Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982 - 25

bow and stern to leave a large open space around
the mast amidships for cargo. Other known Scandinavian cargo vessels such as those excavated at
Äskekärr, Eltang and Galtabäck, suggest that a separate family of cargo ships existed in Viking
times, and this pair from Skuldelev attests to this
fact. Moreover, there was a clear evolution in the
development of their design: as examples from
periods earlier and later than Skuldelev show, cargo
ships like warships were gradually becoming more
rigid. By the year 1000, changes- especially the
downward movement of the system of frames- were
becoming apparent. Again, the ribbing in Viking
ships had always been built up with long floor
timbers; and crossbeams rode on top of each of these.
By the twelfth century, the lowest crossbeams
had disappeared entirely, replaced by built-up frames,
supported at some points by cross-timbers stretching across the ship. That meant the gradual disappearance of the unique cross-section, which had
been a distinguishing feature of Viking ships.

The fifth and final vessel from the harbor at
Roskilde is the one still undergoing reconstruction
at the hands of Ole Crumlin-Pedersen who, along
with Olaf Olsen and others from the Danish National
Museum, has taken a leading role in establishing
the archaeology of boats as a full-fledged discipline
in Scandinavia. This vessel- originally thought
to be two separate ships- is the most spectacular of
all the Skuldelev finds, and a ship hitherto known
only from the sagas. It is a dragonship, one of
the very large, rarely built warships that served as
the flagships of royal fleets. This Skuldelev ship
may have been more than 30 meters long, and with
as many as 36 rooms. It goes almost without saying
that this ship constitutes the extreme point of
development in Viking warships. As yet, no definite
connection exists between the dragonships and
naval bases set up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but it is possible that such a link will emerge.
The remains of the ship which was found in
Hedeby harbor are also still undergoing reconstruction under the joint direction of Schietzel and
Crumlin-Pedersen. The Skuldelev finds have made it
possible to identify the Hedeby craft as a warship
from the eleventh century. Indeed, the systematic
examination of the finds at Roskilde fjord, together
with the work in applied ethnography which has
accompanied it, has opened up new possibilities for
study and, more important, illuminated and
clarified much knowledge from both written and
archaeological evidence. The investigators of the
Skuldelev ships have also been excellent about
continuing publication of their discoveries, problems
with preservation, and tentative conclusions.
Their work has yielded crucial information about
Viking ships which other investigations such as
those in the Hedeby harbor should supplement.
The Skuldelev ships fit into an evolutionary

pattern of Scandinavian ship design, and they confirm the unique features of Viking ships in general
now firmly established. Above all, the Skuldelev
ships demonstrate the remarkable versatility
of Mediaeval shipbuilders. They were artisans who
had only simple tools at their disposal and experience alone to serve as their guide. Yet they produced a variety of structurally similar cargo ships
to meet a wide range of different needs. The so-called
Dark Ages, which include the Viking period, may
have been a violent time of political and social turmoil,
a time when knowledge of the Latin language
and of Roman culture disappeared from northern
and western Europe. But it was also a time of extensive technical innovation and the development
of skills where literacy mattered little. The work of
archaeologists of boats continues to prove that.
For Further
Reading on Viking ships: George
A
Bass, editor, History of Seafaring based on Underwater Archaeology (Thames and Hudson, London
1972), especially the chapters by Ole CrumlinPedersen and Arne Emil Christensen; A.W. Br^gger
and Haakon Shetelig, The Viking Ships, Their
Ancestry and Evolution (Dreyers Forlag, Oslo 1971),
includes lull reports on the Gokstad and Oseberg
finds; Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, Das Haithabuschiff,
Berichte über die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu ,
Bericht 3 (Karl Wacholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1969),
summarizes the work on the ship fragments found
in Hedeby noor ; Basil Greenhill, Archaeology of
the Boat (A. and C. Black Ltd., London 1976)
and Richard W. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval
Economy , 600-1600 (Croon-Helm, London 1980),
contain more general information on Mediaeval
ships and their development; Olaf Hasslöf, Henning
Henningsen and Arne Emil Christensen, editors,
Ships and Shipyards , Sailors and Fishermen
(Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen 1972), is the
best survey of the study of maritime ethnology;
''Building the Replica," Part 1, by Sean McGrail,
and Part II, "The Sea TYials,"by Eric McKee, The
Building and Trials of the Replica of an Ancient
Boat: The Gokstad Faering (National Maritime
Museum, Maritime Monographs and Reports, no. 11,
1974), summarize work on the reconstruction of
the small Viking ship at the Greenwich museum;
Olaf Olsen and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, The Skuldelev
Ships , originally published in Acta Archaeologica
38 (1967): 73-174, with a preliminary report on the
dig in the same journal, 29 (1958): 161-75, contains
the work on Roskilde fjord; James Graham-Campbell,
The Viking World (Lincoln, London 1980), offers a
recent well-illustrated summary of knowledge about
Vikings gained from archaeological research.
Two excellent films on the excavation of the
Skuldelev ships and their preservation and reconstruction, both made at the museum in Roskilde,
are available through the Danish embassies.

1982
May/June

Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982