How Did Vikings Build Boats?

No drawings, no saw for planks: how Vikings turned an oak forest into a ship that crossed seas. In this video: The older boats Vikings inherited, from a boat sewn with cord to the first riveted hulls Choosing the trees: why one warship needed about twenty great oaks and hundreds of curved pieces Splitting logs with wedges along the grain instead of sawing them Building without blueprints: shell first, ribs second, rules kept in the builder's head Iron rivets and a hull that bends with the waves instead of fighting them Tar, wool, the mast and the steering oar that gave us the word "starboard" The sail: one of the slowest parts of the ship to make, and who had to pay for it Dragon heads: what the sagas and the law say, and why almost none have been found Sources: Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde: the Skuldelev ships and the Sea Stallion from Glendalough reconstruction (2000–2004) Niels Bonde and Arne Emil Christensen (1993), Dendrochronological dating of the Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Antiquity 67 Tom Dhoop and Jose-Manuel Olaberria (2015), Practical knowledge in the Viking Age: the use of mental templates in clinker shipbuilding, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 44 Rolf Warming (2023), on the Gokstad shields, Arms & Armour Lise Bender Jorgensen (2012), on the labour of Viking Age sails Museum of Cultural History, Oslo: the Oseberg and Gokstad ships National Museum of Denmark: the Nydam and Hjortspring boats Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: Saga of Olaf Tryggvason (the Long Serpent) Landnamabok: the law on dragon heads attributed to Ulfljot #Vikings #VikingHistory #VikingAge