[Research Task] Viking Longboat

[niektb]

What we need to know is what kind of boats the Vikings used in their daily live.

According to Wiki they had 4 kinds of ships:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longship

Karvi

Snekkja

Skeid

Drekkar

However, 4 kinds of ships seem a bit too much to me. The Karvi ship is suitable (I think) as a combi of fishing and trading ship. Two more ships should be choosen. What we need are references and a description of for what they were used.

[RoekeloosNL]

I hope you guys dont use wikipedia for research alone, Maybe somethings are true but you cant base your research on wiki only.

Edited March 31, 2014 by RoekeloosNL

[Lion.Kanzen]

I hope you guys dont use wikipedia for research alone, Maybe somethings are true but you cant base your research on wiki only.

i agree with that. Wiki is a plataform to introduce to a complex theme.

[Radagast.]

A Wiki is there to get YOU involved and fix the errors you encounter. It's fine to point the errors out. It's even more appreciated to fix them. (wikipedia is publicly editable, with review of course)


For a start three ships will be enough .. once we have a flow, we can still get the 4th done as side-effect.

Don't forget our epic naval plans. Or sailing the vulcanos ... I always wanted to try it, but in this case I prefer simulating it first to be aware of the consequences. Hence we put it as a mod into 0A.D. to see if we can have vulcano sailing ventures. (something must be wrong with me today, my comments ... well. a bit crazy.)

[shieldwolf23]

Hi guys! Sorry for my inactivity. I have an Osprey e-book about Viking ships. However, I'm currently out of town and is hard pressed to do some reading. Will post, hopefully within this week.

[Radagast.]

Don't rush, collague. We are not in a hurry. Once you are feeling there is a desire to sit down in the evenings at candle light and dive into viking adventures, examining their culture and style closely, then you may well read the book. My banners are missing the breathe of fresh sea air too. So there is no rush.

[shieldwolf23]

I'm just feeling guilty while all the rest of you are busy posting/ helping each other out, I'm sitting my @#$% off (albeit with work). I have transferred the file to my mobile, and will start reading it.

EDIT:

Linked is my research notes for the Viking Longships.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47464522/viking%20research.pdf

Edited April 10, 2014 by shieldwolf23

[shieldwolf23]

Bump, in case nobody noticed the link research.

[niektb]

I indeed didn't notice your edit, will look into when home.

[Radagast.]

I thinks it's even in the pipeline already. Stan and me we talked about it. Though I'm currently still busy with rendering. Only 2 Cores and 4GB for rendering and VIM work and plenty of firefox tabs as well as git upload is way too much for my poor machine.

I've lost three hours waiting today I guess.

Awesome work, Shieldwolf. Would love to sail with these ships. One day we might well do this. Lastly I read about this ancient egyptian reconstructed ship - 3500 years old. Wow. And it managed to survive the sea. We should construct one in real life some time ...

[niektb]

From your notes I read that we have 3 types of ships:

1. Knarr: Trade/Cargo ship.

2. Snekkja / Skeid / Drekar: Warship

3. Karvi: ?

The first one looks in for me, but what type would you recommend to use as warship (Drekar looks most well-known to me as Dragon ship)? And what would the Karvi be in the game? Fishing ship (http://www.brighthubengineering.com/naval-architecture/71080-medieval-longship-designs/)?

[Lion.Kanzen]

Karvi

The difference is the Jarvis is little bit short warship.

Los vikingos - Noruega - Guía oficial de viajes - visitnorway.com

www.visitnorway.com/es/prensa/ideas-y-datos-de-utilidad/los-vikingos/

Un barco de uso general llamado Karvi podría tener entre 6 y 16 bancos, un Snekkja tenía almenos 20 bancos, y un Skeid tenía más de 30 ...

Jarvis have beteween 6 and 16 benches and Snekkja have almost 20 or more benches and the Skeid have 30

Edited April 11, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

Upss

-----------

Here are more info and above.

