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Great web source for Viking ship modelers

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  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Sunday, February 15, 2009 12:07 PM

Excellent reference!!!  One very good bit I found in there right away, and that's how to attach the forestay!  There is no hole drilled in the stem; it is simply tied around the stem itself!!  Have a look at the photos of the Nordlandboats and you will find just that!

  • Member since
    November 2005
  • From: Amongst Words
Posted by aardvark1917 on Sunday, February 15, 2009 10:54 AM
Here's an even better resource that should slacken your jaw as to the amount of information presented!

Not Revell-specific; it's a general-purpose Viking ship and boat reference.

"Freedom is a possession of inestimable value." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: NJ
Posted by JMart on Friday, February 6, 2009 12:45 PM

 

Great information in this post, and thanks for the link!  Look forward to seeing your build in some form/forum! Cheers,

 

 

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 8:21 PM
Good point!  Therefore, some other attachement, such as that suggested by Prof Tilley... Good stuff!
  • Member since
    February 2007
Posted by vonBerlichingen on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:50 PM

@Dr. Tilley: Thank you for the info. - I am going to look for Wooden Boat the next time that I am downtown despite our month-long bus strike.

@searat12: The concensus seems to be that Viking shields were handled by gripping the horizontal bar that is behind the shield boss, and that there probably weren't any arm straps as such.  

 

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 10:15 AM
Interesting!  Yes, the tale of the 'Long Serpent' is one of the Norse Sagas.... I would have thought simply using the arm straps of the shields themselves slipped over the gunwale and over a peg of some sort would be the easiest way to sling shields, and makes them readily available to lift off and use as well, but I guess there is no good evidence for this.....
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Monday, January 19, 2009 11:24 PM

I've read that legend many times (I think first bumped into it in Henry Culver's and Gordon Grant's Book of Old Ships, which was a fixture in the family house till I cut the pictures out and hung them on the walls of my bedroom), but I don't think it's connected with the "notches" I was referring to earlier. 

The "shield rack" (most of these terms are modern; the old Norse ones have survived in some cases, but not in others) is a separate, narrow strip of wood nailed to the underside of the gunwale plank inboard, to form a mechanism for hanging the shields.  It's shown in Plate I, no. 5 in the old book on that German website.

In the Revell kit the hull planking is unavoidably out of scale.  (If it were in scale, the hull halves would be about 1/64" thick.)  The shield racks are molded integrally with the hull halves, with the notches nicely rendered as countersunk rectangles.  It obviously isn't practical to tie the shields through them "prototypically," but a practical dodge is to drill holes in the appropriate places all the way through the hull.  On the outside the holes will be hidden by the shields. 

Most sources seem to think the shields were held in place by leather straps, passed through the notches in the shield rack and tied back on themselves.  I thought quite a bit about how best to represent those straps.  Something long and flat, about 1/32" wide, that could be tied in a knot.  The answer came in one of those memorable "modeler moments" that I've read about in books, but had never happened to me before.  I was standing in the bathroom shaving one morning when my eye lit on a spool of the appropriate material:  dental floss.  A quick trip to the drugstore yielded a package of the unwaxed, undyed cotton variety.  Just the stuff, once I stained it brown.  In retrospect, if I'd used plain old thread the difference would have been barely discernible, but it's fun to talk about.  

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Monday, January 19, 2009 3:57 PM
 jtilley wrote:

I picked up a copy of the February, 2009 issue of Wooden Boat magazine yesterday, my attention having been attracted by the photo of a Viking ship replica on the cover.  In addition to a most interesting article on that vessel, there's a brief reference (p. 20) to a website that will be of immense value to anybody working on the Revell "Viking Ship" kit (which, as we've established in several other threads, is in fact a very good replica of the Gokstad Ship, one of the two surviving intact Norse ships).

The University of Goettingen sponsors  a project called the Center for Retrospective Digitalization, which produces high-quality scans of important, non-copyrighted books and posts those scans, in easily-downloaded form, on the web.  One of the books is The Viking-Ship Discovered at Gokstad in Norway, by N. Nicolaysen, published in 1882 - shortly after the ship was found. 

The book contains an extensively detailed description of the archeaological site - not only the Gokstad Ship herself but all the artifacts that were found inside her.  (I'm not sure whether any additional artifacts were found after the book was published, but it appears to be a complete inventory as of the time it was written.)  Most of it consists of text in two columns - one in Norwegian, one in English.  And (most valuable for the modeler) at the end of the book are a series of twelve beautifully-engraved plates, each containing several individual, measured drawings.

