Revell Gokstad ship

Absolutely gorgeous and an inspiration!  Thanks for the detailed discussion on how you painted it.

Cheers, Rick

Thanks, Rick. I'm slowly building up my painting techniques so I can tackle my Artitec Statenjacht again.

Acrylics are very different than artist's oils, and more challenging. But they also have a number of advantages in terms of ease of use. Its just developing the methods that work. A few parts of this build got away, as they say, but overall I learned a lot and can put this to use in the future.

Its also my first attempt at rigging, and true to form, I only found a reference photo clearly showing how one replica ship of this era manages the shrouds this morning, after they had gone up. If only I had seen that before . . . But there is at least one more backstay to do, so I can test the new method.

The shrouds are held by crossmembers I added to the interior of the hull, based on the more recent replica of the Gokstad ship. The originals may have been held by the rail that goes just under the top element of the hull, but this is impossible to drill and make function, so I went with the alternate method on the basis of the newer replica. It may be incorrect, but at least it is used on a working copy.

I wanted to have the least number of coats of paint, so I omitted primer, and just washed the plastic several times to remove mold residue. New elements made from white styrene were prepainted after gluing to match the color of the kit's plastic, so when the base color coat went on it would have even coloring.

The steering oar is prototypically held by a rope, which passes through a hole in the oar and knotted. There is no detail for this on the kit oar, so I added it from plastic. Knotted thread glued to the oar would also work.

Jim

Very impressive indeed.  I particularly like the way the texture and color of the "wood grain" finish vary according to how the light hits the model.  Few observers will be able to believe this is a plastic model.

As it happens I'm working on the same kit at the moment.  In my opinion it has a strong claim, in its modest way, to the title "best plastic sailing ship kit ever."  The "wood grain" texture surely is among the most realistic ever.  (It looks remarkably similar to the "wood grain" on the best of the old Imai kits, which were being produced at about the same time.  One does wonder....)  If the oars, the shields, the dubious stem and stern ornaments, and the mounting stands are left out, this kit has fewer than two dozen parts.  But the people who designed it really knew what they were doing.

According to Thomas Graham's fine history of Revell, they based it on the 1893 replica vessel that stood for many years at Lincoln Park, outside Chicago.  (I'm not sure what that vessel's current status is.  I found a web site for it a few months ago; at that time its owners were raising money to try to restore it.  I've lost track of it since.)  The replica, in turn, was based on the Gokstad Ship.  I've never seen the replica (or, for that matter, the real Gokstad Ship), but the kit is mighty, mighty close in all its essentials to the plans of the Gokstad Ship in The Viking Ships:  Their Ancestry and Evolution, A.W. Brogger and Haaken Shetelig.  (That's the only book I've found with genuine, reasonably detailed plans of the Gokstad Ship in it.  It's long out of print, but used copies for reasonable prices can sometimes be found on the web.)  Revell simplified a few parts (there are no nail heads in the hull planking, and all the planks run the full length of the ship - with no butt joints) and omitted a few (most conspicuously a couple of wedge-shaped finishing pieces at the extreme bow and stern), but the basic shapes are right on target - down to the number of planks on the hull and deck and the remarkably subtle curvature of the keel.

So far my biggest criticism of the kit (and it's not a really big one) concerns the way the deck is attached to the hull halves.  In the real Gokstad Ship there's a gracefully shaped knee at each end of each deck beam; the knees form the supporting structure to which the hull planking above the deck is attached.  Revell, probably in an effort to keep the parts count down (the kit was originally promoted as a "Quick-Build model"), molded the horizontal part of each knee integrally with the deck and the vertical part integrally with the hull half.  The joint where the two come together isn't bad as such things go, but the shapes of the knees are lost.  At the moment I'm trying to correct the problem by building up the knees with Milliput epoxy putty.  ("Terracotta"-colored Milliput dries to a shade remarkably like the kit's brown plastic, reducing the job of making the finished paint job look uniform.)  I've barely started this job, and it's a rather long one; there are a lot of those joints.  I'll do another post later when I can comment on how well the idea worked - if at all.

The Brogger/Shetelig book contains photos of lots of artifacts that were found in the burial mound along with the ship.  They include several wood pieces that clearly are rigging blocks (Revell includes nice reproductions of two of the most elaborate ones), but scarcely any other evidence of how the rigging worked.  Six simple wood cleats (faithfully reproduced by Revell) are nailed inside the hull planking near the stern.  It would make sense for two of them to take braces and two to take sheets - both almost essential in working such a rig.  There is, however, no evidence of how any stays or shrouds were rigged.  (The holes Revell put in the stem and stern posts are spurious.  So far as I can tell, there are no holes in any of the hull timbers or planking through which a line could have been secured.) 

