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Viking ships were marine vessels of unique structure, used in Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages. The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for, [ 1 ] but they were generally characterized as being slender and flexible boats, with symmetrical ends with true keel .
Karlsen also discusses why on North Atlantic trips the Vikings might have preferred to navigate by the sun rather than by stars, as at high latitudes in summer the days are long and the nights short. A Viking named Stjerner Oddi compiled a chart showing the direction of sunrise and sunset, which enabled navigators to sail longships from place ...
Model of a knarr in the Hedeby Viking Museum in Germany. A knarr (/ n ɔː r /) is a type of Norse merchant ship used by the Vikings for long sea voyages and during the Viking expansion. The knarr was a cargo ship; the hull was wider, deeper and shorter than a longship, and could take more cargo and be
Hulks continued to be mentioned in use throughout the Middle Ages and into the 16th century when it is particularly associated with the Baltic and the Hanseatic League. These late hulks could be as large as contemporary great ships. Jesus of Lübeck of 1544 was a ship of 700 long tons (780 short tons; 710 t), the same as the Mary Rose. [7]
The longship allowed the Norse to go Viking, which might explain why this type of ship has become almost synonymous with the concept of Vikings. [148] [149] The Vikings built many unique types of watercraft, often used for more peaceful tasks. The knarr was a dedicated merchant vessel designed to carry cargo in bulk. It had a broader hull, a ...
Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
In the Middle Ages that preceded the early modern era, shipbuilding mainly utilized clinker building techniques, in which wooden hull planks were laid in an overlapping fashion so that they are both easier to construct and lighter. A common form of a clinker-built ship is Nordic longship associated with the vikings. [2]
Viking activity in the British Isles occurred during the Early Middle Ages, the 8th to the 11th centuries CE, when Scandinavians travelled to the British Isles to raid, conquer, settle and trade. They are generally referred to as Vikings , [ 1 ] [ 2 ] but some scholars debate whether the term Viking [ a ] represented all Scandinavian settlers ...