# Viking Sunstone Found In 16th-Century Shipwreck



## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

I searched the site and could not find a post for this story; sorry if it's a rerun.

Viking 'Sunstone' Discovered - Business Insider


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## flyingwelshman (Aug 5, 2007)

Pretty cool.
It amazes me how ingenious mankind can be.


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## MarkofSeaLife (Nov 7, 2010)

Oh hell!

Now the sextant and paper chart boys have something else that we Must Have to go to sea!


Mark


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

MarkofSeaLife said:


> Oh hell!
> 
> Now the sextant and paper chart boys have something else that we Must Have to go to sea!
> 
> Mark


Don't forget your sun compass, too. :laugher


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## paulk (Jun 2, 2000)

Why aren't more of these things found? (Why is finding one on an Elizabethan wreck - 800 years after the Vikings - such big news?) Why aren't they found on much older wrecks? Are there more references to them in earlier periods, other than the sparse mention (as the article states) in nordic texts?


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

paulk said:


> Why aren't more of these things found? (Why is finding one on an Elizabethan wreck - 800 years after the Vikings - such big news?) Why aren't they found on much older wrecks? Are there more references to them in earlier periods, other than the sparse mention (as the article states) in nordic texts?


 Interesting questions. The Alderney stone was found close to navigation tools, suggesting it was being used as a backup or check on the magnetic compass. I wonder if anyone has searched early English literature for references to anything like the sunstone. There's a good project for a college dissertation. 

We'll have to wait for the archaeologists to do the dirty work, but they are looking:

"No such crystals have been found yet at Viking sites. The team notes that archaeologists are unlikely to find complete crystals as part of a group of grave goods, since the Vikings often cremated their dead.

But recent excavations turned up the first calcite fragment at a Viking settlement, "proving some people in the Viking Age were employing Iceland spar crystals," the researchers wrote."

 Shipwreck Article


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## HighTyde (Feb 5, 2014)

Great article. As I continue to learn more about the Vikings, I am even more impressed by how awesome they were. I don't think most folks really know that much about them.
When people ask me about my background (I'm American), I tell them I'm 1/4-Swede (since my grandfather came over from Sweden when he was a teenager, expecting to find the streets actually paved with gold, according to family lore). Maybe I should tell them I'm 1/4-Viking instead, since it's better to be associated with the sunstone than the Vasa (which I had a chance to tour when I visited Stockholm).
I bet you Chuck Norris is part Viking! From now on I'm one-quarter Viking (though I'm still and always will be a die hard Green Bay Packers fan)!


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## algee (Feb 28, 2010)

Weather rocks and sex stones are still easy to find.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> I searched the site and could not find a post for this story; sorry if it's a rerun.
> 
> Viking 'Sunstone' Discovered - Business Insider


as i said: a wealth of information. this is cool. now they have proof the the idea that the sunstone was a real thing and that it was icelandic spar. one thing that irks me:

"Sunstones, according to a theory first aired 45 years ago, helped the great Norse mariners to navigate their way to Iceland and even perhaps as far as North America during the Viking heyday of 900-1200 AD, way before the magnetic compass was introduced in Europe in the 13th century."

really? perhaps as far as North America? someone is behind the times. historians used to deny the validity of the saga account of finding North America but they found the actual settlement a good while ago, proving the sagas weren't full of BS.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

HighTyde said:


> Great article. As I continue to learn more about the Vikings, I am even more impressed by how awesome they were. I don't think most folks really know that much about them.
> When people ask me about my background (I'm American), I tell them I'm 1/4-Swede (since my grandfather came over from Sweden when he was a teenager, expecting to find the streets actually paved with gold, according to family lore). Maybe I should tell them I'm 1/4-Viking instead, since it's better to be associated with the sunstone than the Vasa (which I had a chance to tour when I visited Stockholm).
> I bet you Chuck Norris is part Viking!


lol. one of the other things people don't know about the vikings. vikings were not a race or culture or a people. viking was a profession. a vikingr was someone wo went a viking. viking being the verb referring to raiding/piracy. while the vikings were primarily scandinavian ( norse ), being the last official wave of germanic migrations ( although i would certainly count the norman invasions as being part of the germanic migrations, myself ), they also included dutch and germans. they even gathered some irish, as well.

not even all norse sailors were vikings. only those involved in raiding.

instead of saying you are viking, perhaps you should say you were norse.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

captain jack said:


> ....
> not even all norse sailors were vikings. only those involved in raiding.
> 
> instead of saying you are viking, perhaps you should say you were norse.


FWIW, the history books I've read usually refer to them as "norse raiders"..


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## Bene505 (Jul 31, 2008)

captain jack said:


> lol. one of the other things people don't know about the vikings. vikings were not a race or culture or a people. viking was a profession. a vikingr was someone wo went a viking. viking being the verb referring to raiding/piracy. while the vikings were primarily scandinavian ( norse ), being the last official wave of germanic migrations ( although i would certainly count the norman invasions as being part of the germanic migrations, myself ), they also included dutch and germans. they even gathered some irish, as well.
> 
> not even all norse sailors were vikings. only those involved in raiding.
> 
> instead of saying you are viking, perhaps you should say you were norse.


Weren't the Normans who invaded England in 1006 actually Vikings? I think I read that the Vikings settled Normandy a generation or two earlier.

Regards,
Brad


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Bene505 said:


> Weren't the Normans who invaded England in 1006 actually Vikings? I think I read that the Vikings settled Normandy a generation or two earlier.
> 
> Regards,
> Brad


yes, indeed they were descendents of vikings. actually, northern europe was divided between celts and germans. the germanic tribes consisted of the north germanic, which includes the norse. the west germanic, which are the germans, dutch, english, franks ( french ), swiss, and austrians. the south germanics are the bavarians. the east germanics were the goths but they did not continue, as a distinct people, into our time.

all of those people shared a religion, language group, and similar cultural traits. the anglo-saxons sailed to england in longships.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> FWIW, the history books I've read usually refer to them as "norse raiders"..


that would be more proper than viking, really. viking is a norse word, however, viking is the verb. the person who goes a viking is called vikingr. since most people aren't familiar with old norse, calling them vikingr, in a text book, would make people wonder.


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## HighTyde (Feb 5, 2014)

captain jack said:


> lol. one of the other things people don't know about the vikings. vikings were not a race or culture or a people. viking was a profession. a vikingr was someone wo went a viking. viking being the verb referring to raiding/piracy. while the vikings were primarily scandinavian ( norse ), being the last official wave of germanic migrations ( although i would certainly count the norman invasions as being part of the germanic migrations, myself ), they also included dutch and germans. they even gathered some irish, as well.
> 
> not even all norse sailors were vikings. only those involved in raiding.
> 
> instead of saying you are viking, perhaps you should say you were norse.


Thanks for the bit of history! I never thought of being a viking as more of a profession than a race. Interesting!
As for being norse, I always thought (without much thought) that norse meant norwegian, but I bet it is just "from the north" and included norway and sweden, plus others?
Anyway, the vikings, aka norse, aka norse raiders, sure were/are interesting!


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

HighTyde said:


> Thanks for the bit of history! I never thought of being a viking as more of a profession than a race. Interesting!
> As for being norse, I always thought (without much thought) that norse meant norwegian, but I bet it is just "from the north" and included norway and sweden, plus others?
> Anyway, the vikings, aka norse, aka norse raiders, sure were/are interesting!


quite so. the norweigians ans swedes spoke the west norse dialect and the danes spoke west norse. the icelanders were also norse. they spoke a dialect called old icelandic.

just because you might find it interesting, the germanic languages were/are very similar, being of the same family. for instance:

english: raven Wodan (anglosaxon ) Thunor ( anglosaxon )
norse: hrafn Othinn ( usually anglicized to Odin ) Thorr
german: raben Wotan Donar


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

The vikings were members of a productive and highly creative culture. The superb artistry of their woodworking, metalsmithing, songmaking, shipbuilding and exploring talents deserve more notice. 

I particularly enjoy their play with words. The riddle-poems and riddle-game are great fun, and the lore-poems a fine way for a non-literate people to keep ancient wisdom alive. Tolkien used them to great effect in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".

(rant)
That's one of my pet peeves with the "Lord of the Rings" movies. Besides leaving out the Old Forest and Barrow-Downs episodes (I really wanted to see Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadil), Peter Jackson left out the poems and songs.
(/rant)


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Thirty of forty years ago, the "Sunstone" was still considered "just another Viking fairy tale" as much of the Norse writings have been considered for a thousand years. So unless someone was very up to date, they could easily see one--assuming a chunk of Icelandic Spar survives underwater better than beach glass does--and tossed it out as a piece of worn glass, or a quartz crystal, or some other bit of trash. 

The Icelandic Sagas were long denigrated as works of fairy tales and rubbish because they were quite serious about things like sailing so far to the south that the pitch melted off the planking and the lands were full of BLUE men.

And then around 1970 someone figured out that the Vikings had different words for some colors, and "blue" men meant "blue-black, the color of raven feathers" and the blue men were, ahuh, simply very black Africans. And that perhaps the Vikings really had gone that far. 

Apparently they founded Russia (named for the Rus tribe of Vikings) sacked and burned Constantinople, made it to just about everyplace where a warrior poet could have a good time sacking and burning and pillaging...and, yeah, were dead serious about being able to navigate with tools the Europeans didn't have.

Bear in mind that European navigators were a very secretive bunch, if they HAD obtained potentially ungodly tools from horrid pagans, they'd probably have been very quiet about having them or using them. Viking magic? The Inquisition would have put a fast end to that, too.

I think it was only ten? years ago that someone figured out the longboats would regularly exceed "hull speed" because the style of lapstrake construction they used actually works to perform a considerable amount of air injection. Bubbles are passed under the hull, reducing drag, increasing speed, the same way that we've banned them form modern racing boats for the same reason. But the Vikings apparently were using the same technology, accidentally of not, and then it got lost for a thousand years.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> The vikings were members of a productive and highly creative culture. The superb artistry of their woodworking, metalsmithing, songmaking, shipbuilding and exploring talents deserve more notice.
> 
> I particularly enjoy their play with words. The riddle-poems and riddle-game are great fun, and the lore-poems a fine way for a non-literate people to keep ancient wisdom alive. Tolkien used them to great effect in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".
> 
> ...


that irked me, as well. ian anderson, of jethro tull, would have been the perfect bombadil.

plus, he had the characters crying all the time. i don't recall that happening in the books. pansy elves, hobbits, and heros.

one other thing is how he changed the personalities of the characters. aragorn was never the reluctant king, as jackson made him.

and don't get me started on the new hobbit movies.....

one point i would make. the vikings were not illiterate. they have runestaves, that they have found, where a wife was sending her husband a message to come home from the mead hall and things like that. and there is runic graffiti in all the places the vikings went.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

hellosailor said:


> Thirty of forty years ago, the "Sunstone" was still considered "just another Viking fairy tale" as much of the Norse writings have been considered for a thousand years. So unless someone was very up to date, they could easily see one--assuming a chunk of Icelandic Spar survives underwater better than beach glass does--and tossed it out as a piece of worn glass, or a quartz crystal, or some other bit of trash.
> 
> The Icelandic Sagas were long denigrated as works of fairy tales and rubbish because they were quite serious about things like sailing so far to the south that the pitch melted off the planking and the lands were full of BLUE men.
> 
> ...


wow. that's great. when i write about this kind of viking age technological advancement people just laugh at me and say i am full of it....especially on sailing sites. thank you thank you thank you 

'experimental archaeology' has done a lot to further our understanding of the capabilities of the norse vessels....although there are still people who will argue that they could only reach, never sail up wind, because europe just couldn't have had those capabilities until much later. i suppose it's hard for some people to admit that technology hasn't been a straight steady line of advancement but, rather, an advance, retreat, advance some more process.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> that irked me, as well. ian anderson, of jethro tull, would have been the perfect bombadil.
> 
> plus, he had the characters crying all the time. i don't recall that happening in the books. pansy elves, hobbits, and heros.
> 
> ...


Not "illiterate" - "non-literate" - they did not rely on books to record and pass down their culture. Their stories, songs and poems did that through the skalds, much as Homer and the bards did for Greece prior to the 6th century BCE, when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their language.

Totally agree with the poor portrayal of the characters. It feels to me as though he stole the reputation and good-will of Tolkien's name, then gutted the books and characters of the qualities that made them good in the first place.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Not "illiterate" - "non-literate" - they did not rely on books to record and pass down their culture. Their stories, songs and poems did that through the skalds, much as Homer and the bards did for Greece prior to the 6th century BCE, when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their language.
> 
> Totally agree with the poor portrayal of the characters. It feels to me as though he stole the reputation and good-will of Tolkien's name, then gutted the books and characters of the qualities that made them good in the first place.


oh. ok. i get you. i misunderstood your intent. 

glad to hear someone shares my opinion about those movies. i actually heard one woman, in a book store, ask the cashier about getting the movie verstion of LOTR for her kid. can you imagine?