Brogger and Shetelig suggest that the mast (which apparently was hacked off a few feet above the deck before the ship was buried) was originally about 45 feet tall, and that, given the extremely sturdy timbers in which it was stepped, it just might have been able to support itself without shrouds or stays.  That strikes me as a bit of a stretch, but I have no trouble believing that the "standing rigging" was in fact set up temporarily every time the mast was raised and the sail was set.  (The surviving rigging fittings include several simple wood toggles, which could have been used to secure and cast off such lines in a hurry.  And there would have been no shortage of manpower to do the job.  The ship carried a bare minimum of 33 men - 32 to haul on the oars and one to work the tiller.)  There are two obvious places where lines could have been secured without leaving any evidence of their presence.  One  is the "shield rack," which Woodburner mentioned; it's a narrow plank under the main rail with dozens of holes cut in it, by means of which (it's thought) the shields were secured.  It would make a good place to tie off a line anywhere along the ship's length.  The other possibility, I guess, is that lines were secured to the deck beams.  The "deck planks" are simple pine boards laid in rabbets on the edges of the deck beams, with no fastenings.  They probably were regarded as temporary and removed frequently; it seems likely that the space underneath them was used for storage.  (The removable boards also would have come in handy for bailing water out of the ship.  The ingenious structure of the hull made it almost leak proof, but in any kind of seaway a fair amount of water must have come over the gunwales.)  It would have been a simple matter to lift up a couple of those boards and pass a line around the beam. 

Revell also faithfully reproduced the two little boards with round, dish-like depressions in them that are located in the scuppers abreast the mast.  It's generally assumed that these are sockets for the "biatases," long, skinny spars that fit into some sort of grommets on the leeches of the sail to stretch the weather leech forward when the ship was working to windward.  (Revell also includes the bietases themselves.  Bravo.)  But there are problems with that theory. (For instance - why are there two such sockets in each of the boards?)  Quite a few years ago (I think; beware my notorious memory) I bumped into an article in The Mariner's Mirror that postulated another idea:  that the mast was supported by a simple but rather massive a-frame structure, with its legs resting in those sockets.  When I get a little farther along with the model I'm going to go over to the library and see if I can track down that article - assuming it actually exists outside my imagination.

That decal for the sail is a monstrosity.  (One of the first things one learns when studying the Vikings is that the horned helmet, such as the caricature on the decal is wearing, is not part of Norse culture.  Wagner operas yes; Vikings no.  I wonder why Revell did such a thing.  The original issue of the kit had an innocuous bird decal for the sail.)  It does seem a shame, though, that Revell didn't include any crew figures.  Maybe the company didn't have anybody working for it in 1977 who could make the masters for them.  A Viking chieftain to the standard of Revell's 1956 Captain Bligh...that would be something to see! 

The kit's scale works out to about 1/63.3.  (The days of the "fit-the-box" scale were not yet over in 1977 - at least among sailing ship model manufacturers.)  I found a box of nicely-sculpted (and commendably hornless) plastic Vikings made by a British firm called Emhar, labeled as being on 1/72 scale.  The plastic is softer and more flexible than normal styrene, but the company calls it "Original Sta-Put Plastic - Poseable, Paintable, Can Be Glued."  (We'll see.)  Most of the figures in the box are shooting arrows, swinging axes, berserking, and otherwise behaving as though they're on a wargaming table rather than a ship model, but a couple of them are in more static poses.  They're about 5'6" tall on the scale of the model; the chieftain who was buried in the Gokstad Ship was 5'8".  Pretty close.  I may put one or two of those Emhar guys on the model (or maybe on the baseboard, next to the nameplate) to give the observer some sense of the scale.  It's rather hard to judge the size of the ship solely on the basis of its shape.

Too long as usual.  Woodburner and Grem56 have shown us that this kit can be turned into a beautiful model.  (And what a great kit it would be for newcomers to sailing ship modeling!)  Mine won't reach that standard, but I'm sure having fun with it - and learning something in the process. 

A truly magnificent build Woodburner. I can't believe you managed to get this effect with acrylic paints. Your rigging is more in scale than mine as well and does better justice to the rest of the vessel. Nice going there ! 

cheers,

Julian

I spent a year of my youth in KobenHavn, and was prodded to life one evening by a railroad guard at the end of the line in Roskild...slept in a box car.

Sobered up and went to the museum the next morning.

The ships were a very dark brown. I have a bunch of slides. The ships in the hall are the originals. I like how you photog'd them against the same white plaster as the museet.

Thanks to the Prof. for I've got one in the stash.

Woody, its a beaut. I really like your model because I am convinced that the Godstad ship as she was excavated is not a fighting ship, she's a funeral monument. So you've created a might have been sailing version.

Damn nice job!  I copied and printed your article on the paints and other stuff.

Jake

Julian, thanks for the good words, your model was the inspiration for building this. I like your wood effects, and it convinced me that this was a serious model.

Bondo, nice to hear you got to Roskilde - I'm looking forward to a pilgrimage someday. Skuldelev 3 is my all time favorite for a ship of this era. I figured that since the original ship from Gokstad saw some twenty years' service, it would have sailed in a variety of configurations, and an "ordinary, everyday, in service" appearance was too intruiging not to try.

Jake, hope the ideas help, but its important to note that the most helpful part is the engraved wood grain. Using very thinned over colors allows the paint to flow around the raised elements in the plastic surface. This is why its practical to use as few base coats as possible, so the detail is not obscured. I've started prep work on my next, a Revell Batavia (yep, back to my usual favorite period) and the absence of wood grain on the hull sides will be very challenging. Not sure how it will turn out, but if I can at least get the right tones and shades its better than nothing.

