Dragon Ship or Trader?

Crom - Welcome to the forum!

As it happens we had a discussion of Viking ships a few weeks back. The thread rambles off onto quite a few tangents, but there's quite a bit there about kits. I just moved the thread to the first page of the forum. It's titled "Building a wooden ship," and should appear on the list of topics a couple of lines below this one.

We were concentrating on plastic kits; the only wood one mentioned is the one from Billing, which I haven't seen. I think there may be some other wood Viking ships on the market. Maybe another member is more familiar with them than I am.

Quite a few full-size replicas of Viking ships have been built - and sailed - over the years. I have no idea whether any of them have made their way to Australia; I rather doubt it.

If you want to see such vessels in action, you need to get hold of the movie "The Vikings," with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, and Janet Leigh. The story is pretty hokey, but the moviemakers built several full-size replicas of the Gokstad Ship (one of the two surviving actual Viking vessels) and the photography is beautiful. The only problem with the ships, according to the director, was that the modern oarsmen were too big to fit between the oar ports. In the movie half the oar ports are empty. The film is available on videotape and DVD.

Good luck. It's a great hobby.

Thanks jtilley

Can you recommend any online hobby store where I can buy these models? I am interested in the 'Billing' models 518 'Oseberg', 703 'Roar Ege', 416 'Norlansbaden'.

Thanks
Crom!

I just tracked two of the kits down online via the Billing website, www.billingboats.com. It contained a link labeled "order online" (or something similar). When I clicked on that link I got routed to the site of an American online hobby shop called Tower Hobbies (www.towerhobbies.com), which had the Oseberg kit for $69.95 (U.S.). If you tried the same trick in Australia, maybe you'd get routed to an Australian dealer.

The Billing site does list an Australian distributor, but he only operates as a wholesaler. A local hobby shop probably could order from him.

The company actually offers two kits labeled "Oseberg," both supposedly on 1/25 scale. (I think that may be a typo, though; it looks like one is considerably bigger than the other.) The second one, called "Mini-Oseberg," apparently is intended for beginning modelers. That might be a reasonable way to get one's feet wet in the hobby. Both are based on the Oseberg Ship, one of the two surviving actual Viking vessels. (The name would have meant nothing to the original owners. It's the name of the place in Norway where the ship was found. I know of no evidence that the Vikings - or anybody else in medieaval Europe - assigned individual names to ships.)

I haven't built or even seen either kit. On the basis of the pictures on the website, though, the non-mini one does look pretty much like the Oseberg Ship. The pictures are too small for me to see the bow and stern ornamentation clearly, but they seem to be about the right shapes. Be advised, though: the real Oseberg Ship doesn't meet the definition of either "longship" or "trader." It's far too small for either purpose, and it has so little freeboard that the experts think it probably wasn't a seagoing vessel. The best guess is that it served as some sort of ceremonial yacht, probably for the aristocratic woman who was buried in it.

I'm a little uncomfortable about Billing's description of the vessel's history, which refers to the depth of water in which the ship was found. Unless I'm badly mistaken the Oseberg Ship was found in a burial mound on dry land. And I have doubts about the shields that Billing has arranged along the gunwales. This wasn't a fighting ship - though I suppose its occupants might have brandished shields for ceremonial purposes.

The Ege seems to be a replica of one of the ships found at Roskilde. I don't know much about that find, but based on the photo the model certainly looks believable. The Roskilde vessels, if I remember correctly, are quite small - not longships by any stretch of the imagination, but the model certainly does have that beautiful Scandinavian look about it. It's a little cheaper and, according to Billing's star system, considerably easier to build than the non-mini Oseberg Ship.

I couldn't find the third kit you mentioned. Maybe it's been discontinued; the name doesn't ring a bell.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

Cheers for the info. The history of the Oseberg ship is as you say, a burial ship for the lady, probably not used at all as a vessel.

I have contacted a number of local hobby stores (and internationals as well.) I have also been to the Dawn Trading website that you mention (the Australian wholesaler) and have mentioned the Norlansbaden. It has been discontinued. Pity.

Well, let it be known that I have ordered both Oseberg and the Ege kits. Will start with the mini-Oseberg and let you all know how it travels.

Cheers again,
Crom!