All about Viking Ships

The written sources divide Viking ships into two main kinds: the langskip (longship) for war and the knörr for cargo. Longships were long and narrow, rowed as well as sailed, and drew little water: Skuldelev 5 needed only 0.6 metres. The knörr was broader and relied on its sail; a reconstruction of the trader Skuldelev 1 carries about 20 tons.

If we look at transportation today, there is not much challenge. You could travel by car, train, boat or plane.

Now imagine the world without any of that.

Every journey longer than a few kilometres becomes an effort.

Now imagine all those challenges, but being at war at the same time.

Through generations, people improved their means of transport, and ships became one of the main means of travel, trade and warfare.

The Vikings took this craft further than most.

Ships mattered enough that the sagas remember shipbuilders by name: Snorri Sturluson names Þorbergr skafhögg as the master builder of King Olaf Tryggvason's Long Serpent. Their ships carried them across the North Sea and the North Atlantic and far up the rivers of eastern Europe.

Let's take a closer look at those ships.

Different Types of Viking Ships

The written sources set two classes against each other: the merchant ship, the knörr (knorr, knarr), and the warship, the langskip. Cleasby and Vigfusson's Old Norse dictionary defines the knörr as "a kind of merchant-ship" and sets it against the langskip. Some early Viking ships fit neither class neatly: the Roskilde museum describes broad ships with both oars and sail as all-round vessels for trade and war alike.

Langskip

The Oseberg ship in Oslo, built around 820 and buried in 834

We will start with warships.

The warships are known mostly today as longships. The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde defines a longship archaeologically as a ship driven by both oars and sail and at least five times as long as it is wide. Compared with cargo ships they were longer, narrower and lighter, and they carried a large crew of rowers.

They carried one large square sail, woven of wool or flax, and their oars kept them moving when there was no wind. The Roskilde museum's reconstruction of a cargo ship, Ottar, sails with flax today, but the museum notes that the original sail was wool.

What we know about them comes from a handful of finds. The ships in Oslo are the best preserved. The Oseberg ship, built in south-west Norway around 820, was buried in 834 and dug out in 1904; it has 15 oar holes on each side. The Gokstad ship, built around 890, was buried around 900 and excavated in 1880. At 23.22 metres long and 5.18 metres wide, it falls short of the five-to-one rule. The Tune ship, dug out near Fredrikstad in 1867, was the first Viking ship ever excavated.

The true longships were found later. At Ladby on Funen only the iron rivets survived, still in place, outlining a ship of more than 21.5 metres with 15 or 16 pairs of oars, buried in the early tenth century. In Hedeby harbour lay a warship built around 985, about 30.9 metres long and only 2.7 metres wide, the narrowest longship yet found. From Roskilde Fjord came the small longship Skuldelev 5, 17.3 metres long with 26 oars, and the great longship Skuldelev 2, built near Dublin around 1042, about 30 metres long with 60 oars.

All of them were clinker-built, with overlapping planks riveted together with iron; the Oseberg ship is already fastened this way. Clinker boats are still built in the Nordic countries with the same basic technique, and in 2021 UNESCO added the Nordic clinker boat traditions to its list of intangible cultural heritage.

The ships drew little water, though how little depended on the ship. The Roskilde museum gives Skuldelev 5 a draught of 0.6 metres and the great longship Skuldelev 2 about 1 metre. That let them use both the sea and the rivers, and run up onto a beach, which was a significant tactical advantage for Vikings during their raids.

The Roskilde museum, which sails full-size reconstructions, gives Skuldelev 5 an average speed of 6 to 7 knots and a top speed of about 15 knots, and Skuldelev 2 an average of 6 to 8 knots and a top speed of 13 to 17.

The sources use several words for warships, and they do not form neat classes. The Roskilde museum's study of the longships in skaldic verse is the best guide to them.

Skeið is the commonest warship word in skaldic verse, found in at least 49 stanzas, nearly all of them about war. Cleasby and Vigfusson define it as a swift ship of war of the langskip class. The museum adds that it is uncertain whether a skeið was a particular type of warship at all.

Snekkja was also a longship, but it was not always a small one. Snorri says that King Olaf Tryggvason's ship Trana, the Crane, was a snekkja of 30 rowing rooms, while in one skaldic poem a snekkja is smaller than a skeið.

Karfi appears in the sagas as a lighter craft. Cleasby and Vigfusson describe it as a swift galley with six, twelve or sixteen rowers a side, used especially on lakes and inlets, and light enough to be carried overland.

Then there is the word everyone knows. Drakkar is not an Old Norse word at all: the French dictionary Trésor de la langue française dates it to 1840, borrowed from Swedish. The Old Norse word behind it is dreki, 'dragon', and the Roskilde museum reads it as a poetic name for a great warship rather than a type; in one poem the same ship is called both a dreki and a skeið. Today drakkar lives on as a modern name, as on our Drakkar wooden ship model kit.