John, thanks for the good words, and I'm glad to hear you are working on your version. Building up the knees will be a gigantic improvement and no doubt the quality will be outstanding. The terra cotta color putty sounds like a very good idea; I'm familiar with the old white and blue putties.

I was too far along to rig the stays into the hull, as the replica Gokstad ship Gaia shows, and it was too late to effectively fill the holes at stem and stern without requiring a complete repaint. I think it will look much better rigged into the hull than on the stem and stern posts. Rigging the shrouds into the knees will also work nicely, and I think in retrospect the Gaia replica does this (it was hard to tell from internet photos). So long as they are rigged into the hull, it will be good. This is one reason I strayed from the Skuldelev 3, since it shows evidence that the shrouds were attached through holes in the upper hull planking. This ship is much smaller than the Gokstad ship, and by all references, less elaborately rigged. The mystery of the biatases is neat, and I wonder if anyone has tried to replicate the various possible functions. I'm still working on mine, mostly in terms of painted finish, and they will go on before long.

I have no idea why the sail has that decal beyond some marketing department genius. Horns are one thing, but representations of human figures never looked like that at the time, that was what got me.

The Emhar figures are a great find, and they are quite good in terms of clothing. I have to give them extra points for presenting slim silhouettes, consistant with proportions of surviving clothing from this time, usually grave finds. The clothing itself on the figures are appropriate for the ship, although take note that the baggy trousered figure represents "Rus" style, from Sweden, Birka and the east. Not sure anyone in Norway would be wearing that, although fragments of a pair were found at Hedeby. In terms of painting the figures, here are some suggestions based on Thor Ewing's recent book, Viking Clothing, one of the best scholarly works on the subject. Most everyday dress was undyed, and in Norway this would mean natural wool of different tones according to breed of sheep (linen was more common in Denmark, but not in Norway). Dyed garments were worn usually on overshirts and cloaks, and often on wickelbander, the leg wrappings below the knee. In Norway and Denmark, blue from woad and indigotin is by far the most common, followed by reddish brown walnut shell dyes, with the darkest (multi-bath) dyes on wealthy people, and lighter single bath dyes on less wealthy folks. (Reds were in contrast very common among garment fragements found in York and London). If you are representing farmers' sons going a-vikking, consider that the more experience and successful ones would have better grades of clothing, while the newer and less experienced sons would not be as well dressed. One of the Emhar figures has long trousers, or ankelbrokker, typical of seamen, consider him part of the crew and less well dressed. If you feel up to adding clothes via putty, consider a kufl, a type of cloak common among seamen. Its sort of a hooded poncho, usually undyed according to references in sagas, although it could be. The kufl is similar to a Roman garment shown in the Conway's book on the Earliest Ships; look to the section on Roman era river craft and the grave stone of a bargemen; he is wearing something very similar. I think you will have an excellent crew and indeed it will give scale.


I'm going to set this aside now and concentrate on Batavia. A big honking 600 tons burden VOC ship, oh boy.

I forgot to mention that there are a few examples of reconstructions using standing rigging run through the stem and stern posts. These helped guide the decision to do so on my Gokstad model, or at least made the decision less uncomfortable.

The Ladby ship reconstruction is probably the most significant, as the original was buried in Denmark between 900 and 925, making it a contemporary of the Gokstad ship. The smaller of the two Skuldelev long ships, Skuldelev 5, has been replicated with this type of stay as well, and the wrapping of the rope around the posts was copied for the model. Skuldelev 2, the larger long ship, has something similar, but it appears to be mounted just within the posts, rather than around or through them. Both Skuldelev ships are later, 1025 and 1042 respectively, and from different regions (Denmark and Ireland). The Ladby is safer in terms of type and date, but is also Danish instead of Norwegian, allowing for regional differences.

However the Ladby, and to some extent the Gokstad ship, are both rigged hypothetically, as the upper parts of the Ladby, and I believe the stem and stern posts of Gokstad, were either fragmentary or did not survive, and as a result, have been reconstructed according to inference from corresponding data. All of this makes a lot of fun trying to figure out possible interpretations!

Also, although they do not show in the photos, I build the wedges for the bow and stern from plastic, with scalloped bases. I think they are a tad too small, however.

Oh well I've also been to the museum in Oslo, and the Iron age settlement in Hjemsted. I had a bit of a career in Denmark, and Finland; but thats another story.

The usual viking ship model seems to be based on a funeral ship  Gokstad,or such. Laden with shields, tent structures, chests and rigging spars.

Tilley sees this as an important model- nuff said.

I like very much the way you painted the wood, and left off the so called figure heads. Rent "The Vikings"; they used an accurate replica of the Gokstad ship "ish".

Nicely done, indeed.

