This Ain’t Your Film Set-CGI Viking Ship

The Sea Stallion rowed in calm water (Thilde Kold Holdt).

The best description I have ever read of sailing a long ship. I love it when people reconstitute old tech that still works — like the traditional Polynesian canoe that sailed from Tahiti to Hawaii and back in the 1970s, all without a compass, radio, or modern maps.

This is Danish writer Thilde Kold Holdt’s description of rejoining her “crew” for the first trip of the season aboard a traditional long ship, the Sea Stallion: “We’re 65 people on a ship no larger than a bus.”

Old habits must be remembered:

With the sail up, and not currently on duty, I’m no longer tied to my rowing seat, so I crash atop the oars, forgetting, as I do every year, not to lean against the thick shrouds, those enormous tarred ropes which hold up the mast. My long braid gets stuck to the tar and I have to wrench it off. I’m pretty sure this is why Vikings braided their beards.

The video included might remind you of the History Channel Vikings series, but this is not a CGI ship or a movie set, but the real deal, creaking and leaking and going forth.

One thought on “This Ain’t Your Film Set-CGI Viking Ship

  1. What most impresses me and concerns me about nautical endeavors like the Polynesian and Nordic ones is the superb skills humans are capable of acquiring in things like ocean navigation and ship building and handling. And how those skills may be lost.

Comments are closed.