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The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times

drakenhh.com

31–35 of 35 posts

Re: The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times

#32
post #7

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 straig…

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.

Re: The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times

#33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: The largest Viking Ship sailing in modern times

#34
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-...

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