Boats that Vikings Used: Beyond the Longship

Longships get all the glory. But no Viking rowed thirty of his mightiest friends out just to check the fishing nets. Across Scandinavia, where mountains, bogs, and winter made roads a misery, water was the highway, and people built a whole fleet of boats to travel it: one-person dugouts, family rowing boats, broad-bellied cargo ships, and the ocean-crossing Viking knarr that carried settlers to Iceland and Greenland. In fact, the famous shallow-draft longship was only one of the boats that Vikings used.

Most Popular Viking Boat

Comparatively easy to make, dugouts were the most common boats that Vikings used. Because a dugout was carved from a single log, it gave almost anyone access to communication and trade routes. The largest dugouts topped about 30 feet in length and could accommodate people and cargo. The smallest, however, would hold one person.

Small Viking Boats Below the Viking Knarr

A step up from the dugout was the row boat. Also called a skiff, more prosperous people, like fishers and important farmers, likely owned this type of boat. As a result, it would have made getting to the market with farm goods or large catches easier.

Larger Boats that Vikings Used: the Skuldelev Ships and the Viking Knarr

In 1962, archaeologists drained a cofferdam in Roskilde Fjord, Denmark, and raised five ships now known as the Skuldelev ships. Around 1070 they had been filled with stones and deliberately sunk to block the main sailing channel, protecting Roskilde from attack by sea. The five were:

• Skuldelev 5: a small warship, known as a snekkja
• Skuldelev 2: a 90-foot-long warship that could carry 80 people and had a shallow draft of three feet
• Skuldelev 3: a small coastal trading ship
• Skuldelev 6: a small fishing boat
• Skuldelev 1: an ocean-going cargo ship of the knarr type, built in western Norway

Before Skuldelev, most Viking ships known to archaeology came from grand burials like Oseberg and Gokstad. These were ordinary working ships, so they showed for the first time how varied the fleet really was. The big warship, Skuldelev 2, was built of Irish oak near Dublin around 1042. It was also a reminder that the Norse world stretched well beyond Scandinavia.

The Viking Knarr

The knarr (Old Norse knǫrr, often written “knorr” in English) was the Viking cargo ship. Knarrs were “the workhorses of Viking-Age maritime power,” according to author Neil Price. In fact, these were the ships that would carry settlers across the rough North Atlantic Ocean and haul the most cargo for merchants. Their routes ran to Iceland, to Greenland, and then on to North America.

The best-preserved Viking knarr is Skuldelev 1, built of pine in western Norway around 1030. It was about 52 feet (16 m) long and 16 feet (4.8 m) wide. A crew of only six to eight could sail it, because it relied on a large square sail and just a few oars. Where a longship was long, narrow, and packed with rowers, the knarr was shorter, broader, and deeper, with its open hold given over to cargo. Later, in 2000, the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde built a full-size reconstruction, Ottar.

Viking Byrding: the Smaller Cousin of the Viking Knarr

By contrast, byrdings were smaller and more maneuverable than their knarr counterparts. So they hauled goods in places that required smaller boats with shallower drafts, such as the harbor at Hedeby.

Viking Boats in Alaska

One of Asgard Alaska’s dreams is a working Viking-style boat on Alaska waters, so that one day visitors can feel an oar bite the water the way a Norse crew did. You can also help us get there by picking up something from Odin’s Offerings, where 100% of proceeds support our work. The museum is not open yet. Meanwhile, we are raising the Land Fund to buy the site, Phase 1 of our Roadmap.

Read more about Viking ships: Viking Ships: How the Longship Changed Norse Seafaring · The Oseberg Ship · The Vikings’ Discovery of Greenland