Now the Scandinavian peoples were at this time the finest sailors in the world. The Jutes and Angles from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein belonged to this race, the whole of which became known as "vikings"—that is to say, "the sons of the creeks", from the Scandinavian word vik, a bay, creek, or fiord. But though there must have been a strong Viking element among the Saxon conquerors of England—so much so that it became known as Angle-land, or England, from the Angles—yet the Saxons or English do not seem to have taken so enthusiastically to the sea as the Norwegians and Danes, and, except when special efforts to create fighting fleets were made by King Alfred and Edmund Ironside, were never able to prevent the incursions of their Danish and Norse kinsmen, who, in process of time, firmly established themselves in the country. After the Danes came the Norman Conquest, and during all this period there was little, if any, change in the types of the ships in which the northern nations fared the seas.
Noah's Ark, according to a MS. of A.D. 1000
Observe the fullness and apparent capacity of the hull of the dragon-ship on which the Ark proper is erected, and compare it with that of the Nydam ship on the opposite page.
What were these vessels like? As it happens, we really know more about them than we do of any between their time and the days of Henry VIII. For not only have we very definite details of them and their "gear" in the long "sagas" or historical and traditional poems which have come down to us, sculptured pictures of them in stone, engravings on rocks and upon arms and ornaments, but more than one of the actual Viking vessels have been dug out of the big burial-mounds where they had been hidden for centuries. For the Viking chieftain loved his ship: he lavished ornament and decoration upon it, and regarded it almost as a living thing. When, therefore, the time came for him to take the long last voyage, from which no man ever returns, it was quite natural that he should have wished to make it in the cherished "Dragon Ship" or "Long Serpent", which had so often borne him over the waves on his way to those hand-to-hand combats and harryings and plunderings in which his soul delighted. Sometimes a funeral pyre was erected on the ship herself, and with his favourite sword by his side, his shield and his helmet, the dead chieftain set out on his final voyage, his sons and followers watching the well-known long-ship sailing into the west till she, her sails, and her dead captain disappeared in clouds of fire and smoke under the sunset. Or, again, a dying sea-king would elect to be buried in his favourite ship in some spot overlooking the glassy fiord whence he had so often set out on his piratical exploits. The ship was run up on shore over the rollers which all Viking vessels carried to facilitate beaching, the body was laid amidships with his most treasured earthly possessions, a penthouse of timber was built over him, his favourite horses were killed and placed round the hull of the vessel, and the whole was buried in the depths of a huge mound, which was erected over it.
The most famous "finds" of this kind were at Gokstadt, in south Norway, in 1881, and at Nydam, in Schleswig, in 1863. In the latter case the ship does not seem to have been used as a sarcophagus, but with another, which had almost entirely rotted away, was found in a bog. Possibly if the huge oval mound now utilized as a cemetery at Inverness, and known as "Tom-na-hurich" ("The Hill of the Fairies"), were tunnelled into, another Viking ship might be brought to light. In the case of the Nydam ship, Roman coins found on board fix her date as being somewhere about A.D. 250. Both from these ships and fragments of others that have been found in various places it is abundantly evident that their builders were as skilled shipwrights as ever existed. Space does not allow us to go into details of their construction, but we may say at once that their finish was perfect, and that their lines were not only beautiful but wonderfully well adapted for contending with the stormy waters of the northern seas. Neither of them appears to have belonged to the largest type of Viking ships, which may be roughly divided into "Dragon Ships" or "Drakkars", "Eseneccas" or "Long Serpents", and "Skutas" or small swift scouting-vessels. It seems just possible, by the way, that our modern slang expression "skoot"—"get away quickly", "clear out"—may be derived from this word. We must try in the next chapter to understand what these Viking ships were like.
Broadside View of the Nydam Ship now in the Kiel Museum. Observe the horn-like rowlocks and the steer-board