In her restored state the actual Gokstad Ship isn't rigged at all.  I have the strong impression, based on the few photos of the excavation in progress, that no rigging was intact when the ship was found.  A few pieces of rope, some of them with rather sophisticated splices in them, were lying around the site, and quite a few blocks, toggles, etc. - but no intact rigging.  And no sail.  (The remains of a big piece of yellow wool fabric, neatly folded up, were found in the tomb, but the consensus seems to be that it's a tent of some sort rather than a sail.)  So any rigging one puts on a model (or a full-size replica) can be no more than an educated guess.

The approach Woodburner took - using the Revell kit as the basis for a hypothetical ship, rather than a replica of the Gokstad Ship - is, I think, a perfectly legitimate one, and it opens the door to all sorts of artistic and historical license.  Unless the stem and stern of the Gokstad Ship have been replaced (which is highly unlikely; surely there'd be some documentation of such a big alteration to the original), there were no stays rigged to holes in them.  But that doesn't mean Woodburners hypothetical ship didn't have stays rigged in that manner.

I certainly wouldn't want to overstate the case, but I don't think the Gokstad Ship was built as a funeral barge.  One piece of evidence against that theory is that there are several small, well-executed repairs in the hull planking; that suggests that the ship had seen some practical use before it was buried.  Logically, it also seems unlikely that such a large and elaborate vessel would be built just for the purpose of burying it.  I think the archeologists and historians are generally agreed that it's a small seagoing "warship" or "merchantman" (the distinction between those terms not meaning much, if anything, in those days).  On the other hand, the actual, hard information about the ship is so meager that lots of interpretations are possible.  Other archeological finds from various times and places establish that human beings are perfectly capable of creating some pretty elaborate objects and immediately burying them or destroying them.  There's no question that many of the artifacts found in the Gokstad Ship (including the skeletons of several dogs, several horses, and a peacock) were put there as funerary offerings.  I suspect the shields in the ship were also ceremonial rather than genuine weapons.  (They were painted alternately yellow and black.  That seems an unlikely scheme for the weapons of individual fighting men.)  I'm inclined to think Woodburner is right:  the ship was built as a working vessel, and had seen a fair amount of practical use prior to being buried as part of a funeral ceremony.  But I'd certainly be receptive to any evidence to the contrary.

One thing I find a little frustrating about this whole subject is that, though both the Gokstad Ship and the Oseberg Ship (which almost certainly is a non-seagoing state barge) are beautifully preserved today, there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about how they got that way.  We should all be grateful to the people who dug up and restored those two ships.  But we also need to acknowledge that those people weren't bound by the ethical and professional standards that are taken for granted in the fields of archeology and artifact preservation today.  There are a few photos (I've seen three or four; there may be more somewhere, but apparently not many) of the excavations in process.  The photos make it clear that the two ships were in pretty wretched shape when they were brought out of the ground.  The Oseberg Ship had almost collapsed, and the Gokstad Ship wasn't much better off.  Somebody did an enormous amount of restoration work on them in order to get them into the state they're in today.  In those days (the very late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries) modern standards of documentation and conservation ethics weren't in place.  A team of conservators undertaking such a project today would produce hundreds of pages of notes, and take photos of everything they did, but I have the impression that the written record of the Gokstad and Oseberg Ship restorations is pretty scanty.  (Maybe I'm mistaken about that, but the books I've seen sure don't say much about it.)  I do wonder just what sort of "repairs" were in fact made to those beautiful hulls in order to get them into the condition they're in now.  (Is it possible that some the aforementioned repairs to the Gokstad Ship's planking were made by the restorers?)  The old photos make me doubt that either ship's hull could have supported itself without some pretty drastic help.

The question of colors is interesting.  The Gokstad and Oseberg Ships obviously been treated with some sort of preservative, which probably would have given the wood a pretty dark color even if it hadn't been buried for almost a thousand years.  What color was it originally?  That's mighty hard to say.  The hull planks, frames, and other structural components are oak; the deck planks and the vertical, T-shaped supports for the stored oars and spars are pine.  Both of those are light-colored woods; some species of oak and pine, under some circumstances, actually get lighter as they age.  There are several references in the Icelandic sagas to the practice of "tarring the ship," and it certainly makes sense that some such substance would be applied to the hull planks as a protectant.  But just what color was the "tar" in question?  Maybe black or nearly so, or maybe a rich brown like the "Stockholm tar" of later centuries.  And would it have made sense to "tar" the deck planks?  Or the oars?  I sort of doubt it.  It seems to me that there's plenty of room here for personal taste, and lots of shades of brown.

I'm a big fan of the movie "The Vikings."  The plot is pretty hokey, but lots of the details are on target.  (They include such things as the unusual Scandinavian horse Kirk Douglas is riding in one scene; the moviemakers rented the critter from a zoo.  And the actors wear reasonable-looking helmets, with no horns.  On the other hand, the "Vinking funeral" in the finale is pure Hollywood hokum.)  The DVD version I've got includes some production stills and an "audio commentary" from the director, Richard Fleischer.  He explains that the three ships in the movie were "exact replicas of real Viking ships."  (It looks to me like two of them were full-size replicas of the Gokstad Ship and the third was built to the same lines but a little smaller.)  The moviemakers did, however, make one big compromise in the name of practicality.  They hired a group of trained, experienced rowers to serve as oarsman, and these guys quickly concluded that the oar ports were too close together.  When they took a full stroke, their fists banged into the backs of the guys ahead of them.  So the decision was made to eliminate half the oars.  In a few shots you can barely make out where half of the original ports were sealed up.  (Mr. Fleischer's explanation is that the real Vikings were significantly shorter than the modern rowers.  I'm not sure I buy that.  The guy buried in the Gokstad Ship was 5'8".  That's a little below today's average, but is that enough to make a difference in the rowing of a ship like that?)