At the beginning of that section (on pp. 77 and 78) is a key - in Norwegian and English - to all twelve plates.  The plates themselves are printed on one side of the paper, so the apparent number of pages is a little deceptive; half the pages in the last section of the book are blank.  You can print out all the plates and the 2-page key on fourteen sheets of paper.  (If your printer, like mine, happens to be low on a color of ink, you can set it on "gray scale" and print in black-and-white.  If you print in color the slightly brown tint of the original paper will show - but you'll get all the detail in black-and-white.)

This is great stuff - nicely drawn, extremely detailed, and only one step removed from the original artifacts.  And each plate includes a scale bar; if your printer has an enlarging/reducing capability you can print out any of the drawings at the same scale as your model.

The more reading I do about the real Gokstad ship, the more the Revell version impresses me.  When I went to this website I was afraid I was going to find all sorts of hideous mistakes in my almost-finished model.  (I'm working on the spars and rigging.)  I was relieved to find that what I've done so far holds up pretty well.  Most of the "inaccuracies" either can be cured by omitting them (e.g., the gawdawful decal for the vac-formed "sail"), or can be attributed to the limitations of the injection-molding process (it would be physically impossible to reproduce all the subtlety of a clinker-built hull accurately in port and starboard halves), or are relatively minor errors of omission (e.g., the "scallop"-shaped pieces that span the hull halves at the bow and stern).

One discrepancy I did notice recently concerns the shields hanging on the gunwales.  The Revell shields are very neatly molded, with excellent "wood grain" detailing and countersunk grooves between the "planks."  But each is surrounded by a ring - slightly thinner than the planks.  The instructions tell you to paint the ring as though it's made of iron (like the domed boss in the center).  In reality that ring isn't there.  Around the circumference of each shield is a series of small holes where, it's surmised, a band of leather originally was tacked on to bind the ends of the planks together.  (An iron ring, as implied by Revell's rendition, would have made the shield mighty heavy for even a stalwart Viking to lug around with him.) 

This is a pretty picky criticism.  It's to be remembered that (according to Dr. Graham's book on Revell) the kit designers worked not from the Gokstad Ship herself but from the 1893 full-size replica that ended up in Chicago; maybe that replica's shields looked just like the ones in the kit.   

Here's the link to the University of Gottingen site.  Viking ship enthusiasts - enjoy.  http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/index.php?id=11&no_cache=1&IDDOC=321111&branch=&L=1

Some notes about the 'notches'.....

95. BUILDING OF THE SHIP LONG SERPENT

The winter after, King Olaf came from Halogaland, he had a great vessel built at Hladhamrar, which was larger than any  ship in the country, and of which the beam-knees are still to be seen.  The length of keel that rested upon the grass was seventy four ells.  Thorberg Skafhog was the man's name who was the master-builder of the ship; but there were many others besides, some to fell wood, some to shape it, some to make nails, some to carry timber; and all that was used was of the best.  The ship was both long and broad and high-sided, and strongly timbered.

While they were planking the ship, it happened that Thorberg had to go home to his farm upon some urgent business; and as he remained there a long time, the ship was planked up on both sides when he came back.  In the evening the king went out, and Thorberg with him, to see how the vessel looked, and everybody said that never was seen so large and so beautiful a ship of war.  Then the king returned to the town.  Early next morning the king returns again to the ship, and Thorberg with him.  The carpenters were there before them, but all were standing idle with their arms across.  The king asked, "what was the matter?" They said the ship was destroyed; for somebody had gone from, stem to stern, and cut one deep notch after the other down the one side of the planking.  When the king came nearer he saw it  was so, and said, with an oath, "The man shall die who has thus destroyed the vessel out of envy, if he can be discovered, and I shall bestow a great reward on whoever finds him out."

"I can tell you, king," said Thorberg, "who has done this piece  of work."

"I don't think," replies the king, "that any one is so likely to find it out as thou art."

Thorberg says, "I will tell you, king, who did it. I did it  myself."

The king says, "Thou must restore it all to the same condition as before, or thy life shall pay for it."

Then Thorberg went and chipped the planks until the deep notches were all smoothed and made even with the rest; and the king and  all present declared that the ship was much handsomer on the side of the hull which Thorberg, had chipped, and bade him shape the other side in the same way; and gave him great thanks for the improvement.  Afterwards Thorberg was the master builder of the ship until she was entirely finished.  The ship was a dragon, built after the one the king had captured in Halogaland; but this ship was far larger, and more carefully put together in all her parts.  The king called this ship Serpent the Long, and the other Serpent the Short.  The Long Serpent had thirty-four benches for rowers.  The head and the arched tail were both gilt, and the bulwarks were as high as in sea-going ships.  This ship was the best and most costly ship ever made in Norway.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Monday, January 19, 2009 11:33 AM

Well, I took a few shots of it early on.  It's almost finished now; I hope to have it done by the end of January, when our model club has its next meeting.  I don't have facilities to post photos in the Forum, but if I'm satisfied with the final results I may send some pictures to FSM for its web gallery.  (The management is always encouraging us to do that.)

