Viking boat build

[Derek Cohen]

This came up on the Old Tools list serve. Passing it along ...

https://vimeo.com/68557912?outro=1&ref=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR21hOFxtrubnaYl4Gq1Ca2Grf39NKfD_IvatRyqqR9_4yvhG8pWN7yEZJQ

Regards from Perth

Derek

[badwhiskey]

Very cool.

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[stav]

Very cool.

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[Chuck Nickerson]

Everywhere in the world some tradition like this is being lost because the younger generation isn't willing to deal with the lower wage structure.

40 years ago I also took a hard pass on a traditional skill route. I've enjoyed the money but only now understand the lost cultural connection.

[Jason28]

Everywhere in the world some tradition like this is being lost because the younger generation isn't willing to deal with the lower wage structure.

Nor should they be.

[TGW]

Viking ships are only a minor part of it.
Essentially it is the traditional Scandinavian clinker doubleender boatbuilding skills and traditions that are endangered.
The boats have changed and been adapted little by little over the centuries and the tools have become better but the basic building methods have changed so little in 1500 years that when archeologists first started digging up viking ships and wanted to test how they behave on water in reality they could just go to any skilled rural boatbuilder who normally built boats for local farmers and fishermen and ask him to build a new boat just like the very old one they just had dug up.
Then those boatbuilders found out exactly how their viking era ancestors had done it just by copying those ancient boats.

So...... viking ships is just a minor par of it. What we are in danger of loosing is the 1500 years old tradition that produced everything from viking ships to motor trawlers and an untold number of small double ended fishing boats. Most of them sharing the same very good seakeeping abilities and very light and strong hull.

My motor boats is actually built from fiberglass but the builder used his old rotten wooden fishing boat as mould for his new fiberglass boat. Sheathed it in fiberglass and then removed the wooden boat from the inside. Though the original boat was built as late as the 1950-ies and designed for an 8 hp inboard engine it is easy to see the close relationship to vikng age boats of the same size. Essentially it has just changed enough to make it suitable for 20th century fishing gear and to make it seaworthy and dry under engine power.
My boat pretty much marks the endpoint of an adaptable tradition. At the same time as fiberglass came into use big motors came into use too and hull shapes changed drastically. The few wooden boats that are still built rarely have anything to do with tradition.

[camp10]

Some of those hand tools are a thousand years old. Wow!

Thanks for sharing this.