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

It is unclear when the first longships were built, but references to longships in the old norse sagas and datings from archaeological ship finds indicate that the first real longships carrying sail were developed in the 10th century. The rudder of the longships remained sidemounted to around 1250 - 1300, when they started to rear mount the rudder instead. After 1300 the danish and norwegian kingdoms became gradually weaker and the expensive longships faded from history.

The longships can be divided into these subcategories, according to norwegian maritime historians:

Busse

The "Busse" was a class of longships with large cargo capacity and a large crew. They were designed for battlecraft to give advantage in war against other ships. They can be regarded as warships.

The "Ormen Lange" (The Long Serpent) of king Olav Tryggvason of Norway was such a ship. A "busse" could have a much as 35 pairs of oars and a total length of 50 meters or more. To picture the hull of a busse one can think of it as a prolonged and enlarged version of the Gokstadship, with even taller stern and stem and a dragonhead. This gives the busse an even larger length/width ratio than of the Gokstad ship.

Skeide

The "Skeide" was also great longships equipped with 20 - 35 pairs of oars. Most likely they had lower gunwhale than the Busse class and lower cargo capacity. Perhaps were they also slimmer and faster. The sagas does not give a clear picture of the differences, but it must have to do with the shape and dimensions in the hull. The Skuldelev longship found in Limfjorden in Denmark could be an example of a skeide.

Snekke (snekkja)

The "Snekke" was a kind of longship used both at war and for travels. The snekke had probably more charactar of beiing a crew carrier than a pure war ship. My guess is that they had stems and stens of more modest heigth than the more prestigious classes of longships. The Snekke as a term in ship design seem to have been well known both in Scandinavia and in parts of the Baltic Sea. Snorri Sturlason use the term "Vendelsnekke" in some places in one of his sagas.

The longship "Tranen" (Trana) of the norwegian king Olav Tryggvason was according to Snorri a snekke. But the king was more impressed by the look and design of the longship "Ormen Skramme" which was built in Salten in northern Norway and at one stage captured by the king.

Sud

"Sud" were probably not a longship class of its own, but a pars pro toto that appears as a suffix in several ship names in the late Viking age and high Middle ages. Most longships that were called -suðínn probably belonged to the busse class.

Serpent - Drakkar - Dragon-ship (Norwegian: "drage" / "drake" or "Orm")

In english literature several terms seem to be in use for a looser group of large viking ships. Both the terms serpents and drakkars are frequently used, and seem the be equal to the norwegian terms "drage" (drake) and "orm". Regarding the shape of the hull of a large longship and its flexibility at sea I prefer the term serpent of the two, as "orm" translates into serpent or snake. I believe this comes closest to what such a ship must have looked like in use. The norse word "orm" (old norse "orminum"), must not be confused with or translated into the english word "worm", even though dictionaries can suggest such a translation.

The serpents were usually the largest ships in the fleet of a viking king, and were supposed to stand out to symbolize his superior rank.

Calling a ship a serpent seem to have been a looser term than using the more restricted terms busse, skeide, snekke and sud. Any of these could also be called a serpent if they were equipped with an animal shaped head in the stem. Usually this head was shaped like a dragons head. Also other animal forms are known from the sagas, for example the ship "Visund" which had a bulls head (a vicent - european buffalo) in its stem. The stern could also have a dragon head or forming a dragons tail. The dragon head was not permanently fixed to the prow, but could usually be taked down for various reasons.

The sagas of Snorri Sturlason gives several examples of ships that were called both a "serpent" and one of the subclasses of longships. Among these are "Ormen Lange" (The Long Serpent) which are mentioned both as serpent and busse in different parts of the saga.

Merchant ships - "Kaupskip"

The vikings had several classes of trading ships, designed for crossing open sea carrying a lot of cargo. These ships were the true "work horses" in the viking age. They can be subdivided into several classes:

Karv (karfi)

A karv was substantially smaller than the real longships. Usually they were equipped with 13 to 16 pairs of oars. They can have been very versatile and can have been in use both as merchant vessels and at war.