There are no really good contemporary references for the rigging of Viking ships.  The Gokstad Ship is especially frustrating in that regard, because there are scarcely any hints - even vague ones - of how her rigging worked.  Six good-sized wood cleats, three a side, are nailed inside the hull planking at the stern.  That's it.  There are no holes or other evidence of rigging being fastened to the stem or sternpost, or anywhere along the sides.

Among the books I've found, the most useful when it comes to rigging probably is the Osprey volume, Viking Longship, by Keith Durham.  (It's also available bound together with three other Osprey titles in a nice paperback called The Vikings:  Voyagers of Discovery and Plunder.)  It contains, in addition to the lengthiest discussion of rigging I've run across, some fine modern paintings and photos of lots of modern reconstructed ships.  

Some scholars have suggested that, given the relatively short mast, the Gokstad Ship didn't need much rigging other than what was necessary to control the sail.  There are arguments against that theory, though.  Every single surviving contemporary representation of a Norse ship (except those that don't have sails or masts at all) shows some evidence of rigging - usually two or three shrouds per side and a stay running forward.  (And the guys who sail the full-size replicas seem to have no doubt:  a Viking mast needs shrouds and stays.)  There had to be some sort of halyard to raise and lower the yard, braces to swing it, and sheets to control the lower corners of the sail.  That's just about the minimum.  It seems likely that there also were tacks to haul the weather clew of the sail forward (though the "bietas" poles would have taken on some of that function), and there's a long tradition among Scandinavian square-rigged sailing craft of a tackle called a "priare" that hauls down the center of the bunt of the sail.  Clewlines and bowlines are also plausible, and some scholars (and designers of full-size reproductions) have fitted reef points to the sails - sometimes close to the bottom, apparently for the purpose of bundling up the lower part of the sail (rather than gathering the upper part against the yard).  It would be a mistake to assume that all Norse ships - even all those of a given size and date - were rigged identically.  There's plenty of room for interpretation and outright guesswork.  I don't think there's enough evidence to pronounce any reasonable reconstructed rigging configuration "wrong."

Some of the old stone pictures show the sails covered with diagonal lines, forming a diagonal checkerboard pattern.  This may be an indication of how the sails were decorated, or it may be a representation of either cloth, leather, or rope reinforcements stitched to the fabric.  (It's likely that Viking sails were made of wool, which tends to become slack and baggy - especially when it's wet.)  Some pictures show a net-like contrivance hanging down from the foot of the sail.  That may be a continuation of the reinforcing structure, or some separate rope mechanism for furling the sail.

Frankly I haven't yet figured out exactly how I'm going to rig my little model.  Other than those six cleats (which I figure could have taken the braces, the sheets, and the halyard), there's no obvious place to belay lines.  I can think of three possibilities.  One - the upper ends of the Gokstad Ship's stem and sternpost are reconstructions, the originals having rotted away because they projected into a layer of more acidic clay in the burial mound.  Maybe the original stem had a hole in it for the stay.  Two - the "deck planks" of the Gokstad Ship are in fact short pine boards that lie loosely in rabbets on the upper sides of the beams.  Maybe when the mast was set up and the sail was set some of the planks got lifted out, and lines got secured to the beams.  Three - running along each side of the ship, just under the gunwale plank, is a piece of wood with a series of notches in it.  Its primary purpose seems to have been to secure the straps that held the shields in place outoboard (modern writers call it the "shield rack," and Revell did a beautiful job with it), but there would have been plenty of notches left over - especially if the shields were stowed away, as they would have been when the ship was under sail.  It's possible that some rigging lines were belayed through those notches.

Whatever the answer, it's clear that almost all the rigging was temporary and would be struck when the mast was lowered (as it frequently was).  The artifacts found with the Oseberg Ship include a number of wood toggles, which would have been an effective means of setting up shrouds, for example, in such a way that they could be loosed in a hurry.  And if the toggles connected the shrouds themselves to strops that were secured either to the deck beams or to the shield rack, the shrouds could be adjusted in tension and angle by shifting the strops from one beam (or notch) to another.

