From incidental allusions in the Sagas, it is believed that a fleet fitted out for fighting and plunder was accompanied by lumber ships to carry slaves for the drudgery work, provisions, munitions, and perhaps the heavier portion of the plunder. As to the size of their light narrow war ships, it has been calculated by an ardent and skilful student of the habits of the Norsemen, that one favourite vessel, “the Long Serpent,” must have been above a hundred feet in length.[464] The monk of the Irish house of St. Gall, who tells the story of Charlemagne weeping when he saw a pirate fleet in the Mediterranean, also tells how the emperor’s acute eye at once detected, from the build and swiftness of the vessels, that their purpose was not trade but mischief.[465]
Discovery of ancient ship and of other early relics.
Some remarkable discoveries in Denmark have revealed recently the remains of a plank-built boat sufficiently complete to admit of the entire reconstruction of the vessel as it floated. If we compare this vessel (see [page 336]) with the accounts of the hide-covered coracles which carried the Scots from Ireland, or with the lumbering canoe cut out of the solid wood, such as may still be seen on the lakes of Bavaria, we obtain at a glance the measure of the high capacity of those who built the vessels for the Vikings. The Northern antiquaries have fixed her date as “the early iron age,” probably about the fifth century. Close examination has led to the conclusion that she was entirely a row-boat, with no arrangement for help from canvas; “yet it is seventy-seven feet long, measured from stem to stern, and proportionally rather broad in the middle.”[466]
It immediately recalls the light handy boats of smaller size still used on the Norwegian coast, and in the Shetlands; and its structure is so thoroughly adapted to a union of lightness, speed, and strength, that it has been compared with the class of vessels now called clippers.
ANCIENT DANISH VESSEL.
There are peculiarities in its structure, testifying to the abundance both of material and skilled labour. The timber or heavy planks, for instance, instead of being sawn into boards of equal thickness—or thinness—throughout, are cut thin where thinness was desirable, but thick at points of juncture, that they may be mortised into the cross-beams and gunwale, instead of being merely nailed. The vessel has two bows, or rather is alike at bow and stern, with thirty rowlocks, and it is noticed that these, along with the helm, are reversible, so as to permit the vessel to be rowed with either end forward.[467] The gunwale rises with the keel, at each extremity, into a high beak or prow, a notable feature of the Norwegian boats of the present day. The build is of the kind technically called “clinker,” each plank overlapping that immediately below, from the gunwale to the keel: in the peat-moss containing these remains many other testimonies to wealth and industrial civilization, especially to boat-building, were found.
It is alike interesting and instructive to trace the progress of these northern tribes, and the mechanical means at their disposal which enabled them to construct vessels which could in safety navigate distant seas, for there can be no doubt that these wild adventurers, barbarous as they undoubtedly were, became, in the hands of Providence, useful instruments for saving from extinction a large portion of the human race, who, under the Roman rule in the later days of its folly, had become unable to maintain their position either as independent nations, or as provinces of the imperial city. Surely it was good for mankind that the Goths and Vandals became masters of Rome, when Rome in her last decay could no longer govern herself.
Incursions of the Saxons and Angles into Britain;
Nor was the change of people to the disadvantage of Britain. Though not to the same extent, the Romanized Britons had imbibed the vices of their rulers, and were too effeminate to defend the lands the Romans had, in their extremity, abandoned. The coming of a new race, the Saxons and Angles of Schleswig, was needed to revive the energies of a population who had not been able to drive back the far more barbarous Picts, though, for a long time, under the Anglo-Saxon rule, also, commercial enterprise in Britain remained at a low ebb. For a while, indeed, even the faint light of learning, which remained when the Romans left, appears to have been almost extinguished by the long-continued and bloody wars which, during this gloomy period, depopulated the country and desolated the cities of Britain.