On the strength of Mr. Stauffer's recommendation I went over to the local Barnes and Noble and bought one of these. What a terrific kit! I love it!
It comes in a nice box with a little paperback book about the Vikings - good stuff, with lots of photos. The oars and spars are injection-molded plastic. The die-cut paper parts are beautifully printed - on both sides of the cardstock (which is rather unusual - and expensive for the publisher).
The kit pretty clearly is based on the Gokstad ship. The shields have designs printed on them that are highly reminiscent of the decals in the Revell kit. (I wonder where Revell got those designs.) Not like the plain yellow and black shields on the real Gokstad ship, but quite Norse-looking. It scores over all other Viking ship kits on the market by including the sea chests for the rowers to sit on. The bow and stern ornaments (dragon's head and tail) look very familiar; I think they're based on the ornamental bedstand posts found in the Gokstad mound.
I agree completely with Mr. Stauffer on the sail; the hokey "billowing" effect is grossly overdone. As for those rigging fittings - some wood parts like that were found in the mound, but I don't think the kit designer really understood how they worked. (I'm not sure I do either. The truth is that we know almost nothing about the rigging of Viking ships. There's even disagreement over whether or not they had shrouds.) I'd recommend replacing the sail with a thinner paper one.
The best book I know for sorting all this stuff is The Viking Ships, by A.W. Brogger and Haaken Shetelig. It's long out of print, but copies can be found on the web for reasonable prices.
Paper modeling is a whole world unto itself. It's extremely popular in Europe. And some of the kits are really sophisticated. One of the best, and oldest, manufacturers is a German firm named Wilhelmshaven. Take a look at this link: http://hbprecisioncard.com/US-shop/ . Some of those larger kits have hundreds of printed parts (including gun barrels that have to be rolled up - even the smallest antiaircraft weapons). And note the 1/500 Arizona in Pearl Harbor colors, complete with red turret tops. The hobby shop where I used to work stocked a few of them, and I can testify from personal experience that building a model from one of those kits isn't easy. The parts are not die-cut; you have to cut them all to shape with an Xacto knife. I built one of the simplest Wilhelmshaven ships, a U-boat. I made the incredibly stupid mistake of putting it together with rubber cement. It looked great for about three weeks. Then the cement started to turn pink, then brown; then all the pieces fell apart. Live and learn.
Paper models are a great way to get into scale modeling at minimal expense. Compare those dollar prices to Trumpeter or Tamiya ones.
I also googled Sterling Innovations. It's quite a company, with a number of publications of great interest to modelers. Several old Anatomy of the Ship volumes are there (in paperback!), along with the annual Shipwright, successor to the late lamented quarterly Model Shipwright. Well worth a look.
I've already got a Viking ship in my tiny collection, so this one's going into the closet for the time being. I think one of my step-grandsons will be up to it in three or four years, so I can help him build it (or vice-versa). I can't think of a better way to introduce a youngster to ship modeling.
Many thanks to Mr. Stauffer for bringing this fine kit to our attention!