Revell provides a pair of beautifully-molded, ornate blocks that match the ones in Plate IV on the German website.  Apparently there need to be two more.  They seem to have been designed to make the ropes running around them jam - like a more modern deadeye.  I figure they probably were used for standing rigging - stays or shrouds.  Photos show some other, much simpler wood blocks from the somewhat older Oseberg find; I've been working on scrap styrene reproductions of them, along with some little toggles.  What I eventually come up with will be, at best, reasonably educated guesswork.  But that's what makes this kind of model fun.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    May 2007
  • From: Atlanta, Georgia
Posted by RTimmer on Monday, January 19, 2009 10:43 AM

Hi Prof. Tilley,

Outstanding find, and thanks for sharing!  Will you be posting any photos of your build - completed or in progress?

Also, what are you using as your reference for the rigging?

Thanks again, Rick

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Great web source for Viking ship modelers
Posted by jtilley on Monday, January 19, 2009 2:43 AM

I picked up a copy of the February, 2009 issue of Wooden Boat magazine yesterday, my attention having been attracted by the photo of a Viking ship replica on the cover.  In addition to a most interesting article on that vessel, there's a brief reference (p. 20) to a website that will be of immense value to anybody working on the Revell "Viking Ship" kit (which, as we've established in several other threads, is in fact a very good replica of the Gokstad Ship, one of the two surviving intact Norse ships).

The University of Goettingen sponsors  a project called the Center for Retrospective Digitalization, which produces high-quality scans of important, non-copyrighted books and posts those scans, in easily-downloaded form, on the web.  One of the books is The Viking-Ship Discovered at Gokstad in Norway, by N. Nicolaysen, published in 1882 - shortly after the ship was found. 

The book contains an extensively detailed description of the archeaological site - not only the Gokstad Ship herself but all the artifacts that were found inside her.  (I'm not sure whether any additional artifacts were found after the book was published, but it appears to be a complete inventory as of the time it was written.)  Most of it consists of text in two columns - one in Norwegian, one in English.  And (most valuable for the modeler) at the end of the book are a series of twelve beautifully-engraved plates, each containing several individual, measured drawings.

At the beginning of that section (on pp. 77 and 78) is a key - in Norwegian and English - to all twelve plates.  The plates themselves are printed on one side of the paper, so the apparent number of pages is a little deceptive; half the pages in the last section of the book are blank.  You can print out all the plates and the 2-page key on fourteen sheets of paper.  (If your printer, like mine, happens to be low on a color of ink, you can set it on "gray scale" and print in black-and-white.  If you print in color the slightly brown tint of the original paper will show - but you'll get all the detail in black-and-white.)

This is great stuff - nicely drawn, extremely detailed, and only one step removed from the original artifacts.  And each plate includes a scale bar; if your printer has an enlarging/reducing capability you can print out any of the drawings at the same scale as your model.

The more reading I do about the real Gokstad ship, the more the Revell version impresses me.  When I went to this website I was afraid I was going to find all sorts of hideous mistakes in my almost-finished model.  (I'm working on the spars and rigging.)  I was relieved to find that what I've done so far holds up pretty well.  Most of the "inaccuracies" either can be cured by omitting them (e.g., the gawdawful decal for the vac-formed "sail"), or can be attributed to the limitations of the injection-molding process (it would be physically impossible to reproduce all the subtlety of a clinker-built hull accurately in port and starboard halves), or are relatively minor errors of omission (e.g., the "scallop"-shaped pieces that span the hull halves at the bow and stern).

One discrepancy I did notice recently concerns the shields hanging on the gunwales.  The Revell shields are very neatly molded, with excellent "wood grain" detailing and countersunk grooves between the "planks."  But each is surrounded by a ring - slightly thinner than the planks.  The instructions tell you to paint the ring as though it's made of iron (like the domed boss in the center).  In reality that ring isn't there.  Around the circumference of each shield is a series of small holes where, it's surmised, a band of leather originally was tacked on to bind the ends of the planks together.  (An iron ring, as implied by Revell's rendition, would have made the shield mighty heavy for even a stalwart Viking to lug around with him.) 

This is a pretty picky criticism.  It's to be remembered that (according to Dr. Graham's book on Revell) the kit designers worked not from the Gokstad Ship herself but from the 1893 full-size replica that ended up in Chicago; maybe that replica's shields looked just like the ones in the kit.   

Here's the link to the University of Gottingen site.  Viking ship enthusiasts - enjoy.  http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/index.php?id=11&no_cache=1&IDDOC=321111&branch=&L=1

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

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