The longest Viking ship found so far is Roskilde 6, uncovered in 1997 while the museum harbour in Roskilde was being dug. It was about 36 metres long, with probably 39 pairs of oars, and the museum says a ship of that size was without doubt the property of a king or an earl.

The most famous ship mentioned in the sources is Olaf Tryggvason's Ormr inn langi, the Long Serpent. Snorri's Heimskringla says it had 34 rúm, the rowing spaces between the frames, each holding one pair of oars, and that its head and tail were adorned with gold. Snorri wrote more than two centuries later, and the Roskilde museum cautions that he was probably describing the ships of his own day. Olaf lost the ship at the sea battle of Svolder in the year 1000.

Knorr

A modern replica under sail with shields along the side. Undset's 1898 guide to the Gokstad ship notes that the shields covered the oar holes, so they came down whenever the ship was rowed.

Knorr ships were primarily used for trade.

A knörr was not bigger than a longship. It was broader, deeper and fuller in form, and it was driven mainly by the wind through one large sail. Skuldelev 1, an ocean-going cargo ship built of pine in western Norway around 1030, is 15.84 metres long and 4.8 metres wide, against 17.3 by 2.5 metres for the small longship Skuldelev 5.

The main concern on these ships was cargo. Skuldelev 1 had decks fore and aft and an open hold amidships, and the museum gives it a crew of only six to eight and two to four oars, used for manoeuvring.

Its reconstruction, Ottar, can carry about 20 tons. Even loaded, the museum says, the ship drew less than one and a half metres, so it could still work its way into shallow bays and up rivers. The museum suggests that ship and cargo may have belonged to a chieftain or to a group of merchants sailing to the European markets.

According to the written sources, the museum adds, the knarr was the only type of ship that sailed to Greenland.

Two of the best-known cargo ships came out of Roskilde Fjord in Denmark.

The first one is Skuldelev 1, one of five Viking ships raised in 1962 from a barrier sunk across the fjord near Skuldelev.

The second one is Skuldelev 3, a small coastal trader of Danish oak built around 1040, 14 metres long with room for about 4.6 tons of cargo and a crew of five to eight. It is the best preserved of the five.

Viking Ship Names

Like modern ships, Viking ships, both mythological and real, had names.

Many of the real ones were named after animals: serpents, a crane, a bison, a reindeer.

When it comes to mythological ships, the best of ships was Skíðblaðnir, which belonged to Freyr. In Snorri's Gylfaginning, dwarfs, the sons of Ívaldi, made it and gave it to Freyr. It is big enough to carry all the gods with their weapons, has a fair wind as soon as the sail is raised, and folds up like a cloth to go in a pouch.

The next mythological ship is Hringhorni, literally 'ring-horn'. This was the ship of Baldr, the greatest of all ships according to Snorri, and the gods made his funeral pyre on it.

A replica ship burned at a modern fire festival, not a Viking Age funeral

Last but not least is Naglfar.

Snorri calls it the largest ship and says it belongs to Muspell. It is made from the nails of dead men, so anyone who dies with uncut nails adds to it, and at Ragnarök it floats free with the giant Hrymr at the helm.

When it comes to real ship names, we have already mentioned Olaf Tryggvason's Ormr inn langi. Before it he sailed Trana, the Crane, and Ormr inn skammi, the Short Serpent, a dragon ship he took from Rauðr in Hálogaland. Snorri says Olaf called it Ormr because when the sail was up it was meant to be the dragon's wings.

The next one is the ship of Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson, the Barði. The Roskilde museum notes that barð is a word for part of a ship's stem. Snorri says Eiríkr's Barði was huge, with a "beard" at the top of both stems and a thick iron plate below it running down to the water.

Saint Olaf, the Norwegian king Olaf Haraldsson, had a ship called Vísundr, the Bison. Snorri's saga of Saint Olaf calls it the largest of all ships and says a bison's head adorned with gold stood on its prow. The animal is the European bison, the wisent, not the American one.

In the end, ship names may show some abilities of the ship. King Sigurd Munn's men hunted a rival in Hreinninn, the Reindeer, a ship of 22 rowing rooms that Snorri calls the fastest of all ships.

How did Vikings Sleep on Ships?

Viking ships had no cabins. Even the large cargo ship Skuldelev 1 had only decks fore and aft and an open hold amidships.

When the coast allowed it, crews could go ashore for the night, which gave them shelter, food and water. When land was not an option, on the open sea or in enemy waters, there was little to be done.

In harbour, they pitched tents on the ship itself. Cleasby and Vigfusson's dictionary notes that tents, tjöld, were pitched on ships as well as on land, especially in harbour. In Heimskringla a ship is handed over with its rigging, tents and provisions, and before the battle of Svolder the crews strike their tents and run to their ships.

