The Viking Age. Volume 2 (of 2): The early history, manners, and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nationsDu Chaillu, Paul B. (Paul Belloni)
History
The Viking Age. Volume 2 (of 2): The early history, manners, and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nations
Tune ship (viewed from above), with heavy oak-log or block, with
square hole for making fast the mast, more than 2 feet in
diameter—a stump of the mast still remained in its place;
discovered in a mound, the lower part of which consisted of heavy
blue clay, the upper of sand and earth. The length of keel is
about 45 feet (from stem to stern it must, however, have been over
70 feet), the width amidships about 13 feet, and depth about 4½
feet. Stem and stern are alike, and pointed. The sponts were
attached to the planks by bast ropes. They were not fastened to
the keel plank, which has only been attached by the few nails
which held it together with the bottom planks. The planks, of
which there have been ten to twelve on each side, are from 18 to
30 inches in width. Tune parish, where the remains of the boat and
the stone with old Northern runes have been found, is especially
rich in mementoes from the past. All over the parish many mounds
and _bautarstones_ of large size are seen.
[Illustration:
Fig. 995.
]
Though several centuries had probably elapsed between the construction
of the _Nydam_ and that of the _Tune_ and _Gokstad_ boats, we find the
same principle of construction and of joining the planks by rivets used
in each case.
The clinch nails here represented were discovered not far from Upsala,
in the decayed remains of a small ship buried in the Ultuna mound. They
were from 1½ to 2 inches in length, and still remained in their places,
holding the planks together. The exact size of the vessel could not be
ascertained, as the mound had been disturbed before the systematic
researches by competent authorities had been undertaken. There were
besides a double-edged sword with hilt of gilt bronze, with fragments of
its wooden scabbard, a bundle of 19 arrow-points, 3 dice, 36 checkers,
parts of two horses, skeleton on the prow of the ship, and a gridiron,
etc., etc.
[Illustration:
Fig. 996.—½ real size.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 997.—⅔ real size.
]
Rivets or clinch nails for ships.
The following passages are the only ones in the whole literature of the
North which describe the building of a ship:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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