Mr. Fleischer tells the story of the scene in which one of the ships is returning to the fjord and the crew "runs the oars" (apparently an authentic Viking practice).  Kirk Douglas originally wasn't supposed to be in that scene, but as he watched the athletes hopping along the rows of oars he said "I think I could do that."  Being one of the movie's producers, he had the authority to insist - and he "ran the oars" twice without mishap.  On his third try one of the oars unexpectedly broke and, much to the delight of the watching athletes, Douglas ended up in the water.  When he came to the surface his first act was to ask the cameraman, "did you get that?" 

I was in a bookstore a few weeks ago and happened to run across Ernest Borgnine's recently-published autobiography.  I naturally picked it up to see what he had to say about "The Vikings."  He describes how, when the trained rowers arrived on the set, they courteously invited him to take a seat in one of the ships and row with them.  He accepted the invitation, figuring they intended to embarrass him.  What they didn't know was that he was a U.S. Navy veteran, and had been a member of a rowing whaleboat crew; he understood all the evolutions had no trouble keeping up with the athletes.  When the exercise was over they gave him three cheers, and he had an excellent relationship with them from then on.  I have the impression that both Mr. Douglas and Mr. Borgnine are widely regarded as being among Hollywood's classiest gentlemen. 

Fun movie.  My wife occasionally shows it to her high school world history classes.  The only big problem we both have with it is that after we watch it we have trouble getting that infernal horn call out of our heads.  

That's exactly right - the Gokstad ship was some twenty years old or so when it was buried. It would have seen all manner of service, both under oar and under sail. Repairs would be natural, as would considerable weathering over time.

The replica Gokstad ship Gaia shows a progression of colors of the wood over her own twenty years' service: bright wood when launched and new, deeply mottled after ten years, and today she is nearly as black as the original. I suppose Julian's model shows the ship after a year or so, mine after a decade, and what you do we are all looking forward to seeing.

The rigging plans I used are from the reconstructions, replicas and models built for museums - obviously not the original unrigged ship! The hall she is in today is one of those happy moments when late romantic architecture and preservation fused into a perfect whole, and the arched ceiling is perfect. There is just something heroic in the way people see her today.

I'm doubtful about the stem and stern post rigging as well, but at least the people who modeled the Ladby ship and Skuldelev replicas think its one possability (see caveats on the previous posts) which was helpful since I had already assembled and painted the hull before thinking about the holes. Photos of the Gokstad ship before restoration (today it would be conservation) do show missing stern and bow sections, especially evident in a late 19th century stereocard, and a photo of the ship during excavation indicates that the upper portions of the hull, from the plank above the oarports up, were also missing. An early photo of the restored ship after installation in the museum supports this, as the wood above is newer. I'm not sure if those parts were found crushed in situ, and thus able to provide a model, or eaten away by acidic soil, requiring an inferential interpretation. Journal notes from this process would indeed be helpful.

I wondered about possible colors as well. The Ladby model shows a beautiful blue/yellow/blue pattern on the upper three planks, but I think this is hypothetical, based on a famous embroidery and several illustrated books from a later period. A similar pattern would have looked great on my model but it seemed best to avoid it without better documentation.

I went to Youtube and saw a few clips of the Kirk Douglas movie. What a hoot, the oar dance is great, and the Douglas dunking was really great. I really wanted to see that attack on an English cog scene you mentioned, you know, the one carrying Janet Leigh. But truly, a Cog? A COG? (Actually a hulk, not so much from desire to be accurate -I mean, they are already attacking a ship from 350 years into the future- but more likely since whatever boat they built the superstructure on had flush planks.) Not like it would bother them since the 9th century is bonking into the 13th . . All that aside its a lot of fun and if you ignore the awful costumes, the landscape is spectacular and the sight of the Gokstad ship in all that is impressive.

Your hunch regarding human height is correct, Viking age men were actually much the same height as today, the result of a relatively healthy environment and food, and a culture which did not yet have many towns, much less unsanitary cities. Height begins to drop by the medeival period, and it was not until the late 19th century that it begain to rise again, in part due to improved sanitation and foods.

Yes, the Norsemen were known to be pretty big guys, even by todays standards.  Common people in Europe began 'shrinking' during the Medieval-19th century mostly because of poor nutrition with a very low protein diet (coarse bread and gruel doesn't make for champions!), while the Norse ate a LOT of protein from fish, etc.  At the same time, wealthy people, royalty, etc continued to eat a lot of protein and remained large (check out Henry VIII's armor sometime, he was about 6' 2"!)