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> oh. ok. i get you. i misunderstood your intent.
> 
> glad to hear someone shares my opinion about those movies. i actually heard one woman, in a book store, ask the cashier about getting the movie verstion of LOTR for her kid. can you imagine?


Poor kid. The graphic novels would be better.

Have you heard Professor Tolkien's recordings?


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

hellosailor said:


> I think it was only ten? years ago that someone figured out the longboats would regularly exceed "hull speed" because the style of lapstrake construction they used actually works to perform a considerable amount of air injection. Bubbles are passed under the hull, reducing drag, increasing speed, the same way that we've banned them form modern racing boats for the same reason. But the Vikings apparently were using the same technology, accidentally of not, and then it got lost for a thousand years.


You might like to drag out a copy of Uffa Fox's _"Racing, Cruising and Design"_ written in the late '40s.. He had a bit of a poke around a couple of viking longboats and had nothing but good things to say about them.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

manatee said:


> Totally agree with the poor portrayal of the characters. It feels to me as though he stole the reputation and good-will of Tolkien's name, then gutted the books and characters of the qualities that made them good in the first place.


Oh, FFS, give the guy a break.. do you really have any idea how much effort he went to to make those movies and the thousands of people who were involved?!? If you did, you'd be aware that there are some aspects of characters and story-line that either (a) don't fit even a massive budget or (b) get cut to fit the maximum length of time people can be expected to sit in a cinema without getting a sore butt. 

If you were wanting to be realistic, try comparing Peter Jackson's effort against all other cinematic efforts to portray LOTR and/or Hobbit in the past and then come back and review what you've written.

I, for one, am sure even Tolkien would have enjoyed the films for the bit they do manage to portray.. and I find it even more amazing, after seeing it for myself, that the scenery in those movies is very, very real - steep hillsides, rivers and lakes are real steep hillsides, river and lakes. He made pretty much the entire country into one giant movie set. Epic doesn't describe the half of it.

.. with apologies for the thread drift.


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## paulk (Jun 2, 2000)

Bene505 said:


> Weren't the Normans who invaded England in 1006 actually Vikings? I think I read that the Vikings settled Normandy a generation or two earlier.
> 
> Regards,
> Brad


Vikings rowed up the Seine (convenient, for them) to Paris and besieged it around the year 800. The King of France, or what passed for it at the time, offered to buy them off by giving them some territory... Normandie (North man - get it?) In 1066 Guillaume, Duc de Normandie invaded England and became King of England. The Tower of London is built using stone from the area of Caen, France. England didn't have the quarries or many- if any- stone castles at that point. Still wondering why there aren't more of these crystals around.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> Oh, FFS, give the guy a break.. do you really have any idea how much effort he went to to make those movies and the thousands of people who were involved?!? If you did, you'd be aware that there are some aspects of characters and story-line that either (a) don't fit even a massive budget or (b) get cut to fit the maximum length of time people can be expected to sit in a cinema without getting a sore butt.
> 
> If you were wanting to be realistic, try comparing Peter Jackson's effort against all other cinematic efforts to portray LOTR and/or Hobbit in the past and then come back and review what you've written.
> 
> ...


 No question, they are beautifully filmed.

My disagreement is with things like making scenes up that are not even hinted at in the books and do not advance the story, padding and creating characters, changing the characters' characters, using computers to make pretty pictures instead of using the characters to enrich and advance the story. The books are about Story, and have a rich texture; the movies are about Spectacle, and feel rather flat, tasteless, two-dimensional.

The only other attempts to film it that I know of were the abominable Rankin-Bass cartoons, and Ralph Bakshi's animated "Lord of the Rings, Part One", which I don't remember much, but it had to be orders of magnitude better than the Rankin-Bass.

Sorry for the threadjack, Jack.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

manatee said:


> No question, they are beautifully filmed.
> 
> My disagreement is with things like making scenes up that are not even hinted at in the books and do not advance the story, padding and creating characters, changing the characters' characters, using computers to make pretty pictures instead of using the characters to enrich and advance the story. *The books are about Story, and have a rich texture; the movies are about Spectacle, *and feel rather flat, tasteless, two-dimensional.


Actually, that holds true for almost ALL movie adaptations I think I've ever seen.

When writing a book you can create whatever environment you like restricted only by the bounds of language, but in the movie world you have backers that must either be greatly impressed or you don't get any more of the astronomical funding you need to pay the bills.. not to mention that some scenes that read great in book form for one reason or other simply don't work on screen. It's a fine line.. and I'm very glad I, for one, don't have to walk it. 

Here's some of the fun they had: (from that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia of course)

_"Trouble struck when Marty Katz was sent to New Zealand. Spending four months there, he told Miramax that the films were more likely to cost $150 million, and with Miramax unable to finance this, and with $15 million already spent, they decided to merge the two films into one. On 17 June 1998, Bob Weinstein presented a treatment of a single two-hour film version of the book. He suggested cutting Bree and the Battle of Helm's Deep, "losing or using" Saruman, merging Rohan and Gondor with Éowyn as Boromir's sister, shortening Rivendell and Moria as well as having Ents prevent the Uruk-hai kidnapping Merry and Pippin.[11] Upset by the idea of "cutting out half the good stuff"[12] Jackson balked, and Miramax declared that any ****** or work completed by Weta Workshop was theirs.[11] Jackson went around Hollywood for four weeks,[12] showing a thirty-five-minute video of their work, before meeting with New Line Cinema's Mark Ordesky.[13] At New Line Cinema, Robert Shaye viewed the video, and then asked why they were making two films when the book was published as three volumes; he wanted to make a film trilogy. Now Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had to write three new scripts."_

You can put a rocket in orbit for $150 million..



manatee said:


> The only other attempts to film it that I know of were the abominable Rankin-Bass cartoons, and Ralph Bakshi's animated "Lord of the Rings, Part One", which I don't remember much, but it had to be orders of magnitude better than the Rankin-Bass.


They're the ones... Hardly in the same league, are they? Did they actually have a story? or develop characters like the book?? Compare scenes in those attempts with Jackson's Battle for Helm's Deep. Highly memorable indeed.



manatee said:


> Sorry for the threadjack, Jack.


Yes indeedy.. sorry for the threadjack, Jack


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Poor kid. The graphic novels would be better.
> 
> Have you heard Professor Tolkien's recordings?


no. i haven't. i have read a lot of his other works, including his rendition of the volsungasaga but i wasn't aware there were recordings. are they readily available?


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> no. i haven't. i have read a lot of his other works, including his rendition of the volsungasaga but i wasn't aware there were recordings. are they readily available?


 They're wonderful! A couple of samples to whet your appetite.

 The Ring Verse 

Two 15-minute sessions for the entire Riddle Game With Gollum

The two poems "Namarie" and "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" are recited by Tolkien; the third is by his son. The short words & phrases are Tolkien:

 Elvish Poems

The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection:Amazon:[email protected]@[email protected]@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51D-%[email protected]@[email protected]@51D-%2BCwERoL
l&tag=filigod-20


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> They're wonderful! A couple of samples to whet your appetite.
> 
> The Ring Verse
> 
> ...


that's really awesome! thanks. the fifteen minutes hearing him read the riddle game was better than the entirity of the three movies.

have you read 'smith of wooton major' and 'farmer giles of ham'?


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## warren5421 (Jan 9, 2014)

The history and lit you can learn about in forums not related to either is interesting some mornings. And the wife said that I only liked sailing and guns!


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## Markwesti (Jan 1, 2013)

Sunstone , well yes very nice . So why does GPS City hang up on me when I try to order one ? They won't even let me ask if it has a way point alarm !


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> that's really awesome! thanks. the fifteen minutes hearing him read the riddle game was better than the entirity of the three movies.
> 
> have you read 'smith of wooton major' and 'farmer giles of ham'?


 Sure. He has a great sense of humor - Farmer Giles making the deal with the dragon is great fun. The Professor would have been a good one to share a pitcher with. I can picture JRRT and his buds from the Inklings tipping back a few pints in their 'local' and singing old drinking songs in the original Olde English. 

I just recently found a downloadable version of his paper on "Beowulf". It's pdf, so I can only read a couple of pages at a time on my phone. I *really* don't like pdf. His audience must have been special, - there are bits where he slips into Anglo-Saxon to emphasize the point he wants to make.

"The Tolkien Reader" has a lot in it. I particularly like "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm's Son", and his essays around it.

*ETA*
Did you listen to both parts of the riddle game? (You say '15 minutes', and there are 2 15-minute recordings -- the 2nd is down the page a bit.)

Have you read

Silverlock:Amazon:[email protected]@[email protected]@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/[email protected]@[email protected]@5180GQAVBCL

or

The Complete Compleat Enchanter:Amazon:[email protected]@[email protected]@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/[email protected]@[email protected]@51EGPG68NTL


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Markwesti said:


> Sunstone , well yes very nice . So why does GPS City hang up on me when I try to order one ? They won't even let me ask if it has a way point alarm !


They're not going to sell you something that uses no power, and that they cannot gouge you on for periodic maintenance and 'upgrades'.


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

"Sunstone , well yes very nice . So why does GPS City hang up on me when I try to order one ? "

Because, old chap, you're not listed in the Guild, and if you're not in the Guild, you aren't allowed to play with the good toys.

Navigators do not share outside of the Guild. That's Rule Number One.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

hellosailor said:


> "Sunstone , well yes very nice . So why does GPS City hang up on me when I try to order one ? "
> 
> Because, old chap, you're not listed in the Guild, and if you're not in the Guild, you aren't allowed to play with the good toys.
> 
> Navigators do not share outside of the Guild. That's Rule Number One.


You mean the first rule of navigation is "Don't talk about navigation. "?


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> Oh, FFS, give the guy a break.. do you really have any idea how much effort he went to to make those movies and the thousands of people who were involved?!? If you did, you'd be aware that there are some aspects of characters and story-line that either (a) don't fit even a massive budget or (b) get cut to fit the maximum length of time people can be expected to sit in a cinema without getting a sore butt.
> 
> If you were wanting to be realistic, try comparing Peter Jackson's effort against all other cinematic efforts to portray LOTR and/or Hobbit in the past and then come back and review what you've written.
> 
> ...


the first movie wasn't that bad. i was disappointed about bombadil and a little disapproving of his portrayal of aragorn and frodo. however, i left the theater excited and waiting for the next two movies. but after that first movie, he went out in left field and threw away the books.

as far as the movies go, the hobbit and lotr are two different issues. as for his take on the hobbit, the much maligned cartoon from the 70s did a far better job of telling the story, as it was writen, than the movies have( 3 movies for the shortest of the books ). i read interviews with him before it came out. he started off thinking the hobbit was a POS children's book that he needed to fix. so, he decided to do it his way to fix tolkien's flawed work.

and i think that touches on the issue with the lotr movies. no one is saying that he didn't choose a perfect cast. he did. no one is saying that the effects weren't awesome. they were ( even though i found the film quality of the third movie to be below the quality of the previous two). where he totally mressed them up was in his story telling.

for instance, he left out one of the most beloved chatacters of the book, tom bombadil, and chose to waste lots of footage on a character that only appears as a mention in the books: aragorn's elvish bride to be. many people claim he did this to introduce a romantic interest. however, he completely down played the real romantic story of the trilogy, that of faramir and eowyn.

my biggest issue was his depiction of the characters. for instance: at helm's deep, he depicts theoden king as being weak and ready to give up in dispair ( a shameful caracter ), while aragorn is the one who gives him courage and leads the charge. that is not at all how it was written by tolkien. also, he depicts aragorn as some reluctant king, like an irresponsible teen, who has to be coerced to take his proper place. but, that's not how he was, in the book, at all. in the book, he carried the broken sword with him, from the start, waiting for the day when it was time to have it reforged so he could fulfill his prophecy. he is introduced by that prophecy. he isn't seeking to run from kingship. he is waiting for his time to be king to arrive. it's a totally different character than tolkien wrote. same with faramir. jackson portrays him as a man sorely tempted who only chose to do the right thing at the last minute. however, tolkien wrote him as a pure character, full of honor and worthymindedness ( weorthmyndum in anglosaxon, the language of rohan ), who was in no way tempted by the power of the ring. i could give examples of this problem for every major character, including the hobbits. frodo never turned on samwise. ever.

that's the issue. it's not whether he could create a movie of huge scale and great effects ( although the battle at gondor, with the souls of the cursed, really sucked...if you ask me ). it's can he tell tolkien's story. he butchered that story. so, no. he did not succeed at that. of course, it is a million times better than what he is calling 'the hobbit'. that's just an abomination.

tolkien is a 20th century shakespeare. truly a great of modern english litterature. he deserves the same kind of respect. jackson thinks himself a better writer than tolkien. either they should have chosen a director who actually respected and loved tolkien's works or they should have appointed someone, who did, to rein jackson in.

i think it's a shame. production-wise, what he did, with lotr, was awesome and, if he had just presented tolkien's story, as written, it would have been a truly great and classic thing. as it is, there will probably not be another attempt to actually get it right for a very long time...if ever. and, i thought the cast was perfect, so, even if an attempt is, someday, made to do the trilogy over, it won't be with this cast...which is truly a shame.

now, his hobbit, so far, is terrible. really horrible. the characters are all completely and utterly wrong. when he actually does use material from the book, he has totally screwed it up. his portrayal of the unexpected party....truly horrendous and completely at odds with the book and with tolkien's portrayal of the characters. and that giant golden dwarf.....by the Gods, i bet tolkien is rolling over in his grave so fast and hard that it's affecting the gravitational pull of the earth over his grave.

but, it's a matter of what you expect of the movies. if you are expecting the usual hollywood cheesy sword and sorcery movie, then you will be ecstatic. if you are expecting the hobbit and lotr, then you probably won't be dancng on the tables at the prancing pony.

yeah, it is a thread drift....although i don't imagine manatee minds the drift all that much. lol. a discussion of tolkien can bring out people's passions as strong as a discussion of religion or politics..


