OMG! I'm laughing till my sides are sore, talk about pimping your ride out!!!

Do they do a Roman warship? Not sure I want to see the decal sheet if they do!

That is so damned hilarious! You really should put that on the sail don't ya think. Thanks for sharing that.

Too bad those shields aren't football team logos.

I much prefer the dragon decal that came with the Viking ship kit I built in the mid 1960s.......AURORA issued the kit to coincide with the late 1950s release of the Kirk Douglas film : "The Vikings" .....

I also bought that new Revell kit.

Thankfully, I'm not forced to use their decals.

Perhaps the decals were intended for the kiddies? 

At least they could of included some "Viking" tatoos? Thats what happens when you let the art dept. loose!

arnie60

Too bad those shields aren't football team logos.

LOL.......I kinda like that idea

HEY!!! The kit has 32 rowers...

And yeah he does kind of look like Keith Millard!

It looks like he is pooping.   and as for the 32 nfl teams,  you can down load and print them.... or ask if jt graphics will do it for you

Funny that. Elsewhere I've heard he's "gurning". Had to look that up. As for the shields, They're not going on the outside. They'll be stacked on deck somewhere.

Thanks for the tip though, that would REALLY be cool!

I'm a big fan of this kit.  Sometime back I started a thread about the model I built from it. With my IPhone I can't copy the web address of the thread, but do a forum search on

 "Gokstad" and you'll find it.  You may find something helpful there.

Thanks, and something tells me you have not seen the original post.

Yes it's a fine kit. When I build it there's just a few improvements I forsee.

I'm planning to provide benches and maybe some other authentic stowage, but no little Olafs as far as I know so far.

Just as a tidbit, I did a little research into the Kirk Douglas movie and they actually made an effort. One thing they did was put out a call for real rowers. Got a bunch of pros, almost all Scandinavians.

I think mine is in the sailing ship thred, if you wont to look at it.  I found a way to use ALL the shields.

I read the first post all right; just figured that earlier thread said about all I have to offer.  I agree about the decals - and I don' t recommend the vacformed sail.  The aperture [Later edit:  I meant "paper."  Why on earth I typed "Aperture" I have no idea.]  one I made has held up fine for about five years now - including the "leather" tape.

Actually it kind of makes sense.  Since the kit is something that would be marketed to all ages I could foresee some 12 year old thinking it would be cool to have that on their sail.  And a happy 12 year old will hopefully grow into a 20, 30, 40 (and so on) year old that now drops hundreds of dollars on kits and after market parts!

Brian

It deserves to be noted that in its original American incarnation the kit didn't have that decal.  The sail was supposed to be decorated with a simple, fairly believable picture of a bird.  That awful caricature apparently was added by Revell Germany.

Certainly added in the latest round. Anyways it gave me a chuckle. Then there was the Aurora kit with its red and white vinyl sail and figures with horned helmets,

My own personal conclusions on the shields goes like this. The Gokstad ship had sixty four on the outside. If memory serves they were all painted the same either black or yellow. It was a funeral ship on land. The ship would have had thirty two rowers and some additional crew no doubt but it's hard to see where there could have been anywhere close to sixty four.

There are numerous carvings of long ships, Drakkars and even in the Bayeux Tapestry ( yes wrong navy) that show rows of shields inside the bulwarks.

I think the Gokstad ship set everyone's mind in one directio

That's a reasonable conclusion.  It's known that 32 of the shields were painted yellow and 32 were painted black.  As I recall, they were found lying around in the general vicinity of the bulwarks.  (I imagine the leather straps had rotted away.  

Was reading an article on the relics of the Chicago World's Fairs, and ran across this photo.

Which seems to explain the famous/imfamous dragon heads on the Aurora kit.

From the article (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/relics-of-the-world-s-fair-chicago):

After the Fair, The Viking stayed docked just nearby the (now former) Field Museum, then was temporarily moved to New Orleans before relocating to a wooden shed in Chicago’s Lincoln Park in 1919. Then in the 1990s, the Lincoln Park Zoo sought an expansion and evicted The Viking again. The Museum of Science and Industry claimed the head and tail of the ship, although both pieces are kept in storage. A non-profit group claimed the rest, moving the ship to Geneva, Illinois, where they currently offer tours of The Viking and work towards finding it a more permanent home.