I always found it peculiar that so little attention has been paid to the boats and sailors of the Orkneys and Shetlands, as they were happily using Viking-type boats right up into the middle of the 20th century (some still do).  These boats are generally referred to as Faerings and Yoles (a name which gets converted to yawl the further South you go on the British East Coast.  These boats are built in pretty much the same manner as Viking ships, and always have been.  In fact, because there are virtually no trees on either the Shetlands, or the Orkneys, a major trade item with Norway for the last 500 years has been Faerings and Yoles essentially in kit form, for the islanders to assemble themselves.  The earlier versions of these were square sailed, though many of the later versions converted over to a lug rig (an easy conversion, just push the yard aft a ways and slightly recut the sail, and the transitional steps can be clearly seen among these boats).  In any case, the fishermen of these islands have been happily using these boats virtually unchanged for a thousand years, yet very few academics bother to examine them closely, test sail them or use them as any kind of basis for comparison.  The same can be said for the Nordlandsbot still in use in Northern Norway for fishing, racing and yachting....

In any case, the biatases in these boats have a variety of positions, to account for differing alignments of the sail, and for differing sizes of the sail itself (also when the sail is reefed).  A significant measure of how high a boat will point when sailing to windward is how rigid the leading edge of the sail is (which is why boats like English and Cornish oyster cutters have such powerful bobstay gear to 'bowse down' the bowsprit and thus stiffen up the leading edge of the jib).  Biatases add significant tension to the leading edge of the square sail when close-hauled, thus allowing the boat to point higher (and the performance difference can be as much as 15 degrees between a tensioned leading edge, and a relatively 'slack' edge).  A lug sailing rig pretty much eliminates the requirement for biatases, as tension can be increased by use of a downhaul on the peak, as well as a 'snotter' on the clew, yet even still, poles very similar to the biatses were also used on at least some of the later lug-rigged types, such as the Scaffie and the Zulu.  As for why there might be two biatases aboard, it is important to remember that these poles are fairly slender, and most likely broke with a fair bit of regularity in the rough and tumble of the North Sea (the same thing happens to things like spinnaker poles and studdingsail yards), so having a spare or two is always a good idea........  An excellent book that shows all of these boats and many more is titled 'The Chatham Directory of Inshore Craft, Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles.  Have a good read through, and I think you will be surprised just how long-lived the Viking ship-building technology survived and was modified, rather than simply abandoned.......

According to Mikhaila and Malcolm-Davis (2006) the average height of men in the Saxon period was 5' 8" - exactly like the chieftain on board for the Gokstad ship's final voyage. This was an all time height, up from 5' 7" in prehistoric times, and slightly lower in Roman Britain. From the Medieval to Georgian periods its 5' 7 1/2" and then drops to 5' 5 1/2" in the Victorian age and finally rises to 5' 9" by 1998. The authors are clothing historians with Hampton Court Palace, and quote the Museum of London in that "there were tall and small people in all periods of London's history, although in the 18th abd 19th centuries the average height of the inhabitants was at its lowest." They looked at skeletons of men drowned on Mary Rose, finding them between 5' 3" and 5' 11" and averaging 5' 7".

The biatases and their purpose are totally new to me. Just one more reason this forum is so good. I'd happily go about building the thing, thinking, well, there must be some reason for those wedges with holes in them, and now here is the reason. I placed them onto the ship today and they give it a more complete and functional appearance.

Here is a link to an excellent site on Viking age ships, and the ongoing tradition, including faerings. Move around the site and there is a great deal on the ongoing tradition. The replica of the Gokstad faering is one of the most beautiful small boats ever.

http://home.online.no/~joeolavl/viking/gokstadfaering.htm

But right now I have to go back and add more bolts to the Batavia's hull.

Jim

  Nice looking ship.Your wood and shading are excellant.

Rod

Woodburner,

You stated in the first post "..........A base coat of Testor's "wood" was followed by washes of transparent acrylic burnt umber and thinned washes of black. Thin washes of grey were used where the wood has regular contact with water, to "kill" the wood color slightly. The washes have a small amount of dish soap to "wet" the water for greater flow....."

Can you either email me jbgroby@charter.net   or post a responce in the BB with the brand and color you might suggest to start with.  I'd like to try the nice color you've achived on your Viking,  on my Chinese Explorer Ship I just picked up.  But I don't what colors to look for or brand or size and how to apply?  by brush or airbrush.

Thanks

Jake

I was very intrigued by the comment that the real, experienced rowers hired to do the movie The Vikings found the rowing ports to be too close together -- a rower's hands would bump into the backs of the rower in front of him. The movie director said the ship was an exact replica of the Gokstad so how could this be? The movie director said maybe the vikings were smaller -- but they weren't.

Here's what occurs to me: it was to deal with wear-and-tear on the oar ports. Part of the original design. The ship was always intended to have only half the number of oars in-use as there were oar ports; but the rowers would shift between using one set of ports, and the set of ports one port behind that one. This reduces the wear-and-tear by one-half, and stretches out the time between having to replace splintered-out or worn-down oar ports.

Indeed, I suppose that it could even go down to 1/3 of the oar ports, not just 1/2 of them. That would reduce the wear-and-tear even more.