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Sure. He has a great sense of humor - Farmer Giles making the deal with the dragon is great fun. The Professor would have been a good one to share a pitcher with. I can picture JRRT and his buds from the Inklings tipping back a few pints in their 'local' and singing old drinking songs in the original Olde English.
> 
> I just recently found a downloadable version of his paper on "Beowulf". It's pdf, so I can only read a couple of pages at a time on my phone. I *really* don't like pdf. His audience must have been special, - there are bits where he slips into Anglo-Saxon to emphasize the point he wants to make.
> 
> ...


no. i have not read either of those. i take it you strongly recommend them?

have you read the wheel of time series? amazing work. too bad he died before he could finish. i haven't read the ones released after his death. i don't think there is another writer that could carry forth his vision.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> No question, they are beautifully filmed.
> 
> My disagreement is with things like making scenes up that are not even hinted at in the books and do not advance the story, padding and creating characters, changing the characters' characters, using computers to make pretty pictures instead of using the characters to enrich and advance the story. The books are about Story, and have a rich texture; the movies are about Spectacle, and feel rather flat, tasteless, two-dimensional.
> 
> ...


i have to make sure i read threads in order, when i am catching up. lol. it would save me time and typing.

lotr, part one was actually a decent cartoon. other than the fact that aragorn looked a bit native american ( in features not clothes ) it was really pretty good. it did follow the book. funny thing, after i saw it, i looked everywhere for the other parts.

don't apologize to me for the thread jacking. it's your thread! you can jack it if you want to. :laugher hmmmm that sounded bad.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> You might like to drag out a copy of Uffa Fox's _"Racing, Cruising and Design"_ written in the late '40s.. He had a bit of a poke around a couple of viking longboats and had nothing but good things to say about them.


is that book still easily available?


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

holy horned helmets, batman! a used copy is 34 bucks on amazon. i wonder if the library would have a copy available. disclaimer: vikings never wore horned helmets. that is a hollywood thing, they wore spangenhelms: often with eye guards, a nasal, cheek plates. and a neck guard or mail draped along the lower edge. i was just playing on the common misconception for the purpose of campy 70's batman humor


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

while on the subject of longships, i thought you guys might like this.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

Video about the Oseberg Viking Ship replica project
It includes tank testing the hull.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> Video about the Oseberg Viking Ship replica project
> It includes tank testing the hull.
> Stiftelsen Nytt OsebergSkip - YouTube


isn't there a longer, more detailed version of that....one with a more indepth coverage of the hull tank testing? i am sure i have seen one.


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## JimMcGee (Jun 23, 2005)

I thought this video was pretty interesting. From "The Great Ships" series that ran on the History Channel.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> the first movie wasn't that bad. i was disappointed about bombadil and a little disapproving of his portrayal of aragorn and frodo. however, i left the theater excited and waiting for the next two movies. but after that first movie, he went out in left field and threw away the books.
> 
> as far as the movies go, the hobbit and lotr are two different issues. as for his take on the hobbit, the much maligned cartoon from the 70s did a far better job of telling the story, as it was writen, than the movies have( 3 movies for the shortest of the books ). i read interviews with him before it came out. he started off thinking the hobbit was a POS children's book that he needed to fix. so, he decided to do it his way to fix tolkien's flawed work.
> 
> ...


Trenchant, spot-on analysis -- kudos!

I was planning on waiting for the special-edition release of the complete "Hobbit",- sounds like an even-better-than-I-had-thought plan. Though the phrase "...giant golden dwarf..." has me curious.  From the commercials I've seen, I'm afraid he's made the dwarves too cartoon-y. ...and it sounds as though he's copying LOTR, having someone/something following Thorin and company from the outset, as the Black Riders pursue Frodo.

Re: casting remakes. At the rate tech is going, I suspect it won't be long before actors' likenesses will be screen-captured for use in perpetuity. "Max Headroom" lives!


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

JimMcGee said:


> I thought this video was pretty interesting. From "The Great Ships" series that ran on the History Channel.
> 
> The Vikings Ships - Documentary - YouTube


that's a pretty good documentary. it does contain a number of misconceptions about viking vessels, their development, and the reason for the end of the viking age. in fact, they give two different reasons for the end of the viking age; each seperated by quite a bit of time.

of note, the viking vessels, viking culture in general, was not an isolated thing that develpoed under isolated conditions. the vikings were a part of a collective germanic culture, as were their vessels. they were, indeed, the last part of that culture to remain true to it's old ways but, they were not the only element of that culture.

the time frame given for introduction of the sail is incorrect. the saxons used longships, like the one at sutton hoo, to raid and, eventually settle, england hundreds of years before the vikings exploded on the scene. these vessels were sail powered. the viking ships represent an evolution in germanic ship building but not a revolution, as is usually depicted.

the one thing that we, unfortunately do not know, is the depth of the keel, in saxon vessels. the sutton hoo vessel, unfortunately, is uncleatr about that. a fairly recent scale replica of this vessel, the sae wylfing, was built with a shallower keel because the researchers did not want to assume anything. even so, it could still sail within 60 degrees of the wind.

the biggest question is how deep were the keels on saxon, and other germanic, longships? at present, we do not know. if we could find that out, it would add a lot of clarity to the evolution of germanic ship building. most people are totally unaware that the other germanic tribes used longships. however, it was not only the vikings but also the angles, saxons, jutes, frisians, vendals, and other tribes, as well. in fact, if you look at the history, the vikings were the third great sailing power to arise out of germania.

before them, the saxons made their mark on european history; a huge mark, in fact. but before the saxons, the vendals also made their mark. traveling south, moving on to the northern coast of africa and also corsica, malta, sardinia, and balearics, to set themselves up as a major naval power in the mediterranean. they cold not have done this, in an area where sails were used, without using the sail, themselves. they are best known for their sacking of rome.

another thing that i notice is that, as is usually the case, the role of oars on viking ships is misrepresented. warships had lots of oars because the vikings used oars under war conditions. not just in naval battles, as the video notes, but for stealth in raiding. unlike they dramatically claim, in the video, vikings didn't sail up to the coast to be raided. sails, on the horizon would have alerted the intended prey of their arrival far too soon, giving the enemy time to prepare. instead, the vikings lowered the sail, far enough away to help avoid early detection, and rowed to shore.

unlike the lonships, knarrs/knorrs only had 4 oars. these oars were used to maneuver around the docking areas. they operated pretty much completely under sail, having no reason to move stealthily and not normally being used in naval battles.

i think that, not pointing this fact out, creates a misconception that the vikings rowed up wind because their vessels couldn't do well to windward. however, had this been the fact, one would assume knarrs, trading vessels that often traveled long distances, would have also had many oars so they could make their way to wind, as well. especially since knarrs often carried livestock. you certainly wouldn't be able to row a heavily laden knarr up wind, very well, with only 4 oars.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Trenchant, spot-on analysis -- kudos!
> 
> I was planning on waiting for the special-edition release of the complete "Hobbit",- sounds like an even-better-than-I-had-thought plan. Though the phrase "...giant golden dwarf..." has me curious.  From the commercials I've seen, I'm afraid he's made the dwarves too cartoon-y. ...and it sounds as though he's copying LOTR, having someone/something following Thorin and company from the outset, as the Black Riders pursue Frodo.
> 
> Re: casting remakes. At the rate tech is going, I suspect it won't be long before actors' likenesses will be screen-captured for use in perpetuity. "Max Headroom" lives!


thanks for the kudos! i was afraid my post would be seen as pretentious and overly critical.

yes. the giant gold dwarf. go to youtube a look up the title for the second hobbit movie, the desolation of smaug. there, you can see the final part of the movie. this includes the giant gold dwarf. totally laughable. despite my disappointment, i bought the lotr movies. i shall not be buying the hobbit movies, although i will watch all three simply because it's ( supposedly ) tolkien.

well, if you havent seen it, my point about the unexpected party, in the first hobbit movie, is that all of the characters are horribly rude and violate the rules of hospitality; a big no-no in pre christian germanic culture ( which tolkien's middle earth is taken from). the dwarves are rude, hoggish, and actually rather mean to bilbo. in return, bilbo is a rude and horrible host. nothing at all like in the book. in fact, totally the opposite.

thorin, in the movie, doesn't just have the air of nobility, as in the book, he is an outright butthole.

the dwarves don't really even look like dwarves, especially thorin. he is like a short handsome hero. totally unlike the good job jackson did with the dwarves in lotr.

and, instead of the bold there and back again feeling of high adventure, which you get in the book, jackson's the hobbit is full of the air of dread and impending doom, just like lotr. if i were you, i would rent the movies before i bought them. just to make sure you don't get buyer's remorse.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

as far as why the viking age ended, there are two reasons for that event, both taking place concurrently. the video was rather contradictory, in this regard. it states, in one instance, that the viking age ended because of the development of the cog, although that happened after the viking age. the development of the cog caused northern europe to abandon the longship design but, that was during the time of the normans, not the vikings. the viking age officially ended in 1066. when the last vikings were cast out of england and the normans siezed power in england. after that, the normans spread all across the european coast and even into the so called holy land.

the video also claims that the viking are ended around 1066 but they claim it is due to the lack of organization of the norse. however, the video also claims, rightly, that the vikings were highly organized. a major contradiction.

there were really two things, besides the ability to do lightning raids from sea, that made the vikings so successful. one is that they were better equipped. the second is that they had better organization. 

by the beginning of the 'viking age' all the rerst of germanic norther europe had been christianized and romanized 9 to a degree ). they had left behind the pagan demacratic ideas of liberty and freedom ( which had powered their victory over rome at teutoberger ) and had adopted a system of strong centralized power and limited power to the people. unlike the days of the germanic migration age ( which the viking age really was a part of ), the rest of northern europe no longer considered all men to be warriors ( which, still adhering to the old ways the vikings still did ); warriors who were well armed. instead, the rest of norther europe cosisted of rulers and their personal army ( which were armed ) and peasants ( which were unarmed ). so, when the vikings would land, they would be attacking poorly armed and poorly organized peasants. then, they would be gone before the local leader could organize his army and get to the scene of the attack.

the vikings themselves were highly organized. in fact, some groups, such as the jomsvikings, were highly trained military organizations every bit the equal of out modern day special forces. because they still followed the old ways, the vikings were well armed and equipped. every man was a warrior, even farmers and blacksmiths.

so, the vikings, being highly organized and well armed and armored, were able to dominate the rest of europe, that had to depend on a smaller, localized armed military that was never at the scene of the attack when it happened. by the end of the viking age, however, the 'nations' of europe had grown in wealth and the centralized powers had become strong and organized. they were far better able to fend off viking attacks simply because they were able to be where they were needed to provide resistance to these attacks. the viking defeat at stamford bridge, in 1066, illustrates this. the vikings were used to fighting poorly armed and organized civilians. they wet out and got drunk the night before the battle. meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, the english army, well armed and armored, had traveled to where they were. they met with the vikings, most of whom where drunk and hadn't had time to don their mail shirts, and defeated them. it was the first real case of the rest of europe being better equipped and more preparfed than the vikings. so, one of the reasons that the viking age ended was that the rest of europe stepped up it's game and they were having to fight armies on their home turf.

the other reason for the end of the viking age was centralization of power in scandinavia. at the beginning of the viking age, the scandinavian countries were actually not countries, as we think of them today. they were numerous 'tribes' each with their own king or jarl, much like the rest of germanic northen europe during the earlier migration age. this allowed them the freedom to raid other countries at will. even when norway finally had one king over the whole country, his power was extremely limited. in fact, when the viking kings adopted christianity to gain the support of the church ( the church always bribed leaders with the temptation of more power. that's how the frankish clovis became christian and began fighting for the church ), they could not command all of their 'subjects' to convert. many areas, like the helagoland area, had a come and make me attitude and the kings didn't have that kind of power.

however, by the end of the viking age, the norse kings became very powerful and very well organized; commanding huge fleets. like most modern nations, they garnered power between themselves and other kings by entering into treaties with those kings. a king can't havre his people committing acts of war against his allies. so, the norse kings began a war against independent vikings. usually commanding much greater fleets, they were able to defeat the viking forces.

when you put these two elements together, you have the reason the viking age ended. longships, however, were still used after the viking age. in fact, it was the longship that powered the norman expansion. by the time the cog was adopted, there really were no more vikings. the event where cogs defeated lonships, noted in the video, happened, not against a viking fleet, but against a king's navy.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

oh. one point i noticed the video totally got wrong, and i am sure some of you noticed it, was in stating that the vikings added a keel to their boats to support the mast. quite obviously, germanic vessels had keels from the very beginning. the keel is the backbone of the vessel. you can't have a clinker built vessel without a keel. the two parts that were added to the germanic boats to support the mast were the keelson and the keel hog.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> thanks for the kudos! i was afraid my post would be seen as pretentious and overly critical.
> 
> yes. the giant gold dwarf. go to youtube a look up the title for the second hobbit movie, the desolation of smaug. there, you can see the final part of the movie. this includes the giant gold dwarf. totally laughable. despite my disappointment, i bought the lotr movies. i shall not be buying the hobbit movies, although i will watch all three simply because it's ( supposedly ) tolkien.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the warning.