Both the Gokstad ship and the Oseberg ship are examples of well preserved ships of this viking ship class.

Knarr (knórr)

The knarr had a relatively round hull with fewer pairs of oars than the longships. The oars were placed towards each end, leaving the space midships for cargo. The knarr was designed for manoverability, large loading capacity and good sailing abilities offshore. Where Snorre Sturlason tells about "kaupskip" (merchant ships) in his sagas, he probably tells about this kind of ships.

The Skuldelev-wreck 1 found in the Roskilde fjord in Denmark was a knarr. It had a deck fore and aft and the cargo room in the middle. It had a high gunwhale, making the ship more seaworthy in rough waters. The ship is regarded as a good example of the kind of knarrs which were used for trading trips within Scandinavia and further south in Europe.

One special kind of the knarr was called "Grønlandsknarr" (Greenland) and "Vinlandsknarr" (New Foundland). They were large ships with as much as 35 rooms

Byrding

The byrding was a smaller vessel primaily used as domestic freight carriers along the coast. Their size was probably 10 - 15 rooms, thus a bit smaller than the karv. They were also able to cross great distances offshore, such as between Norway and Iceland. In the naval armys they could be used for carrying supplies to the crew in the larges boats, such as food and water. Reconstructions have shown that these boats were fast sailers.

The word "byrding" has great resemblance with the norwegian suffix "-børing" (not boring!), which is used in far newer ship classes in Norway. E.g. the "fembøring" in north and the "sambøring" from Sunnmøre.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen

[shieldwolf23]

I thinks it's even in the pipeline already. Stan and me we talked about it. Though I'm currently still busy with rendering. Only 2 Cores and 4GB for rendering and VIM work and plenty of firefox tabs as well as git upload is way too much for my poor machine.

I've lost three hours waiting today I guess.

Awesome work, Shieldwolf. Would love to sail with these ships. One day we might well do this. Lastly I read about this ancient egyptian reconstructed ship - 3500 years old. Wow. And it managed to survive the sea. We should construct one in real life some time ...

Thank you. And as long as either Lion or niektb is the one who's at the helms, I'll be glad to join. Not that I don't want you as Captain, but buddy, I still value my life.

From your notes I read that we have 3 types of ships:

1. Knarr: Trade/Cargo ship.

2. Snekkja / Skeid / Drekar: Warship

3. Karvi: ?

The first one looks in for me, but what type would you recommend to use as warship (Drekar looks most well-known to me as Dragon ship)? And what would the Karvi be in the game? Fishing ship (http://www.brighthubengineering.com/naval-architecture/71080-medieval-longship-designs/)?

As Lion said, and from Osprey, karvi was a general purpose ship. I'm thinking if it's possible if we can have a trading ship that is also a warship? Something that can trade (like the trade boats in AoK, as well as can attack other warships)?

I'd recommend the Skeid as the in-game warship, while in the future, we can have the drekar as a sort of elite unit. For the fishing ship, I'd recommend the general design of the Viking ship, found on the last page of the notes.

Edited April 11, 2014 by shieldwolf23

[niektb]

Okay:

Knarr: Merchant

Skeid: Warship

Karvi: combination but weaker warship/ less trading income.

Drekar: Elite warship

Simple Fishing ship.

A total of 5 ships.

Now to the gameplay:

The initial longboat had 3 specials:

1. train units

2. mobile dropsite

3. loot bonusing aura.

Which special should we give to which boat?

[Stan`]

I guess all war ship should have the third... Now maybe the drekkar should have both 1,2

[shieldwolf23]

Agree on drekkar having all 3.

My suggestions:

karvi, being both trader and warship, has none of the 3, but same attack as skeid.

knarr would have the 2nd

Edited April 11, 2014 by shieldwolf23

[niektb]

Sounds good. That should work. I now can compile tasks from it.

Edited April 11, 2014 by niektb

[shieldwolf23]

All the best then.