This would also explain one of the great puzzles of viking ships: why there are no fixed benches for rowers to sit on. If you are shifting the rowers between one set of ports and the next, you could not have fixed benches -- you'd have to move them, too.

-- Best Wishes, Ed Sisson

That is indeed an interesting question.  I can think of several possible answers.

The most obvious is that the information given by the director, Mr. Fleischer, is wrong in some way or other.  As I mentioned earlier, I took a look a few weeks ago at the autobiography of Ernest Borgnine.  His recollections of how that movie was made are different in some respects from Mr. Fleischer's.  (Mr. Borgnine says there was a good deal of discussion among the designers about just how big one of the ships was supposed to be, until Kirk Douglas got impatient and said "make it THIS big.")  Some honest mistakes of memory may well be going on here; the movie was, after all, released in 1958. 

After watching that DVD more times than I want to admit, I'm not convinced that even the biggest of the ships is as big as the real Gokstad Ship.  The magic of the movies makes it awfully hard to tell just how big those ships actually are.  (It's clear that one of them is smaller than the other two, but that's about all I can say for sure.)  In the scene where the Vikings are "running the oars," it's hard to believe that the oar ports can possibly be twice as far apart as they're supposed to be. 

Another possibility, I suppose, is that the real Vikings used a rowing stroke that was somehow different than what modern rowers use.  But I rather doubt it.

On another point - I watched part of the movie again the other day and concentrated on the English ship (the one Mr. Douglas and his merry men attack in the process of capturing Janet Leigh).  The whole sequence lasts about five minutes, and the exterior shots of the English ship last a total of slightly more than thirty seconds.  It certainly doesn't seem to have been intended to look like a cog.  It lacks the characteristic pointed bow and upswept stern that are normally associated with that type.  It seems to be "double-ended," with the bow and stern almost the same shape, and raised "castles" at both ends.  The hull appears to be clinker-built, though it's hard to tell in the few frames in which it shows.  On the after "castle" is a larger-than-life-sized sculpture of a man blowing a horn.  I've seen a drawing of a medieval ship with that ornamentation on it somewhere or other, but for the life of me I can't figure out where.  (Given the way my Halfzeimer's-afflicted brain works, I'll probably remember a few minutes from now.)  Whatever that source is, it obviously is the one the moviemakers looked at.  It looks to me like a generic medieval "round ship," and, to my eye at least, reasonably believable given the paucity of information about such things.  I don't normally sympathize with Hollywood when it comes to such things, but in this case I'm willing to give the movie-makers some benefit of the doubt.

I recall listening to Robert Osborn, the guru of Turner Classic Movies, remark on another interesting aspect of "The Vikings."  It seems that at just about that time Kirk Douglas had another movie project in mind, but was having trouble convincing the studio to finance it because it didn't look like a big money-maker.  But "The Vikings" was such a hit that the studio yielded and let him make the movie he wanted to make:  a version of George Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," in which Mr. Douglas starred with Burt Lancaster and Laurence Olivier.  That flick is one of my favorites; if "The Vikings" had done nothing beyond making "The Devil's Disciple" possible, it would have been worthwhile.

Millard, thanks for the good words - your work with wood effects was one of the references I used to try out techniques. I can only hope to get as good. By the way, I found the source for Ertl's Spanish Galleon - its based on plans by Vincenzo Lusci for a Spanish galleon of 1607. Lusci's plan is identical to the Ertle model, and the date 1607 refers to the Batttle of Gibralter, between the Spanish and the Dutch.

Hey Jake, I'll post some answers to your questions on your new thread - boy, that ship is huge.

Ed, thats an interesting question, especially as a raiding party would require as many men as possible - perhaps alternating shifts, or using a different method of rowing. A discussion in Conway's Cogs, Caravels and Galleons for slightly later ships even considers the possibility of rowing while standing. The second of the Gokstad replicas has been rowed, and some information might come from the people who have experience with that.

I think John Tilley may have hit the more accurate answer, in that the movie ships were likely of different proportions than the actual vessel, and therefore interesting to operate. Hollywood scooches things around constantly, for many reasons - the Bounty made larger to accomodate cameras, and so on. On film, a ship may look larger or smaller than it actually is, even from the angle of the shot. Holywood publicity departments always claim total authenticity regardless, just for pizazz. Sometimes the designers are sincerely interested in doing a detail correctly, and this shows up nicely on occasion, and sometimes they want to, but budget or a director's desire forces a compromise.

Its likely that dramatic value for the story narrative influenced the attack on the English whatever-it-is scene. After all, English vessels in the age of the Vikings looked much the same as Viking ships - the Dublin built long ship from 1042 is a concrete example - while vessels with castles did not appear until the 12th- 13th centuries, according to Conways.


I think the film makers realized that the anachronism was acceptible in return for enhanced cinematic value of the "wild" Vikings attacking a "civilized" English ship - even one centuries into the future. They did get a nice effect with the English ship, and I know about that horn-blowing figure too, and cant recall which image its from either! Please dont tell me I'm getting old, please . . .