While I'm waiting for the Hobbit set, I'll be looking for a computer with Moby memory, and studying up on open-source film-editing software. Figure I'll splice the 'good bits' together into something I like. Or, put together a soundtrack of ren-fair/celtic harp/bagpipe music and make an "Over Middle-Earth" video, like the ones PBS shows when they're begging. Or combine video with the recordings of Tolkien reading from his works. Or some combination of the above.

Have you read  the Hellenic Traders books by Harry Turtletaub? They're about a pair of cousins sailing their families' trading galley around the Med about 10-15 years after the death of Alexander. There's a fair amount of seamanship & sail-handling scattered through them. At times they use the vertical brails to reef, or change the shape of the sail into what sounds like a description of a lateen sail. I was wondering if anyone had tried that with the longship sails?


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Thanks for the warning.
> 
> While I'm waiting for the Hobbit set, I'll be looking for a computer with Moby memory, and studying up on open-source film-editing software. Figure I'll splice the 'good bits' together into something I like. Or, put together a soundtrack of ren-fair/celtic harp/bagpipe music and make an "Over Middle-Earth" video, like the ones PBS shows when they're begging. Or combine video with the recordings of Tolkien reading from his works. Or some combination of the above.
> 
> Have you read  the Hellenic Traders books by Harry Turtletaub? They're about a pair of cousins sailing their families' trading galley around the Med about 10-15 years after the death of Alexander. There's a fair amount of seamanship & sail-handling scattered through them. At times they use the vertical brails to reef, or change the shape of the sail into what sounds like a description of a lateen sail. I was wondering if anyone had tried that with the longship sails?


no. i haven't read it. i will have to check it out. it sounds like something i'd like.

not brails, that i can think of. have you heard of a beitass? it was a viking age spinnaker pole, basically. it was used to keep the tack tight, when close hauled, to help control luff shape.

also, there is something about sails that i think you might find interesting. i would be a little reluctat to relate it, here, except for the open minded nature of the 'company' in this thread. i have brought this up, before, in another thread with....less open minded people that may even had nationalistic reasons for not wishing to see the level of technical advancement of the vikings a 'dark ages' people. however, you being you, i believe you might find this interesting.

do you know why viking ships are depicted with tall square sails and why 99% of the reproductions use tall square sails?

well, in the 1800s there was a danish group building an early replica viking ship. the plan was to sail it to America for columbus day; kind of a nose thumb in the face of those claiming columbus was the first european to find America. of course, this was before the settlement was found in newfoundland and historians swore the sagas were just fairy tales and the vikings had never been here. you know historians. they have always sworn the chinese dynasty records were wrong about fair haired, blue eyed, light skinned people helped them establish their civilization....then they found that indo-european burial on the outskirts of china.

anyhow, they were running behind on the schedule and, not wanting to miss columbus day, the guy in charge, who also sailed tall ships, took a topsail ( i believe it was a topsail ) from his square rigger and fit it to the replica longship. they made it to America in 28 days, i think it was.

since then, tall square sails have been used on almost all replicas and in all depictions of longships.

there has never been a complete sail found. they have found fragments of a sail. i was not, like one person i debated with claimed, made of linen. it was made of wool, died and treated and the process used it it's manufacture made it very water proof and wind proof. it also made the sail much stiffer than you normally think of wool as being. there was a modern knarr replica that made such a sail. i will try to find the link to their site, for you. anyhow, the process to make such a sail, in our time, was outrageous so when they needed to replace the sail on this particular replica i believe they used flax, instead.

the point is, we have no physical evidence what shape viking sails had. we certainly have no physical evidence that they were tall square sails. however, there is evidence from the viking art work. you would think the vikings knew what their own sails looked like and their artistic representations of their own sails would be trustworthy. here is one of the many examples of how viking ships were represented in their own art:

http://sigrid.se/

they have a new site and i can't find all the previous info. i will keep looking and email them, as well. you have to choose your language. the new translations are better. there are pics on this site, though.

ok. i contacted them. we will see if i get a response. i hope so.... although, i had to email them in english. i don't speak sweedish.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> no. i haven't read it. i will have to check it out. it sounds like something i'd like.
> 
> not brails, that i can think of. have you heard of a beitass? it was a viking age spinnaker pole, basically. it was used to keep the tack tight, when close hauled, to help control luff shape.
> 
> ...





> anyhow, they were running behind on the schedule


Poor guy -- poked in the backside by Cheops' Law. Interesting story, glad they made it.

Innovators in archeology face an uphill climb. They have to overcome the "Not invented here" syndrome of the entrenched experts. Schliemann and Troy, the Pre-Clovis culture advocates, the Populated-Amazon proponents, the Vikings-in-America folk. You have to beat the reigning 'experts' over the head with artifacts to get their attention.

I think Hodding Carter mentions the beitass in his book, "A Viking Voyage". I'll reread it & see if I can find the reference. Strange book. It would be hilarious to get our sailnetter experts' reactions to it.

I'll look up the Sigrid Storrada. Pictures? I like pictures.

Have you seen this, about halfway down they explain the crosshatch pattern in the sails:

http://www.glen-l.com/weblettr/webletters-12/wl99-viking.html

Treated wool? Turpentine, beeswax, tallow & pine tar? Was there enough material to throw some at a mass-spectrometer?


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Poor guy -- poked in the backside by Cheops' Law. Interesting story, glad they made it.
> 
> Innovators in archeology face an uphill climb. They have to overcome the "Not invented here" syndrome of the entrenched experts. Schliemann and Troy, the Pre-Clovis culture advocates, the Populated-Amazon proponents, the Vikings-in-America folk. You have to beat the reigning 'experts' over the head with artifacts to get their attention.
> 
> ...


http://www.provector.dk/showsingle.asp?epid=14066&iid=12

this video is of the knarr with the woolen sail, which i mentioned before. the beitass is plainly visible in the video. especially when they tack. i believe they may even explain about the beitass. i will have to watch it again to be sure. i saved it on my computer but it's been a bit since i watched it.

the following is an excerpt from a site that lead me to the sigrid storrada site:

"Where do we go to get new theories on how the Vikings made their ships design the most focal design of its day. There is evidence in documents and art work of the period that we can look at, and make some good guesses, based on that information. Lets start with the sail. Today just about every Viking ship replica uses a square sail, but why? There is no evidence to prove that they used a square sail, so why use it? In the late 1890's a replica of a Viking ship was sailed to the US. The ship, to meet its sailing deadline, had to be fitted with any sail that they could find. The sail that they found was from a schooner, and it was a square sail. From their 'use what we can get' situation we have adopted the use of the square sail ever since. Is it right? Probably not, and for several reasons. Square sails will limit the abilities of Viking designed ships to perform many sailing maneuvers with efficiency. Square sails also make the ship very top heavy, and that means ballast, or weight in the bottom (hold) of the ship. One more problem with a square sail is that it catches the wind up high in the sail. Catching wind high in a sail will push the stem (front of the ship) into the water, and increase drag on the hull. The idea of a sail is to make the ship move without other forms of power, and in the Viking age that meant rowing. Another duty for the sail was to move the ship faster than rowing by the power of the wind. Sailing into the wind was, and is, a problem. To do this you have to tack into the wind. What that means is you sail in a zig zag fashion into the wind. In this way your sail can always catch wind to push you toward your objective. With square sails, on a Viking ship, tacking is very poor at best. Rowing the ship might even prove faster then tacking when using a square sail. Square sails equal; poor performance into the wind, top heavy, extra weight in the form of ballast, and increased drag. Use of the square sail does not equal the period reports of its speed and handling.
If the square sail is not the answer, what is? Using a rectangle sail is one answer. The short and wide sail concept proves to make for a very maneuverable ship. Tacking is improved dramatically, and the need for ballast is gone, or almost gone. If this is true, what evidence is there to back it up? Research of drawings and rune stones have shown Viking ships with a different form of sail, and that sail is rectangular in shape. Coins from the Viking age provided images of the same sail shape, and help support the idea of a rectangular sail. Håkan Larsson, of Sweden, more than did a bit of work in this area. He and several others worked out the design for this new sail theory. They worked out a formula of 3:1, or width is 3 times the height. This formula produces a sail that resembles the sails that are found on period evidence. The Yard (the pole that the sail is attached to) length is based on the length of the ship. To use this theory you must first figure out how long the Yard needs to be based on the length of the ship, or about 2/3 its length. From Yard length you can now come up with the height of the mast, based on the 3:1 formula. Sigrid Storåda is a copy of the Gokstad ship, and their test bed for their theories. She comes in at about 76 1/2 feet long and 17 3/8 feet wide. Weight is about 15 tons (US), and caries 818 square feet of sail. The mast is only 36 feet in height, and almost half as short as other masts used on replica Viking ships. This would make the Yard about 51 feet long. At 51 feet wide and 16 feet high you now have about the 818 square feet of sail that they used. Their actual dimensions have to vary a bit from the formulas to get 818 square feet, but not to much to have only 2 square feet of difference. All of this data is needed for one important reason, does it make a logical argument. Their work is summed up very nicely by how it tacks. They have achieved a speed of almost 6 mph when sailing into a wind of 18 mph at a 45 degree angle of approach. Very impressive for such a large ship with only one sail. They report that it sails much like a modern catamaran. All this sounds good but there is one more thing that supports this theory. With out a boom, the cross pole that the bottom of the sail is attached to, you have to have to secure the bottom of the sail to the hull in some way. On the original Gokstad ship they have 3 securing points that no one knew what they were for. They didn't know because they were using a square sail. Using a yard made for a rectangular sail, and 36 foot mast, the sail lines now mate perfectly to those securing points in the original Gokstad ship. The theory of a rectangular sail, put forward by Håkan Larsson, would seem to the most logical of any of the theories to date. Thanks should be given to Håkan for his dedication in Viking ship research."

here is some more info about that replica sailed to the us, for that long ago columbus day celebration. 
"The Viking

To participate in the festivities around the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America in 1892-93, a Viking ship reconstruction was built in Sandefjord, Norway. It was based on the Gokstad find, built of oak by commander Chr. Christensen in Sandefjord, and was named simply Viking.

The Viking sailed under captain Magnus Andersen from Bergen, Norway, and reached Newfoundland four weeks later. It sailed to New York and then attended the Chicago World Fair in 1893. The ship did not receive much attention since the world fair theme was to honour Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. The Norwegians had the nerve to suggest Leif Ericsson was there first."

this was a short blurb about it. it wasn't thorough but it filled in information that was lacking.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

The Rigging of the Viking Age Warship. The Skuldelev find and the ship motifs | Ole Kastholm - Academia.edu

this is a better find than the sigrid's original site! it's a different source that also shares the same sail design theory, states it in perfect english, and gives other sources that also hold that view.

an interesting point of note: the replica of skuldelev 3 looks amazingly like the replica of anglo-sxon ship found at sutton hoo.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> The Rigging of the Viking Age Warship. The Skuldelev find and the ship motifs | Ole Kastholm - Academia.edu
> 
> this is a better find than the sigrid's original site! it's a different source that also shares the same sail design theory, states it in perfect english, and gives other sources that also hold that view.
> 
> an interesting point of note: the replica of skuldelev 3 looks amazingly like the replica of anglo-sxon ship found at sutton hoo.


