The Gokstad Ship
The ninth-century Gokstad ship, excavated from a burial mound in Norway in 1880 and now in Oslo.
Clinker-built in oak, some 23 metres long and shallow enough to be rowed up a river, the Gokstad ship explains the Viking age better than any chronicle. A vessel like this could cross the North Sea and then keep going inland to a monastery or a market town, which is precisely what made Norse raiding and Norse trading the same technology. A replica sailed to America in 1893 in four weeks. Read the full story in our article on The Danelaw and Viking Settlement in England.
CC BY-SA 2.0 — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
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