Jim

Really a nice model - thanks for sharing! I have one of these in my stash, and seeing these nice pictures makes it tempting to pull it out of that. As a footnote to the kit, it was marketed in the early 1990s (?) as a "Viking Ghost Ship"; if I remember correctly it was at that time that the irritating decal came into the kit.

Incidentally, the new Emhar Viking ship should be - finally - out right now. It's based on the Gokstad ship as well and supposed to be true 1/72; I don't have one as yet. Emhar also released a set of crewmen which are lovely; they are made out of their posable plastic which works fine, and the poses include rowers (32) as well as a couple of other useful figures.

Jorit 

Jorit - Nice to hear from you again.  Welcome back.

I have to confess that I have mixed reactions to your news about a new Emhar Gokstad Ship.  This is the first I've heard of it; I wasn't aware that Emhar was in the ship business.  My Revell one is something less than halfway finished; I'm still working on the Miliput repairs to the deck beam knees.  If this new Emhar kit turns out to be a better basis for a scale model, I may have to commit the Norse equivalent of Hari-kiri.  (I wonder if it's ever been done with an X-acto knife?) 

As mentioned above, the currently-available Emhar 1/72 Vikings are about 5' 6" tall - a thoroughly believable height - on the scale of the Revell kit.  Maybe the new set will work too.

It seems odd to be hoping that a new sailing ship kit release won't be a good one, but I do hope Emhar's offering doesn't eat too deeply into the sales of the Revell one.  The latter really is a beautiful kit; it's hard to believe that Emhar will be able to beat it.  I have a forlorn hope that, if it sells well, Revell just may be encouraged to get back into the sailing ship game and give us some equally good new kits in the genre. 

I was interested to learn of the "Viking Ghost Ship" incarnation.  I don't think the kit appeared in that guise on this side of the Atlantic - but I could be mistaken on that point.

jtilley wrote:

Jorit - Nice to hear from you again.  Welcome back.

Thanks - life as they say sometimes seems to get in the way of things... 

I have to confess that I have mixed reactions to your news about a new Emhar Gokstad Ship.  This is the first I've heard of it; I wasn't aware that Emhar was in the ship business.  My Revell one is something less than halfway finished; I'm still working on the Miliput repairs to the deck beam knees.  If this new Emhar kit turns out to be a better basis for a scale model, I may have to commit the Norse equivalent of Hari-kiri.  (I wonder if it's ever been done with an X-acto knife?)

I'm not sure whether it has already hit the market on your side of the big fish pond; it is already out with a number of internet sellers:

http://www.modelhobbies.co.uk/shop/emhar-gokstad-viking-ship-9001-p-14254.html

Apparently it has a plastic sail, and "optional masthead parts" (whatever that means), but I haven't had the chance to get a look into the box.

As for other uses of an X-acto, I'd rather suggest using a longsword.... :)

As mentioned above, the currently-available Emhar 1/72 Vikings are about 5' 6" tall - a thoroughly believable height - on the scale of the Revell kit.  Maybe the new set will work too.

Emhar's new set is reviewed here. What I like in particular is the fact that they are suitably attired for a longer travel - I had feared the rowers to be helmeted or even clad in armour. 

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.asp?manu=EMH&code=7218 

They should be suitable for other purposes as well, like crewing Zvezda's medieval boat (at least I hope so...). 

It seems odd to be hoping that a new sailing ship kit release won't be a good one, but I do hope Emhar's offering doesn't eat too deeply into the sales of the Revell one.  The latter really is a beautiful kit; it's hard to believe that Emhar will be able to beat it.  I have a forlorn hope that, if it sells well, Revell just may be encouraged to get back into the sailing ship game and give us some equally good new kits in the genre.

Ah, indeed. Particularly as Revell finally seems to have realized that there is money in ship models; I wonder how well their sunseeker yacht will sell. I must confess that I'm still hoping for a well-researched model using the latest in technology (slide moulds may be a solution to the block problem) by someone, whatever the subject; I'd probably build a honey barge if it's powered by sail and properly done... ;)

I was interested to learn of the "Viking Ghost Ship" incarnation.  I don't think the kit appeared in that guise on this side of the Atlantic - but I could be mistaken on that point.

It pops up every now and then on ebay here. I think it was bundled together with that semi-luminous paint Revell also sells together with the Peter Pan Pirate ship.

Jorit

Vey interesting indeed!  On the boxtop painting the phrase about the "optional masthead parts" appears alongside the figurehead - which, like the shields and crew figures, is shown in outline form.  I wonder if the "masthead parts" are in fact interchangeable dragons' heads for the bow. 

The "oarsmen" look excellent - both artistically and intelligently designed.  The idea of molding them in such a way that their arms can be bent is great.  (Among other things, it should ensure that every individual looks different.)

I just hope these new kits haven't rendered my poor Gokstad Ship obsolescent before I finish it.  I continue to think that Emhar is unlikely to have surpassed the work of those Revell artisans of the 1970s.  But who knows?  Emhar obviously is a progressive company with some intelligent people working for it.

In addition to the Viking ship and the "Peter Pan" ...object, Revell sold its excellent Golden Hind in a "ghost ship" guise (with phosphorescent paint) for a while.  That was a really disgusting travesty....