 Wow! What's your day job -- Professor of Scandinavian Studies? Great references. I have neven been happy with the high-aspect-ratio square sails on the modern ship replicas -- now I know why. Thanks. If you look at them, most of the sails on square-riggers aren't square either.

The video shows quite a bit about the beitass, starting around a minute in, then again when they tack the ship and sail. It's kind of funny -- these hot-shot racers with their fancy spinnakers & all that jazz claiming to be cutting-edge, and they're using thousand-year-old Viking technology. 

How's your own little ship doing in this mini-Fimbulwinter we're having? 


> an interesting point of note: the replica of skuldelev 3 looks amazingly like the replica of anglo-sxon ship found at sutton hoo.


In one of the books in the Hellenic Traders series they mention how ships from many countries look alike, and the only way to tell them apart is by looking at how the crew dresses and details in the rigging.

The first story in "The Compleat Enchanter" has the main character land in the world of the sagas, where he joins Othin, Thor, Heimdall & Loki on a quest to Jotunheim to recover Thor's stolen hammer. It's my favorite of the series, though they're all fun.
In "Silverlock", the setting is the Commonwealth of Letters, basically anything written in the last 5-thousand years. The hero moves from Homer to Sherwood Forest to Beowulf (not necessarily in that order) in a terrific narrative. Half the fun is figuring out who he's dealing with and where he is. It's a book-lover's book. The author must have eaten his way through a huge library.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> well, in the 1800s there was a *danish* group building an early replica viking ship. the plan was to sail it to America for columbus day; kind of a nose thumb in the face of those claiming columbus was the first european to find America. of course, this was before the settlement was found in newfoundland and historians swore the sagas were just fairy tales and the vikings had never been here.


Wrong this was a Norwegian project 



captain jack said:


> there has never been a complete sail found. they have found fragments of a sail. i was not, like one person i debated with claimed, made of linen. it was made of wool, died and treated and the process used it it's manufacture made it very water proof and wind proof. it also made the sail much stiffer than you normally think of wool as being.


Saga Oseberg have a sail made of wool.
The wool used is from "Old Norwegian Short Tail Landrace" that is the same kind of sheep the Vikings had. These sheep's can live outside all year around in the Norwegian climate.
These sheep's have a wool in two layers the covering layer is more water repellent than the inner layer.
These sheep's shed the wool in the spring.
The sail is made out of the wool the sheep's have been shedding - not cut - thus maintaining the water repellent property of the wool better.

Første gang under seil - Nyheter om Osebergskipet fra Stiftelsen Nytt Osebergskip.









The sail in the picture have not been impregnated.
The plan was to test it first year without impregnation before adding impregnation.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Wow! What's your day job -- Professor of Scandinavian Studies? Great references. I have neven been happy with the high-aspect-ratio square sails on the modern ship replicas -- now I know why. Thanks. If you look at them, most of the sails on square-riggers aren't square either.
> 
> The video shows quite a bit about the beitass, starting around a minute in, then again when they tack the ship and sail. It's kind of funny -- these hot-shot racers with their fancy spinnakers & all that jazz claiming to be cutting-edge, and they're using thousand-year-old Viking technology.
> 
> ...


i thought that book was ' the incomplete enchanter'. i have read that. very good book. his depiction of Heimdal is very accurate, unlike the Thor movies. Heimdall, being 'the friend of man', is a jovial, friendly God; one that is warm and embracing. he's not stiff and cold.

that's funny, i never heard anyone else speak of that book.

lol. not professor of scandinavian studies. let's just say i have an invested interest in pre-christian germanic culture. Ek gefinn Othni.

i'm glad you found that video to be informative. when you compare spinnaker poles to the beitass all you can say is that, no matter what you do, there is nothing truly new under the sun. i think the beitass was an incredibly genius solution to the problem of shaping a 'square' sail for good performance.

you know, it's funny, but if you look at a viking ship replica, with the low wide sail, it actually looks more right, somehow. but, perhaps it's because we have seen that image so often in viking art.

my point about skuldelev3 looking like the sutton hoo vessel is that, usually, norse vessels' prows are more dramaticcaly curved upwards. sutton hoo, an anglo saxon longship, has more gradual prows, like skuldelev 3. of course, both vessels are germanic longships so they share the same heritage. i just thought it an interesting similarity.

good reference to the coming of the Gotterdammerung ( the german variant of the norse Ragnarok ).

an ax age a sword age
shields shall be splintered
a wind age a wolf age
'ere the world crumbles

it's been tough getting things done, lately. for two reasons, actually. the most obvious is you can't do anything that requires non freezing temps and snow makes it hard to work on a boat.

but there is also the financial hardship the snow has created.

i have been working for myself, doing home improvements, since my last job ended. it was convenient to do it that way for a few reasons. for one, it lifted me above the present dire employment situation in America. i make money directly from people who need my services. the economy has made difficulties, there. no doubt. when a customer loses their job just before you are scheduled to begin work, it's not good. but, i haven't been dependent on an 'over lord' who might decide to cut me, at will, and who will pay me a penny on every 50 bucks i earn him.

another reason it has been to my advantage to work for myself is that it has enabled me to choose my own schedule. my mother's boyfriend died a few weeks after the job site closed it's doors. she has been very needy and the job flexibility has made it possible to take care of her, do things for her, and do repairs to her house as it was needed. having fixed hours, determined by a boss, would have made that all much more difficult.

but, since the year began, i find myself held up, in my work, by the weather. most of what i do has been outside work, sometimes requiring the use of products that need temps to be above freezing. with the snow, ice, and bitter cold i have been forced to postpone jobs that are affected by those things. it's made a bit of lean financial time lately.

i started getting my resume and letters of recommendation out there and went to a job interview for a maintenance assistant at a retirement community, last tuesday. it seemed to go well. i am scheduled to do a 'walk along' with the maintenance manager, tuesday, to get a hands on idea of what it will be like working there. the hours will be a bit odd, in some respects. bad in some ways. convenient in others. it will still allow me time do do work on my own, which is good. and it should give me time to myself; time that isn't normally dominated by duty to others. so, we will see how that goes. steady income is, usually, better than income that is great one week but lacking the next...

...although, maybe a wolfish feast or famine financial situation is a small price to pay not to have to answer to an 'overlord'. i have found myself enjoying the freedom that self employment has given me. i have been getting used to being my own master; the decider of my own fate. never did like bowing down to the will of another. one of the reasons i never joined the military. i don't like taking orders. like the vikings said, when the french asked for their chieftain's name: we have no lord over us. we are all equal.

but i haven't been sitting on my laurels. when i can't be working, physically, on the boat, i have been planning, researching, and designing. i hope to be able to begin moving forwards more aggressively in a week or so....if the weather will allow.

i do have a small windfall of money heading my way, in a week or so, too. before the yuletide season, i found out that i had money in a 401k from my last job. it was a use it, move it, or lose it type deal. well, things being as they are, i figured the money would be better in my wallet than having someone else gambling it on an unpredictable market for a 'someday' nest egg that might be nothing by the time 'someday' arrived.

i would have had the money before the year ended but they botched the whole deal up, twice. they were supposed to be sending me a form, along with an info packet, that i needed to fill out and return. after weeks of waiting for this to arrive, i discovered, when it did, that they sent the info packet but no form.

i called to get that fixed and they said they would email me the form i could print out. i waited for a week, patiently. no email. so, i called them back. they, then, told me i could find the form on their website, download and print it. why they hadn't told me that to begin with, i will never know.

anyhow, that will be split between bills and boat materials. hopefully, by the tme it gets tyo me, the weather will have calmed down and i will be able to put said materials to immedisate use.

thanks for asking. i will admit, i am chomping at the bit to get out there and sail her.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> Wrong this was a Norwegian project
> 
> Saga Oseberg have a sail made of wool.
> The wool used is from "Old Norwegian Short Tail Landrace" that is the same kind of sheep the Vikings had. These sheep's can live outside all year around in the Norwegian climate.
> ...


awesome post, dude. that's a great pic. going to pirate it for my computer  by the way, i did correct that error in a later post. when i posted that, i was admitted being completely positive of the details.

one of the great problems with getting older and having too much on your mind: details that you used to know become a little fuzzy when you go to remember them. 

one thing that is so great about a lot of these longship sites is that they offer translation into english.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Manatee, i have totally enjoyed this thread. lots of good input, new information, and images. everyone is civil and contributing in a friendly manner. awesome! thanks for starting it.

it's not exactly on it's original topic, anymore, but certainly, in a closely related area.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> awesome post, dude. that's a great pic. going to pirate it for my computer  by the way, i did correct that error in a later post. when i posted that, i was admitted being completely positive of the details.
> 
> one of the great problems with getting older and having too much on your mind: details that you used to know become a little fuzzy when you go to remember them.
> 
> one thing that is so great about a lot of these longship sites is that they offer translation into english.


No problem - I just had to comment since I'm Norwegian 

It will be interesting to see the experience they get from using the woolen sail.

I think that using wool harvested this way from the old Norwegian sheep will prove that the theories about woolen sail being to heavy when wet to be wrong.

The problem with recreating old technology based on partial finds is that it's easy to get something wrong.

Same as the small errors done when they glued the Oseberg ship together after the find have lead to replicas with wrong shape have been built.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> No problem - I just had to comment since I'm Norwegian
> 
> It will be interesting to see the experience they get from using the woolen sail.
> 
> ...


CJ: Viking-ship related is close enough for me.  Thank you for sharing your knowledge & sources. I'm having fun learning new stuff. Good luck with the money, job & weather.

Knute: My thanks also for your previous post -- she's a beauty.

Reminds me of a question I have: how many of the archaeologists reconstructing these boats are sailors and wooden-boat builders? At what point do the boatbuilders come on-site?

As I recall, wool doesn't get wet as we usually think of wet. The water gets into interstices between fibers, but not into the fibres themselves. So, it's much easier to get rid of the water. I had a wool watch-cap in my Navy days; no matter how wet, a few good slaps & a quick blot with a towel and it was good to go. First piece of woollen clothing I ever owned. Woolens were unknown in Florida where I grew up.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

captain jack said:


> holy horned helmets, batman! a used copy is 34 bucks on amazon. i wonder if the library would have a copy available. disclaimer: vikings never wore horned helmets. that is a hollywood thing, they wore spangenhelms: often with eye guards, a nasal, cheek plates. and a neck guard or mail draped along the lower edge. i was just playing on the common misconception for the purpose of campy 70's batman humor


I'm sure any good marine library (or yacht club library) would have a copy - many thousands were printed and distributed world-wide. I got my copy for 10 bucks from a second-hand book store.

Aside from his pre-WWII comments on the viking ships, the book is interesting in detailing his experiences in the immediate lead-up to the war.. but that's another story.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

manatee said:


> Reminds me of a question I have: how many of the archaeologists reconstructing these boats are sailors and wooden-boat builders? At what point do the boatbuilders come on-site?


The Oseberg ship was found in august 1903, it took 3 months to excavate and 21 years to put all the pieces back into a boat
This is what it looked like when they excavated it








It was in fact a humongous puzzle that they had to glue back together piece by piece.

This is what it looks like today









They did not have the technology available in 1903 to make it exactly correct.
According to the new measurements the keel have been put together with the wrong shape i the bow section. But there are only small errors - but seemingly enough to change the capabilities of the ship.

The new replica of the Oseberg ship have had access to both boat builders and other experts.
Only old tools and techniques have been used.
Saws where not invented, so planks where made by splitting logs
















Shaping the plank








The frames where tied to the planking











manatee said:


> As I recall, wool doesn't get wet as we usually think of wet. The water gets into interstices between fibers, but not into the fibres themselves.


I have grown up using cloths made of wool, and I can assure you that wool can soak up water, the amazing thing with woolen cloth is the ability to keep you warm even if wet. 
But wool is not a strong fiber.
But the wool that have been harvested (not sheared) from the old Norwegian sheep will work better because.

The outer wool on the old sheep is stronger
Since it's not cut the fiber is more closed, preventing it from soaking up water


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> The Oseberg ship was found in august 1903, it took 3 months to excavate and 21 years to put all the pieces back into a boat
> This is what it looked like when they excavated it
> 
> 
> ...


another great post. some really great pics. do you have a' scrap book' of the project? that would be pretty cool to see.....if you did.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> I'm sure any good marine library (or yacht club library) would have a copy - many thousands were printed and distributed world-wide. I got my copy for 10 bucks from a second-hand book store.
> 
> Aside from his pre-WWII comments on the viking ships, the book is interesting in detailing his experiences in the immediate lead-up to the war.. but that's another story.


i was thinking a public library. i don't belong to a yacht club and wouldn't begin to know where a marine library might be.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

captain jack said:


> i was thinking a public library. i don't belong to a yacht club and wouldn't begin to know where a marine library might be.


