The longships finally

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Tue 15 Oct 2019 17:58
The longships built by the vikings were a masterpiece of naval architecture of that time. They had a descent keel with good displacement making them seaworthy, and they were fast reaching speeds of 15-17kts in strong downwinds.
The Swedish vikings going east with their ships reached all the way to Konstantinopel and made settlements on the way. Vikings from Norway going west settled down in Scotland,Ireland,and later Iceland as well as Greenland.
Leifr Eiriksson (Leif the fortunate) was 11 years old when his father Eirik Röde (Erik the Red) was sent away from Iceland as a punishment from the viking court. The whole family sailed to Greenland where they settled down and built the farm Brattalid.
Leif the Fortunate later took a longship and sailed over to Baffin Island,further to Labrador and ended up in New Foundland. This was around the year 1000 and so this was the first European to reach North America well recognised by history of today. He returned to Brattalid and later converted to christianity. His younger brother Torvald returned to New Foundland and established a settlement. According to the sagas Torvald was killed by "skrälingar" which was probably the viking name of indians. Due to internal conflicts and war with the indians the settlement was descerted after 3 years.
Allthough the climate was warmer in those days,to sail those open ships crossing oceans in arctic climate must have been quite a challenge. No wonder they needed a fatalistic way of looking at life.....

JPEG image