The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times | Hacker News Reader

The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times

drakenhh.com

117 pointsJoelMcCracken33 comments

If this was interesting, and you're ever in eastern Norway, our oldest city Tønsberg have been building ships the old way for years now.

They started with Saga Oseberg, a copy of the Oseberg ship, ten years ago (here's the launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tigGYikk6A) and have continued making others.

You don't see any chainsaws in the building of these though; logs are split with axes, wedges and sledges, and even the nails are crafted on-site the old-fashioned way by blacksmiths.

The worksite is open to the public and it's really worth a visit in the summer.

Somewhat similarly the Mystic Seaport Museum[1] restores old ships using traditional methods. I believe they also offer classes on traditional shipbuilding methods.

It focuses on whaling history but have lots of other ships on exhibit and in the summer months have many shipbuilding related activities on site (figurehead carving, blacksmithing, etc) in addition to ship repair.

[1] https://www.mysticseaport.org/

But why did they make the mast of douglas fir? Seems like a bit of an odd decision for a very fine ship since it is not native in Scandinavia.

They get very tall. As tall as a mast.

Taller than the masts of the era it tries to replicate then I guess.

Probably would’ve been ample old growth trees of that size to pick from back in the day, but a Doug fir is going to be cheaper and actually available

From the looks of it this mast is 24m tall. I can see that douglas firs can become 120m, but that is hardly what you need. More like 35m maybe? That is not a very uncommon tree in Scandinavia. I am also guessing lots of landowners would be proud of gifting a tree for such a noble cause.

I think there are douglas firs in Scandinavia, but the question is if they were planted already 60-80 years ago to be able to take from here? Otherwise I guess it is a pretty long delivery from west coast US to Norway.

I guess my conclusion is that the douglas fir has better properties (weight/strength) than a scandinavian spruce or pine.

Its a recreation not a reconstruction. If you are use modern tools you have already left the historical correct reconstruction behind. Better then to save money, time, etc.

It is ok.

I don't know if you have every been to Scandinavia, but I can assure we have lots of firs or pines to choose from.

So it is not meant to be snarky. It is a curious question.

I'm sorry? I just answered your question. They use a non native tree because its cheap and have good capabilities. Using a native tree doesn't make much sense when the project isn't historical correct to high precision. Douglas figs is a very popular tree in modern Scandinavian forestry.

Apologies for being edgy in my answer.

Dont know where that came from.

Amazing ship, been laid up in Mystic Seaport for the last couple of years after crossing from Norway to the US through Iceland and Greenland. From what I have understood talking with people involved the billionaire builder got bored with the project after it completed the crossing.

Here's a video of them sailing out in heavy conditions from Greenland across the labrador sea. Their Youtube channel has more videos of them on the crossing and earlier trial seasons sailing around the north sea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XORSpUUy0lQ

From the video it looks absolutely terrifying. Those waves seem to constantly rise above the side of the ship, and there's large chunks of ice all around, and that's very far from the worst weather they could have encountered.

Yeah, luckily those longships are extremely seaworthy. The width and lack of height make them stable, and they bend and flex with the ocean.

There's a reason Eiriksson managed to cross the Atlantic and reach Newfoundland at the time, before anyone else (that we know of)

to your point, super interesting :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarni_Herj%C3%B3lfsson

I don't understand how they don't get immediately swamped by the first big wave that hits them from the side.

Or if not one big wave, wouldn't they eventually fill with water from the spray that washes over them every time the bow crashes down?

It's surprising how well these ships sail; although square sails are often thought of as only being effective going down wind, they sail somewhat into the wind fine. And of course, you don't have to worry about a bad gybe removing your rigging. I was in Norway a few years back and took a tourist trip in a 2/3 replica of a Viking boat found in a burial mound - the crew took us up the lake, turned round and came straight back - it was remarkably nippy and seemed to handle very well. I'd be interested to read how the much larger ship here performed under sail.

For square riggers the problem is rather tacking, because then you're backing the entire sail area and putting strain in the wrong direction for the rigging.

The rigging is built to withstand immense pressure from behind and the side, not from forwards. For larger square riggers they do wearings when the wind starts to pipe up to mitigate this.

From talking with people involved everyone was surprised how incredibly well she sails. But it was a lot of learning to get to that point with the bottom reefing and strange sheeting points affecting the balance.

How weatherly the ship is (how close to the direction of the wind it can sail) seems like such an important performance spec on a sailing ship, but it never seems to be listed.

I got a tour when the ship was in Detroit briefly, very cool! Smells strongly of tar. The building techniques were very evident up close. The crew were mostly younger folk who were very stoked to talk about the Atlantic crossing.

There is one similar viking ship currently under construction in France in Toulouse.

The objective is the same : doing a transatlantic travel for 2024.

Though, the project owners claim this will be the fastest drakkar ship : In french : https://batar.fr/orkan/

That’s a cool ship! I spent some summers sailing (well, mostly rowing) on a bit smaller Viking ship replicas:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/albums/7215760328404647...

May I recommend the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, close to Copenhagen. They have a number of original ships on display, and also a workshop where they build more. They take tourists for a quick trip on Roskilde Fjord. Their biggest ship turned out to have been built in Ireland, so when they built a replica, they sailed it to Dublin and back.

What impresses me more is that the ship is under Norwegian flag and not "Cocoa and Burbuda Islands".

LoL, you made my day. I want you to know XD

I wanted to see a video of construction and was not disappointed when I found this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-DKZTMPqoE

A similar voyage occurred in 1982 https://www.mnopedia.org/thing/hjemkomst-ship

Viking ships are often portrayed as primarily an advantage in warfare, but they played a significant role in trade. People tend to forget about Scandinavia after the Viking age, but those rich shipbuilding traditions did not remain unused. Much of Norwegian prosperity after the Viking age was based on ship building. With few large urban centers and absence of a rich capitalist class, ship building was long a community oriented endeavor. Everybody who contributed got a stake in the profits.

I wrote an article about this stuff for anyone interested:

https://erik-engheim.medium.com/how-fjords-made-norway-rich-...

Looks like it's all set to go sack a few remote island monasteries!

Well they're sailing the wrong way for that but maybe they can get chased off by an angry uniped[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Erik_the_Red#Chapter_1...

second picture in is a dude with a chainsaw

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