A big public library with a good marine section should have a copy.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> another great post. some really great pics. do you have a' scrap book' of the project? that would be pretty cool to see.....if you did.


Here are some links to the Norwegian part of the web site
pictures
http://www.osebergvikingskip.no/documents/bildedagbok.php
More Pictures
http://www.osebergvikingskip.no/documents/bildedagbok.php?action=archive
Videos
Videoarkiv


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Captain Jack: said:


> i thought that book was ' the incomplete enchanter'. i have read that. very good book. his depiction of Heimdal is very accurate, unlike the Thor movies. Heimdall, being 'the friend of man', is a jovial, friendly God; one that is warm and embracing. he's not stiff and cold.


The "Incomplete Enchanter" only had about half the Harold Shea stories; then "The Enchanter Completed" carried the rest of them; then Science Fiction Book Club did a hardback collection with all of them & called it the "Complete Compleat Enchanter" and Baen Books does the paperback.

I liked the question game between Heimdall & Harold, and the friendship between them. I haven't seen any of the Thor movies, but I suspect they're based on Marvel comics rather than the Poetic Edda. Too bad. Some of the comic stories in Edda would make great film.

Your verse from the Voluspa reminds me of Theoden's exhortation to the Rohirrim as they ride to the defense of Gondor (it's one thing he reads on the recording, in a stirring performance) :

Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!

Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,

A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

Thanks for the photos & links, knute. Can you say "time sink"? :laugher
It is a wonderful thing that they can find trees big enough for replicating these ships. Early in "The Dory Book" John Gardner talks about riving planks for boatbuilding, with drawings by the great Sam Manning, but this is the first time I've seen it in 'real life'.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> The "Incomplete Enchanter" only had about half the Harold Shea stories; then "The Enchanter Completed" carried the rest of them; then Science Fiction Book Club did a hardback collection with all of them & called it the "Complete Compleat Enchanter" and Baen Books does the paperback.
> 
> I liked the question game between Heimdall & Harold, and the friendship between them. I haven't seen any of the Thor movies, but I suspect they're based on Marvel comics rather than the Poetic Edda. Too bad. Some of the comic stories in Edda would make great film.
> 
> ...


that always sounds so like a stanza from Beowulf:

*Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, 
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð 
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, 
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, 
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra 
ofer hronrade hyran scolde, 
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning! *

hmmm just happened to think; maybe you'd like a translation.

often Scyld Scef's son, from enemy hosts

from many peoples, siezed mead benches

awed the earls, at first was

found abandoned, he was for that repaid

waxed under the heavens, in worthymindedness prospered

until to him each, of the neighboring folk

over the whale road ( a kenning for the sea ), had to submit

(and ) tribute yield, that was (a ) good king

you have to watch Beowulf translations. there are a lot of really poor ones; too loose. but even good ones sometimes fail to communicate the meaning that the folk would have taken from the words. this is due to the translator's lack of understanding of the culture. for instance, the sword Hrunting, which Hrothgar gives to Breowulf, is referred to as a 'maðþumsweord '. that's usually translated as treasure sword.

it gives modern people the impression that it is a very ornate, gilded sword. however that word, maðþum, doesn't actually mean a treasure as in gold and jewels. it means treasure as in tribal treasure. it denotes an item that has been handed down from hero to hero ( in the case of a sword ) and carries the spiritual might of those that owned it. it could have been fancy but it just as well could have been a plain warrior's sword, not ornate at all. and, yes, tolkien's hobbit word, mathom, is taken from the anglo saxon word maðþum. it even keeps a bit of the meaning of the original anglo saxon word.

just so you know, the letter ð sounds like 'th' as in 'through'. the letter þ sounds like 'th' as in 'breath.'



> Thanks for the photos & links, knute. Can you say "time sink"? :laugher
> It is a wonderful thing that they can find trees big enough for replicating these ships. Early in "The Dory Book" John Gardner talks about riving planks for boatbuilding, with drawings by the great Sam Manning, but this is the first time I've seen it in 'real life'.


the ride of the rohirrim is my favorite part of the trilogy....the books. for obvious reasons, the rohirrim are my favorite people in middle earth. how could i not like the anglo saxons, right?

wisdom competitions, like the one between harold and Heimdall, in that book, are common in the Eddic material. high stakes often rest on the outcome. in fact, when the Allfather was seeking out a drink from the Mimisbrunner ( another name for the well of wyrd. it is called by three different names, depending on which aspect of it is of import to the particular myth. it is the Urdrbrunner- the well of wyrd, the Mimisbrunner- the well of wisdom, and Hvergelmir- the roaring cauldron ), he is involved in a wisdom competition. with his own head as the price of defeat, he won by asking, " what word of hope did Othin whisper in his slain son baldur's ear". only he would know that answer. of course, those who are lore-minded know the answer to that question. he whispered the word 'rebirth'.

the Thor movies are, loosely, based on the comics. unfortunately, not the Simonson written and illustrated comics. in only a few scenes does he have Thor's actual personality, which the comic actually get's right. mostly, in the movies, Thor is brooding and unsure. missing is the wild boldness. the joy in battle. the boisterous joviality.

and they totally mess the Allfather up. once, in the first movie, is he truly like Othin. the scene where he arrives in Jotunheim, on Sleipnir, to get the Asgardians out of trouble. at that one moment, he appears as Yggtyr, the terrible God. mostly, he is depicted, in the movies, as a weak, pathetic old man; afraid of warfare and ultimately pacifistic. Othin. a weak and pathetic old man.

Uncle Fox faces down Thor in combat, force agains force. Uncle Fox, who slinks away in fear, if the Gods call Thor to bring him in line. he fights using force in the avengers movie, too. very little magic, actually.

the avengers movie goes out of the way to try to show that the Gods are not actually Gods, even having captain America give a speach about there only being one god. that movie, and the second Thor movie, tries to show them as space aliens. Othin even says, directly, that they are not Gods, in the second Thor. they must have gotten a hard time from the church, after the first Thor movie. that's all i can think. even in the comics, Thor is a God. but the church does have a history of pushing it's interests on movie makers.

while, initially, it was amazingly moving to see the Gods on the big screen, especially the scene where Othin actually seems like Othin and the scenes of Thor fighting, the first movie was pretty disappointing and the new one was just terrible.....even if you use the comics as your sole source guide.

i didn't start reading comics til 8th grade. there was no money for it, before that. then, when i looked at a Thor comic, i wasn't interested in reading it because he was not Thor, the God, as i knew him. then, around 11th grade, i saw a Thor comic with some great cover art, so i picked it up. it was written and illustrated by Walt Simonson. on the first page, Thor was standing on the bridge of the s.h.i.e.l.d. helicarrier, in the midst of a storm. driving rain, blinding lightning, hard winds. he stood there, hair blowing in the wind, joyous smile on his face, Mjolnir held up high, revelling in the furosity of the storm. it was actually Thor! Simonson had turned him into the God of thunder, of germanic religion, instead of the one of the older comics. in fact, he portrayed the Gods as they really are(...outside of Sif. marvel set her up as a warrior Goddess, with black hair, rather than the Goddess of the harvest, with hair as gold as the ripened grain. but you can't have everything )

i collected all of the Simonson issues....but only his issues. his art even had a norse feel to it. some of them were very moving. when the charater known as the executioner guards the bridge over the Gjallerbru, allowing Thor to get the rescued souls, wrongfully taken by Hela, out of Hel, it was as awesome a moment... like the last viking, standing alone, at stamford bridge, in 1066 ( i believe Simonson molded that event after the historic event, now that i think about it). he gladly wades into battle, facing the legions of Hel, knowing he would die but not caring. it was a glorious death and amazingly moving for a teen with my....invested interest in pre christian germanic culture.

i was hoping the movies would reflect his version of the comicbook Thor. alas and alack, they did not.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> that always sounds so like a stanza from Beowulf:
> 
> *Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
> 
> ...


 Great post! It's going to take me a while to type out a response on this phone.

Being a horse people myself, I too favor the Rohirrim.Too bad they got such short shrift in the movies, though the Meduseld set was gorgeous.

I hear echoes of Edda and Beowulf in Tolkien too. And other anglo saxon works. In "Tom Bombadil" his poem "Fastitocalon" has the name & basic story of the anglo saxon poem "The Whale". The more I learn of anglo saxon ways & words, the more of them I see in Tolkien. He seems to have been especially fond of the Exeter Book. People don't see it yet, (the education system will have to get *much* better), but he truly did "modernize the myths and make them credible" as he wished to do.

I don't know much about the comics -- I vaguely remember reading some with Thor, but they all got thrown out (not by me) when I was in the Navy. I haven't seen the Marvel movies and don't plan to -- the commercials tell me they are not what they should be. The only memorable portrayal of Thor I can think of was in  The Incredible Hulk Returns. I had forgotten it -- need to look for a copy. Thor is a great take-life-in-big-bites kind of guy, the best thing in the movie.

Which Beowulf translation do you recommend? I got the Seamus Heaney, but I never know how much of the translation is in the original, how much is invention by the translator... same problem as with the LOTR movies. What I'd really like is a literal line-by-line translation, plus a modern, plus a bunch of explanatory footnotes at the end of each chapter.

I understand the treasure-sword idea. Tolkien uses it in "Farmer Giles of Ham" as well as the trilogy. It'd be like having an Ulfbehrt sword in the family.

The bridge-guard episode reminds me of Ernest Borgnine's character Ragnar in "The Vikings". The scene where he asks for a sword before jumping into the pit of wolves has always been one of my favorite movie scenes.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Great post! It's going to take me a while to type out a response on this phone.
> 
> Which Beowulf translation do you recommend? I got the Seamus Heaney, but I never know how much of the translation is in the original, how much is invention by the translator... same problem as with the LOTR movies. What I'd really like is a literal line-by-line translation, plus a modern, plus a bunch of explanatory footnotes at the end of each chapter.
> 
> ...


thanks 

Beowulf text and translation by John Porter published by Anglo-Saxon books, is a really good facing page translation. quite litteral. recently, a new translation of it hit the best seller list but it was far from litteral. i wouldn't recommend it. even with the best translation, i would recommend, if you wish to really get the most out of any reading of Beowulf, learn as much about the anglosaxons, their faith, and their customs as you can.

not only are there issues with modern lack of understanding, as i mentioned before, but there is an issue with the lack of understanding of the monk who wrote it down.

as with all orginal germanic poetry, Beowulf was not a written poem. it was passed down from generation to generation, verbally. it was a pre christian poem about a pre christian hero sung for, and by, pre christian people. the monk who wrote it down did so in an attempt to christianize a much beloved hero from a very popular poem. he had an ulterior motive. you can see the christian additions, speaches about god and such, quite easily. the poem, itself, is chock full of pre christian culture. but, the monk didn't understand all of it. it's not his faith. so, he doesn't always depict what's going on in an accurate way.

one really good example of this is the scene in which they are drinking in Hrothgar's hall before Beowulf fights Grendel. a man, sitting at Hrothgar's foot, questions Beowulf's credentials. that man was named Unferth. in the poem, the monk portrays him as a petty, jealous man; running his mouth while tossing back some brews. but that is a total misunderstanding of the entire event.

in reality, they were at Sumbol; a drinking ritual that unifies the folk and places their intentions within the hamingja ( =chinese chi ) of the tribe. Sumbol involves drinking toasts and making boasts ( proclaiming intentions to do a thing ). Beowulf boasts that he will slay Grendel. Sumbol was a serious thing. if Beowulf failed to fulfill his boast, after making it during Sumbol, the whole of Hrothgar's people would suffer in their tribal hamingja.

Unferth wasn't just a jealous drunk. he was the king's Thule, which is why he was sitting at the king's foot. in LOTR, Grima Wormtongue was Theoden's Thule, albeit a very bad one. a Thule's job is to advise the king and also to protect the honor of the king and the tribe. by challenging Beowulf's boast, he makes it.....spiritually evident...that there is doubt about Beowulf's ability to fulfill the boast. if Beowulf does not back down from his boast, after the Thule has challenged him, he will be the sole receiver of bad hamingja. on the other hand, if Beowulf fulfills his boast, as he did, the whole tribe benefits from the good hamingja. this protects the king and tribe from bad boasts made during the sacred ritual of Sumbol.

