on the replica...

Doesn't lessen the accomplishment in any way in my book if my guess turns out to be correct.

And yet try only evidence that the Norse ever made it beyond Newfoundland is pseudo science (or as Samuel Eliot Morrison said, 'scandiknavery'). Even if they did, it had zero impact on the future of the continent.

> Even if they did, it had zero impact on the future of the continent.

What does that have to do with anything?

Not so. At L'anse Aux Meadows they found samples of plant matter that only grows on the mainland.

-If nothing else, it may suggest that you claimed independence from the wrong colonial power.

We'll come over to incorporate you in Greater Norway any day, now.

;-)

I'm thinking you already have a beachhead in Minnesota. But at the time, wasn't Norway a colony of Sweden? Or was it Denmark then? I'm fuzzy on when the switch happened.

In any case, if you do take over, at least then we'll be able to get decent lefse in California.

First of all - there is no such thing as decent lefse.

Back in Viking times, the nation state as we know it today didn't exist - but Norway was under Denmark between 1387 (methinks) and 1814, when we declared independence only to find ourselves handed over to the Swedes as war booty. Then in 1905 we told the Swedes where they could stuff their union. They promptly did.

I'm a little shocked that no one's pointed out that Harald Hårfarge is the name of the king that's credited with making Norway one nation (some bitter people claim this isn't true just because it was made up in the 1300s, some 300 years after Harald died).

Fitting that it is the name of the ship that's sent to re-capture Vinland.

For those interested, there are written records about these voyages dating back to the 13th and 14th century. The events took place some 300 years earlier, however.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Erik_the_Red

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_sagas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_saga

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