Almost everyone knows it, yet no one seems to want to admit it. What am I talking about? I am talking about the Vikings beating Columbus to the new world. Even the Vikings were probably beaten here by the Chinese and/or Egyptians and who knows who else? The Vikings were a true sea faring people. Their dragon ships were more than a match for anything on the seas at the time. The funny thing is they may not have been a match for the Greek ships from Athens, 1500 hundred years before. It would be interesting to match these two types of ships today and see which one was faster and more maneuverable. We know now that the ancient Greeks had a spring wound, clock type computer that was used at least once to navigate. Did the Vikings have anything similar that helped them navigate the Earth's oceans?

There is a legend that states that the Vikings used a sunstone. It is said that they had this crystal that they could aim at the sun and look through it while turning it until the view became yellow. At this point the pilot of the ship would aim the ship in the direction the stone was pointing and it would lead them home. But how would such a device work? It is said that it polarized light and the Vikings knew that at the point the light was polarized it pointed home. Knowing this made the rest of the directions easy. If you went in the opposite direction you were sailing away from home and so on. If the Vikings didn't have a navigational aid, how did they sail to the new world? There were no magnetic compasses in Europe yet. Even Thorkild Ramskou. a Danish archeologist suggested that this might be true and that the sunstone was used. After all, they did sail from Norway to Iceland, then to Greenland and probably Newfoundland from there. This was quite a feat indeed in those days.

Viking crews often sailed to places like Britain and raided the country side. Two or three dragon boats would dock and the crews jump out, join up and rampage. The terror they caused was so horrific that even prayers were written that stated things like, God protect me from the Norsemen. They seemed to have killed without any remorse and without caring who met a cruel end because of their blade or ax. Being a man of the church wasn't any protection either. If you were a monk or nun you were just as likely to be killed as anyone else,except a nun might get raped first. Why were the Vikings, who were basically farmers and traders so cruel? No one can answer this question, but it is known that they psyched themselves up before an attack and were extremely terrifying warriors. There is no evidence indicating that they took any substances to achieve this level of fierceness but I often wondered about this.

Another thing I often wondered about was the fact that these raiding parties were not huge and how come they weren't overwhelmed at times? One of the reasons for this may have been that they picked their targets carefully and another may have been that everyone became so scared of them that they would rather run than fight them. There is not much written evidence that pertains to the Vikings. That is a big problem for historians. So who did write about Vikings? It was mostly members of the church. Some church sermons stated that the Vikings raids were God's punishment on the Saxons for their sins. It is amazing how anything bad that happens is interpreted as a punishment from God. The Vikings did not use the alphabet until they converted to Christianity, rather they carved symbols into stone or wood. These symbols were called Runes. You can see why they didn't write much. No one is sure how may Vikings could even read Runes. Even when they did write, it was often very short. Even inscriptions on their coins were very short or non existent.

Many historians state that the Viking ship was a leap in technology and therefore certainly don't agree with my statement that Athenian ships from ancient Greece might have been as advanced. They cite the fact that they were able to cross the oceans and switch to oars when they had to. It is true that the Viking ships were constructed differently. An ax was used to build them, not a saw. Oak trees were split into long thin planks and iron nails were used to hold the planks to the keel and each other. An overlapping technique was used. The floor was attached to the Keel and not the hull as in most other ships, this made the ships more flexible. Cross beams were added to nail a deck to. They added rowing benches and then a massive beam along the keel to hold the mast. It was said that this ship could reach 14 knots and was highly maneuverable. But how good were the ancient Greek ships? To give you an idea, they sunk over 300 Persian ships in the Bay of Phaleron and only lost 40 of their own. This was at the battle of Salamis. Some of the ancient Greek ships were eerily similar to the Viking ones. They were fast and highly maneuverable.

So what happened to all those fierce Vikings? The raids stopped and they all settled down. They formed farming communities and became successful traders. Why did they stop raiding? That is a good question. Maybe they got religion or maybe they were tired of the long sea voyages and being away from home. The age of the Vikings lasted about 300 years from 793 AD to 1066 AD.

To see the model of an ancient Greek war ship go to http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/181627
To see a model of a Viking ship go to http://www.historicships.com/TALLSHIPS/Mantua/IMAGES/VIKING_SHIP_MA780.jpg

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