At Sumbol, the king's wife serves the mead/wine/ale/or beer. this is not, as many would assume, because she is a woman; subservient to men. germanic culture wasn't that way. they honored and revered women. the queen serves the alcohol because she is the keeper and the giver of the fluid of divine consciousness. besides for fun, the germanics used alcohol much in the same way native Americans used pot.

not being tru to the old Gods, the monk didn't really understand the heathen elements in the poem. so, between his misunderstandings and modern translator's isunderstandings, you really need to know as much as you can if you wish to enjoy the poem in the same way anglosaxons, listening to a scop sing it, would have.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Great post! It's going to take me a while to type out a response on this phone.
> 
> Being a horse people myself, I too favor the Rohirrim.Too bad they got such short shrift in the movies, though the Meduseld set was gorgeous.
> 
> I hear echoes of Edda and Beowulf in Tolkien too. And other anglo saxon works. In "Tom Bombadil" his poem "Fastitocalon" has the name & basic story of the anglo saxon poem "The Whale". The more I learn of anglo saxon ways & words, the more of them I see in Tolkien. He seems to have been especially fond of the Exeter Book. People don't see it yet, (the education system will have to get *much* better), but he truly did "modernize the myths and make them credible" as he wished to do.


well, he was creating an 'alternative history' of england. a lot of that 'aternative history' is either norse or anglosaxon....in other words, germanic.

england is, for the most part, a geramanic country. during the time of the romans, celts owned it. these were the actual brittains. when the romans left brittain, to attend to troubles the romans were having with the other germanic peoples and the huns, it left the celtic brittains undefended. the celtic picts began raiding down into their territory. a brittish king named Vortigern, later called Vortigern the Traitor, invited 3 longships of saxons to englad. he promised them wealth and land if they would defend the brittains from the picts. they did but it wasn't the wisest deal ever made. afterwards thousands of saxons sailed longships to england and pushed the brittains to the very edge of the island, into wales. the saxons owned all of the rest of england. the irish, scotts, and welsh are the only actual celts left, and there is a lot of germanic blood and culture mixed in with them.

anyhow, in time, as the anglosaxons were struggling with internal strife, partially caused by christianity, the vikings took advantage of that and did to the saxons what the saxons did to the britts. the only difference is the vikings couldn't keep it forever. but, the point is, england, as it is today, is primarily germanic.

when you look at tolkien's middle earth, you see this germanic/romanized celt split. of course, the rohirrim are the saxons. they even speak anglo saxon. the books mention that they are related to other people from the sea ( the norse ) but the sea kings do not figure into the story. gondor represents the romanized celts.

it's interesting that the anglo saxons, like all germanics, were horse people, as well as sailors, but they did not use cavalry. like the vikings, they would ride to battle, dismount, then fight on foot. the goths and franks did use cavalry. so, in the rohirrim, tolkien did a bit of germanic tribe mash-up. they are saxon but they fight like goths or franks.



> Thor is a great take-life-in-big-bites kind of guy


 most decidedly. bold ad bigger than life



> The bridge-guard episode reminds me of Ernest Borgnine's character Ragnar in "The Vikings". The scene where he asks for a sword before jumping into the pit of wolves has always been one of my favorite movie scenes.


to a degree. that scene, in that movie, was based off of another historical account of the vikings. they never were the type of people to take death sitting down! one viking, when fatally shot with an arrow, was accounted as looking at his wound and saying," look! the boar has been eating too rich, of late. see how the fat shows around the shaft?" jesting as he died.

they were real men.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Those posts are the kind of info I'd like in the literature books, to put it all in context. Which Anglo Saxon Books title is yours? Is there a single title you recommend for studying Anglo Saxon culture & lifeways? Do you know  this one from Yale? I think that Anglo Saxon Books company is going to cost me a lot of money. 

Here's my plan:

1) Win the lottery.
2) Fly to England to cherrypick the A-S Books shelves.
3) Shop for a mid-30-foot gaff-rigged schooner.
4) Load boat with books, comestables and potables.
5) Read my way back across the Atlantic.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

manatee said:


> ....Here's my plan:
> 
> 1) Win the lottery.
> 2) Fly to England to cherrypick the A-S Books shelves.
> ...


Sounds like a good plan. Personally, I wouldn't change any of it.. other than choosing a 30-something-foot gaff cutter, rather than a schooner.


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## desert rat (Feb 14, 2013)

Schooner is king. Build it buy it if you have to uh hu it. I still have to be convinced that a schooner wont point.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> Sounds like a good plan. Personally, I wouldn't change any of it.. other than choosing a 30-something-foot gaff cutter, rather than a schooner.





desert rat said:


> Schooner is king. Build it buy it if you have to uh hu it. I still have to be convinced that a schooner wont point.


I thought about a cutter, but I've been in love with schooners since the first episode of "Adventures In Paradise". Another item to add to my plan: find the original films & do a quality remaster set of them. All the sets I see advertised on the web look like crooks or have dismal reviews. If anyone knows a source for a good set of DVDs of this show (and/or "Men Into Space", one of my all-time favorites), I will be most grateful if you let me know.


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## Minnesail (Feb 19, 2013)

Here in Minnesota people are quite proud of their Norwegian ancestry (we have some Swedes too, but let's not talk about them).

Back in the 70s some local people built a replica of a Viking ship found in a burial mound in the 1880s. They launched it in Lake Superior and sailed it to Oslo. During an Atlantic storm it developed a crack over 10' long, but they plugged it as best they could and carried on to Norway. It's now on display in a museum in Moorhead, MN.





Hjemkomst Viking Ship | Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Those posts are the kind of info I'd like in the literature books, to put it all in context. Which Anglo Saxon Books title is yours? Is there a single title you recommend for studying Anglo Saxon culture & lifeways? Do you know  this one from Yale? I think that Anglo Saxon Books company is going to cost me a lot of money.
> 
> Here's my plan:
> 
> ...


:laugher that's funny. actually, i believe anglo-saxon books has a website, although i got y copy of Beowulf over a decade ago, from a religious organization called Theod. you can't get it from them, anymore. however, i don't thonk it costs ore than 10 bucks from AS books.

there are a lot of different works you have to read to truly learn a lot about the migration age germanic tribes. no one book has everything. i will say that AS books has a wealth of information about anglosaxon culture and history. they have books about history, the language, pretty much everything. but there are a lot of other places to get good info. if you want to learn about pre christian spirituality, there are a ton of books out there. some, like Grimm's 'teutonic mithologie' are out of print but accessible on line. if you are really interested in all that, i could compile a good reading list for you, if you give me a few days.

myself, i spent years, when i was younger, combing libraries and book stores. there is so much info out there but you have to dig for it. now, we have the web but it takes a descriminating eye to pick out the good from the not so good.

one thing you have to do, when judging old sources, whether they are roman or christian or 'barbarian', is to understand the mindset and intent of the source. most of the non-'barbarian' sources view the geranic tribes as enemies. this taints their view. there is an account by an arab named ibn fadlan ( i may have spelled that wrong. i'm not arabic  ). he depicts the vikings as being crude, dirty, and unwashed. however, we4 know this isn't true. viking burials contain a lot of grooming supplies, even small spoons to clean out ear wax, and viking warriors even lightened their hair. if you listen to ibn's account, without realizing he is trying to depict the vikings as being filthy barbarians to make his own culture look more enlightened, you would get a very inaccurate view of the vikings. there is a lot of the source material that needs to be viewed in proper perspective.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Minnesail said:


> Here in Minnesota people are quite proud of their Norwegian ancestry (we have some Swedes too, but let's not talk about them).
> 
> Back in the 70s some local people built a replica of a Viking ship found in a burial mound in the 1880s. They launched it in Lake Superior and sailed it to Oslo. During an Atlantic storm it developed a crack over 10' long, but they plugged it as best they could and carried on to Norway. It's now on display in a museum in Moorhead, MN.
> 
> ...


that's a rather odd rig. not only is it extremely high aspect but, outside of some victorian era paintings, i have never seen a vikingship depicted with a top sail. although the shape of the sail is debated, as we have discussed, it's a pretty well established fact that vikings used a single sail.

it's cool that they made the passage to norway in it. however, neither link includes information about the sail design. i would be interested to know what inspired them to add a top sail.

as tall as the rig is, even compared to replicas with the 'conventional' tall square sail, i would think they would have had to add extra ballast.


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## Minnesail (Feb 19, 2013)

captain jack said:


> that's a rather odd rig. not only is it extremely high aspect but, outside of some victorian era paintings, i have never seen a vikingship depicted with a top sail. although the shape of the sail is debated, as we have discussed, it's a pretty well established fact that vikings used a single sail.
> 
> it's cool that they made the passage to norway in it. however, neither link includes information about the sail design. i would be interested to know what inspired them to add a top sail.
> 
> as tall as the rig is, even compared to replicas with the 'conventional' tall square sail, i would think they would have had to add extra ballast.


Victorian Viking paintings added horns to their helmets, why not topsails to their masts! 

From the Historical Society:


> Once under sail, the Hjemkomst proved difficult to control with the square rigging. The crew would need someone with experience sailing square-rigged vessels to train them for the voyage. In present day Norway square-rigged descendants of the old Viking ships called Femborings are now sailed. One of the best known Femboring sailors is Erik Rudstam, who had sailed Femborings from Norway to Iceland four times. Rudstam was very interested in the Hjemkomst, and agreed to give suggestions on improving the performance. On Rudstam's suggestions eight more tons of ballast was added to improve stability, the rudder was redesigned, an extension was added to the keel, and a larger mast and sail were made for the vessel. The original sail of the Hjemkomst was 30′ x 38′, with a 45′ mast and a 38′ yard. The new mast was 63′, with a main sail measuring 30′ x 40′ with a top sail measuring 10′ x 30′. The original mast became the yard of the new mast.


So yes, the topsail was added at the suggestion of a modern square sailor, and yes they added extra ballast. You are correct, good call!

I was a kid when this was built, but I still remember it being in the news. A lot of people didn't even think it would float.

Speaking of Vikings and Minnesota (and not the football team) we also have a thing called the Kensington Runestone. Supposedly Vikings made it all the way to central Minnesota and left a carved rock there.

Although in some circles it is heresy to say this, I think it's bunk. (By "some circles" I mean my family reunions.)

I think it is far more likely that a Norwegian immigrant farmer carved some symbols into a rock near his farm, than it is that a large party of Vikings made it this far inland and that we've only ever found this one piece of evidence.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> that's a rather odd rig. not only is it extremely high aspect but, outside of some victorian era paintings, i have never seen a vikingship depicted with a top sail. although the shape of the sail is debated, as we have discussed, it's a pretty well established fact that vikings used a single sail.
> 
> it's cool that they made the passage to norway in it. however, neither link includes information about the sail design. i would be interested to know what inspired them to add a top sail.
> 
> as tall as the rig is, even compared to replicas with the 'conventional' tall square sail, i would think they would have had to add extra ballast.


The rig is not odd at all 
It's a copy of the Fembøring rig as it was around 1890.









Fembøring is still built and sailed in Norway
This one was shot by me last summer


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Minnesail said:


> Victorian Viking paintings added horns to their helmets, why not topsails to their masts!
> 
> From the Historical Society:
> 
> ...


it's too bad they didn't ask someone with experience sailing longships. unfortunately, 'replicas' that are not made the same as the originals really add nothing to our knowledge of the norse and their vessels. there are actually some 'replicas' made of fiberglass ( i believe one here in maryland ). of course, such inaccurate replicas are 'cool' from a public opinion stand point. but a fiberglass viking ship will act nothing at all like the real thing. and an overly tall square sail, with a top sail and lots of extra ballast, would also not act like a real norse longship. it's a nifty thing to get the public thinking about longships but it really spreads misconceptions, in my opinion. in scandinavia, and other countries, people are doing all they can to build replicas that are as true to the originals as possible...and it captures public imagination just fine. at the same time, it increases our understanding which, if you ask me, is the most important reason to build a replica of a longship.

and, please don't talke me wrong. i am not trying to denigrate their accomplishment. it was bold as can be to sail that all the way to norway, especially after they had damage from that first severe storm, not far from new york. a less courageous captain and crew might have turned back for repairs. plus, undertalking such a major project is nothing to sneeze at. and their hearts were in the right place.

i am just saying it's a shame that they didn't take a slightly different tack with the construction of their replica.

of course, they weren't familiar with square sailed vessels. so, perhaps, a good bit of the responsibility for the tack they took rests with the square rig sailor that advised them. he, obviously, wasn't familiar with longships. in his place, i'd have been upfront about my lack of expertise in that area and would have tried to guide them to folks who were or information that applied to what they were doing. if some guy asks you to help him rebuild his old 57 chevy, and all you have experience with is model-Ts, you really aren't doing them a favor by instructing them to build a model-T/57 chevy hybrid.