Sailing was mostly a summer business. In the sagas, fleets are laid up for the winter and fitted out again in spring.

How Many Men Could a Viking Ship Hold?

The number of men on Viking ships largely depended on the size of the ship.

For the ships that have been found, the museums give these figures.

The small longship Skuldelev 5 had 26 oars and a crew of about 30. The Oseberg ship was fully manned with 30 rowers, plus a helmsman and a lookout.

The Gokstad ship has 16 oar holes on each side, and the Museum of the Viking Age reckons two men to each oar, which gives a crew of up to 67 with the helmsman and a lookout.

The great longship Skuldelev 2 had 60 oars and a crew of 65 to 70. For Roskilde 6 the museum estimates 39 pairs of oars and 78 oarsmen.

Cargo ships needed far fewer: five to eight men on Skuldelev 3 and six to eight on Skuldelev 1.

The sagas give bigger numbers. Snorri says that at Svolder there were eight men in each half-room of the Long Serpent, every one of them picked, and thirty in the fyrirrúm, the room beside the raised deck at the stern. Cleasby and Vigfusson explain a half-room as the space for a single oar, so on Snorri's figures the ship carried several times the men it needed to row.

Interesting Facts About Viking Ships

One of the five carved animal heads from the Oseberg grave. The Museum of the Viking Age does not know for certain what they were used for.

Let's take a look at some interesting facts regarding Viking ships:

• Smaller ships could be hauled overland between waterways, which is called portage. The Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, writing around 950, describes the Rus taking their boats overland past the greatest of the Dnieper rapids, partly dragging them and partly carrying them on their shoulders.
• Some ships carried carved heads. The prow of the Oseberg ship ends in a spiral-twisted dragon's head, and Olaf's Short Serpent had a dragon's head at the front and a tail at the back. On the Gokstad ship, the Museum of the Viking Age says, there is no evidence that a dragon head was ever fitted.
• Snorri says Olaf Tryggvason could walk along the oars outside the Serpent while his men were rowing, juggling three knives so that one was always in the air.
• No rowing benches survive on the Gokstad ship, and the Museum of the Viking Age thinks the rowers probably sat on chests that also held their gear.
• Since Viking ships had no toilets, the sea was used for that.
• No magnetic compass survives from the Viking Age. Sailing directions preserved in Landnámabók steer from Norway to Greenland by sightings of Shetland, the Faroes, and the birds and whales off Iceland.

Curious how far those ships actually got? Trace the real routes (Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, and the river roads to Constantinople and Baghdad) on our interactive Viking World Map, and use its voyage-measure tool to see how many sailing days any crossing took (Dublin to Reykjavík: five to twelve, weather permitting). For the tricks that made it possible, read our guide to Viking navigation.

Conclusion

When you read and learn about Viking ships, you can understand why the Vikings became a seafaring force to be afraid of.

Their ships let them show up where they were not expected. A longship could cross the sea, run up a river and land on a beach, and the men who rowed it were the same men who fought when it landed. Behind the raiders came the broad cargo ships that carried settlers and trade goods as far as Iceland and Greenland.

There you have it!

Sometimes a thing as practical as the construction of a ship can make all the difference. See where the ships fit on our Viking history timeline, or shop our Viking jewelry collection.

Viking Ships FAQ

What were the two main types of Viking ship?

The written sources set the langskip, or longship, the warship, against the knörr, the merchant ship. Longships were long and narrow, at least five times as long as they were wide, and driven by both oars and sail. Cargo ships were broader and deeper, relied on the sail and needed only a small crew: five to eight men on the cargo ships found at Skuldelev.

What was the largest Viking ship ever found?

Roskilde 6, found in 1997 at Roskilde in Denmark, was about 36 metres long, the longest Viking ship found so far. Its keel alone measures 32 metres. The Viking Ship Museum reckons it had about 39 pairs of oars and says it belonged to a king or an earl.

How fast were Viking longships?

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, which sails full-size reconstructions, gives the small longship Skuldelev 5 an average of 6 to 7 knots and a top speed of about 15 knots, and the great longship Skuldelev 2 an average of 6 to 8 knots and a top speed of 13 to 17. Skuldelev 5 drew only 0.6 metres of water, Skuldelev 2 about 1 metre.

Was the drakkar a real type of Viking ship?

No. Drakkar is a French word first recorded in 1840, borrowed from Swedish. The Old Norse word behind it is dreki, 'dragon', which skaldic poems use as a poetic name for a great warship rather than for a type. The usual warship words were langskip, skeið and snekkja.

How many men crewed a Viking ship?

It depended on the ship. The Roskilde museum gives the small longship Skuldelev 5 a crew of about 30 and the great longship Skuldelev 2 a crew of 65 to 70, and the Oslo museum puts the Gokstad ship at up to 67. Cargo ships needed far fewer: five to eight on Skuldelev 3, six to eight on Skuldelev 1.

Skål!