( sometimes the web is a PIA. sometimes, no matter how you try, what you say is going to come off sounding far more negative than intended. that's why sharing good conversation at the mead bench is so much better than communicating on the net. )



> Speaking of Vikings and Minnesota (and not the football team) we also have a thing called the Kensington Runestone. Supposedly Vikings made it all the way to central Minnesota and left a carved rock there.
> 
> Although in some circles it is heresy to say this, I think it's bunk. (By "some circles" I mean my family reunions.)
> 
> ...


while the kensington runestone is widely believed to be a fake, done in fairly modern times, there is, actually, some thought that the vikings may have journeyed farther than newfoundland. one piece of evidence that supports this is the existance of butternuts at the newfoundland site. they don't grow near there. also, one of the ships in Leif Erikson's expedition was lost on the way from greenland. there is some thought tht it might have landed elsewhere. but, we won't know unless an actual find is made. it's a big country and finding such evidence is much like finding a needle in a haystack. but you never know.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> The rig is not odd at all
> It's a copy of the Fembøring rig as it was around 1890.
> 
> 
> ...


i didn't mean odd, in and of itself. i meant odd on a viking longship. it wasn't a replica femboring. it was a relica viking longship.

fuel injection might not be odd on a modern car but it would be odd on a model T.

the femboring doesn't appear to use a side rudder but not using a side rudder, on a longship, would be odd.

in fact, comparing the pictures ( i googled it, as well, since i am not familiar with femborings ), a femboring is very different from a longship. apples and oranges, i would say.


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## Classic30 (Aug 29, 2007)

captain jack said:


> the femboring doesn't appear to use a side rudder but not using a side rudder, on a longship, would be odd.


I don't have his book in front of me right now, but I do remember Uffa Fox mentioning in his write-up that a 'replica' longship he knew about back then fitted a regular rudder to start with, but discarded it once they discovered that the side rudder not only worked but worked much better than the conventional in-line one!

As a small aside: I know it's a cartoon meant for children, but I quite enjoyed the movie "How To Train Your Dragon" with its rendition of "Vikings" as being very likeable, friendly and highly intelligent people.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

Classic30 said:


> I don't have his book in front of me right now, but I do remember Uffa Fox mentioning in his write-up that a 'replica' longship he knew about back then fitted a regular rudder to start with, but discarded it once they discovered that the side rudder not only worked but worked much better than the conventional in-line one!


that actually makes a lot of sense. the rudder is in the flow of the keel. by mounting it off to one side would take it out of the flow of water exiting the keel. like the T tail on a small plane.


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> i didn't mean odd, in and of itself. i meant odd on a viking longship. it wasn't a replica femboring. it was a relica viking longship.
> 
> fuel injection might not be odd on a modern car but it would be odd on a model T.
> 
> ...


We can agree on one thing - the Fembøring rig is not a Viking ship rig.

But I don't think that is so strange that some of the early replicas looked to the traditional Norwegian boats when making rig & sail.

Some facts
Even if some viking ships have been found and excavated sails have not been found. We can only speculate but one explanation I have heard is that sails was valuable and cost more than the boat itself. So most probably reused on new ships.

In "Gulatingsloven" (Gulating law) 900 A.D there was an requirement to store sails and equipment belonging to "leidangen" (the self defense war fleet) in the churches.

A google translate link to an article about the oldest sail in Norway (dated 1400 A.D)Google Translate

The Fembøring is traditional Norwegian boat that has been built and used commercially until around 1900. These boats are considered to be the most direct descendants from the viking ship boat building. A kind of an evolutionary development from the viking ships. 
A lot of the details in these boats are similar to the viking ships.
In fact when they have tried to reconstruct the viking ship rig - looking at the rig details from the Fembøring have helped explain the use of some details found on the excavated viking ships.

This is a model of a Fembøring from 1800, (source: Nordlandsbåter - Vikingskip og norske trebåter - Viking ships and norse wooden boats)
Traditional "fembøring" from Nordland, exhibited in Bergen Museum. This one is of the early type with a more curved stem than the later types.









Still with a rudder.. but this 700 years after the viking era ended.

The scientific approach to building replica viking ships is relatively new.
The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark - Vikingeskibsmuseet Roskilde have been an important contributor to this - the museum boatyard is from 1997.

So that people who built viking ship replicas around 1980 and before didn't get it all correct is not difficult to understand nor explain.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

knuterikt said:


> We can agree on one thing - the Fembøring rig is not a Viking ship rig.
> 
> But I don't think that is so strange that some of the early replicas looked to the traditional Norwegian boats when making rig & sail.
> 
> ...


won't argue with you on any of your points. new things are discovered every year and 'experimental archaeology' has really helped advance our knowledge.

that older femboring looks a lot more like a viking longship than the newer ones do.

by the way, i notice you use the 'specia'l norse characters in your posts. how do you do that? the only way i was able to use the special characters for anglo saxon was to google the original text and then copy and paste. i would love to be able to just type it out.


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## capt vimes (Dec 2, 2013)

manatee said:


> (rant)
> That's one of my pet peeves with the "Lord of the Rings" movies. Besides leaving out the Old Forest and Barrow-Downs episodes (I really wanted to see Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadil), Peter Jackson left out the poems and songs.
> (/rant)


heck - yes!
besides, the hobbits got their blades only when leaving the old forest and sleeping in the old tombs... those blades made from ancient metal were the only ones to be able to harm the nazguls...
completely neglected in the movies... 

regarding the stone:
to my knowledge it has been well known from old scripts that the norse (since vikingr is not appropriate ) have used it to track their position relative to the sun... evidence was missing and there were a lot of speculations what this might have been... this finding then made an end to the speculations but feldspar was well amongst them.

i do not know if it has been mentioned but moscow was and is an old norse settlement founded by the vikingrs...


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## knuterikt (Aug 7, 2006)

captain jack said:


> won't argue with you on any of your points. new things are discovered every year and 'experimental archaeology' has really helped advance our knowledge.
> 
> that older femboring looks a lot more like a viking longship than the newer ones do.


Yes looking at this evolution it's not difficult to understand why some chose the wrong sail/rig for the replicas..



captain jack said:


> by the way, i notice you use the 'specia'l norse characters in your posts. how do you do that? the only way i was able to use the special characters for anglo saxon was to google the original text and then copy and paste. i would love to be able to just type it out.


I have a Norwegian keyboard on my laptop (as I am Norwegian) we have three extra letters in the alphabet Ææ (AE), Øø (OE) and Åå (AA).

You might be able to use a virtual keyboard Type without using the keyboard (On-Screen Keyboard) - Microsoft Windows Help and set language to Norwegian.

You can also use this method http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-insert-special-characters-with-windows-7-ch.html


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

Like *Þæt*? Look here, near the bottom. ðæt's on my phone with no international keyboard or fonts. You can also find find fonts & keyboard layouts to install on your computer. (I know ðe spelling is wrong; just wanted to see if it worked on my phone -- it won't let me do the alt-code trick.)

I can't keep up with you folks, but I certainly enjoy & appreciate your posts.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

capt vimes said:


> heck - yes!
> besides, the hobbits got their blades only when leaving the old forest and sleeping in the old tombs... those blades made from ancient metal were the only ones to be able to harm the nazguls...
> completely neglected in the movies...
> 
> ...


quite right, sir.

i think it is funny that 'historians' seem to always discount the writings and art, of a people, when trying to understand their world. it seems that only physical finds satisfy them. this has created situation where a lot of misinformation is widely accepted as fact.

one good example is how they have consistently used the distribution of grave goods as the only indicator of the weapons and armour that people carried....despite the fact that we know that grave goods in germanic burials are arranged by status and that certain goods, like swords and mail, would be passed down from generation to generation or returned, at the death of the warrior, to the lord who gave them. looking at the art and written legacy, you would realize that armor and swords were not at all uncommon equipment. but what would a people know about their own culture, right? :laugher

i wonder if, when we are gone, future 'historians' will think everything in our history books was mere 'fairytale' if they can't find the physical remains to support it.


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

thanks guys. i will have to see if i can utilize one or more of those methods. i have always found it frustrating, when writing germanic languages outside of new english, not being able to use the characters from those languages. it's not just norse and anglo saxon but also german. in the past, i have ether had to make due, like replacing the 'thorn' character with 'th', or copy and paste text from on line sites. maybe i can even find a way to type runes. that would also be convenient.

wow. you two are a lot more computer savvy than i am. i never had any idea....i feel so primitive and barbaric :laugher


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> I can't keep up with you folks, but I certainly enjoy & appreciate your posts.


that's ok sir. after all the information and inspiration you have imparted, to me, in your posts, in many different threads, it's good that i can return the favor  friendships, even electronic ones, shouldn't be one sided, right?

although, i must say, you did it again. great link.


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## manatee (Feb 27, 2013)

captain jack said:


> that's ok sir. after all the information and inspiration you have imparted, to me, in your posts, in many different threads, it's good that i can return the favor  friendships, even electronic ones, shouldn't be one sided, right?
> 
> although, i must say, you've done it again. great link.


Thanks. It's good to meet someone who shares interests and knowledge as you have.

Futhark, futhorc, angerthas, tengwar? 

Just for fun:

Hobbit Rune Generator: Old English Runes, Angerthas, Tengwar

These may help; sorry I can't try them out, don't have a computer yet (but getting closer).
If your system has automatic spelling correction, you can try setting up an alias for the runes you need, like this: th#="& # 2 5 4 ;" ==>lowercase thorn --(leave out the spaces in the bit between quote marks; had to use them to keep the computer from drawing the þ )

Runic Charset Glyph Picker and ASCII Converter

Runic Alphabet Computing Information (Penn State)

Hnias Runic font

Write Runes on Your 
''Computer | Untamed Wilds

BabelStone : Keyboard Layouts : Runic


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## captain jack (May 5, 2013)

manatee said:


> Thanks. It's good to meet someone who shares interests and knowledge as you have.
> 
> Futhark, futhorc, angerthas, tengwar?


the elder futhark, primarily. the anglosaxon futhorc and the viking futhark are modifications of the original 24 runes. the runes were originally for spiritual use, not as an alphabet, as we think of it. the runic symbols are only one element of the runes. they are the visual key. actually, of far more import is the sound element; the vibration of each rune. this is achieved, traditionally, by galdr; an allitterative poetry or song. this vibration is what gives each rune it's letter sound. all of germanic poetry and song, skaldic poetry if you will, stems from galdr. it was sacred and this sanctity of the sung word has a lot to do with why you don't see the germanic tribes writing down their history and legends until very late in their history. the legends and history make up the orlog of the folk, the cultural primal wyrd ( loosely translated wyrd is fate ) and is sacred so it was sung in allitterative poems ( a sacred thing ) and not written.

some authorities feel that the short, 16 rune, viking futhark was created as a 'leaner meaner' spiritual system. it combines runic elements, which are in some way related, under one rune. for instance the B rune was combined with the P rune and the symbol of the B rune was retained and the symbol of the P rune was dropped. in this case, the B rune represents something which has gestated in a protected enclosed space, like a baby in the womb. the P rune is a direct representation of the force of wyrd, which gestates in the well of wyrd to return and shape that which should be. the similar element between the B rune and the P rune ( see how convenient it would be able to just type the appropriate rune?) is something which benefits from a contained gestation period. anyhow, it could be that these authorities are right or it could be that the shortening of the viking futhark, also called the younger futhark, represents a degradation of the old lore. one thing is certain, it was not done to facilitate the runes as a better communication system, since it reduces the number of sounds that can be accurately represented. i, personally, think it was due to a degradation of the older traditions. the fact that there are rune staves from the later viking age with messages from wives to their husbands to return home from the mead hall and the existence of runic graffiti from the period, indicates that the vikings no longer limited runes to sacred writings. in previous periods, runes were only used for spiritual rune formlas, special inscriptions on objects ( like swords ), and memorial stones.

the anglosaxon runes are a different story, all together. they increased the rune row from 24 to 33 by adding bind runes and rearranging the rows a bit. bind runes are runic symbols achieved by combining two or more runes into one symbol. this is usually done for spiritual work. it is essentially like taking a rune formula and combining it in one runic symbol. some authorities think the anglo saxon futhorc changed to make it better for recording the spoken language. however, i don't think there is a lot of evidence to support this. since all of the new runes in the futhorc have their own meanings, including the 'new' runes, i would think there is a good probability it represents a change made for spiritual reasons.

i haven't made much of a study of the armanen runes, which were developed by guido von list in 1902. some hold that they were an inspired system, greater than the elder traditions. however, i am not one of those.

although i have read the hobbit and lotr almost every winter since i was 11, i have never made a study of the runes tolkien created for his books. such rune systems would hold value as a litterary interest but not for any of the other reasons people study the historical runes.


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