Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway

The Vikings burst out of Scandinavia in the late 8th century and for the next three hundred odd years rampaged across Europe, the Mediterranean, the Russian steppe and even North America. One of the driving forces behind this expansion was the advance of naval technology in the form of the Viking longship. These sleek, clinker-built, open ships were capable of undertaking long, open-sea voyages. They were fast, relatively easy to handle and crew, and their shallow draft allowed them to travel far up rivers, allowing them to raid towns and villages that thought they were far enough from the sea to be safe from marauding Viking bands.

The Vikings weren't only pirates and raiders, they were also traders. From Scandinavia, they set off through the great Russian river systems, eventually reaching the Black Sea and Constantinople. They traveled as far as the Caspian, making contact with the lands of the Islamic Caliphate. Settlers followed the traders and the Rus "the boat men" settled in the land of Russia, giving that country its modern name.

The Vikings also undertook some extraordinary voyages of exploration. Setting out from Norway, the Vikings discovered and settled the Shetland and Faeroe Islands north of Scotland. How they navigated to these tiny, windswept islands in the middle of the North Sea is anyone's guess. From there they spread north to Iceland, which still uses the middle Viking alphabet, pronunciation and naming conventions of the 12th century. From Iceland they settled in Greenland and then on to North America, setting up small villages in Baffin Island and Newfoundland in what is now Canada. None of these settlements would survive and only scant archaeological traces remain.

In Europe, the Vikings would settle in England, Scotland, Ireland and northern France. The northern French would become the Normans, conquering England in 1066AD. The Normans would conquer Italy and the Kingdom of Sicily. They invaded the Byzantine Empire in the 12th century and would lead the Crusades. The Crusader kingdoms and counties owed their existence to the Norman's warlike spirit.

Longships were a central feature of the Viking world and it was no surprise that when a chieftain or king died, he chose to be buried in this symbol of power and prestige. Sometimes an older ship was used for this purpose, while on other occasions a specially build vessel was used. The ship was placed into an excavation, the deceased and his grave goods were loaded aboard and then the ship was covered with a burial mound. Standing out in the landscape, these burial mounds often attracted the attention of grave robbers, who damaged and destroyed a great many.

In 1879, some village children in the town of Gokstadt, decided to dig into the side of a great burial mound that stood in a local field. The tomb had been robbed centuries before so little of value was expected to be found, but when the children discovered the remains of a wooden boat, local historians and archeologists took an interest. In 1880 the tomb was professionally excavated and the remains of a 23.8 metre longship. The ship was exceptionally well preserved having been buried in a layer of blue clay.

The occupant of the ship grave was a 40 year old male whose bones showed signs of violence. His femur had been severed by a sword blow and a knife or sword had been run through his side. He had been placed within a small cabin erected on the deck of the ship. He was surrounded with grave goods, including swords, shields, a small cart, a sled, along with 12 horses and 6 dogs. The ship itself was a well made and very large warship, indicating the occupant was a very powerful individual.

25 years later, an excavation of a Viking burial mound at Oseburg Farm, near Tonesberg, uncovered another spectacular ship burial. This ship was marginally smaller than the Gokstadt ship at 21.3 metres, but had a much broader beam and a highly ornate prow and stem. While the Gokstadt ship was undoubtedly a warship, it seems likely the Oseburg ship was more ceremonial in function. This ship contained two bodies, an 80 year old woman and a 50 year old woman, along with a substantial amount of grave goods. It is uncertain which of the women was the focus of the burial.

The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway, was opened in 1926 to hold the preserved remains of the Osberg and Gokstadt ships along with their artifacts. The museum is built in the shape of a Scandinavian cruciform church.

Upon entry, the visitor is presented with the magnificent Oseberg ship.

Oseberg

The Gokstadt ship is actually half a metre longer than the Oseberg ship, but the lower prow and sleeker lines make her look smaller.

From the viewing landing you can get a decent view into the ship

Part of an intricately carved prow

A carved dragon head

The ornamental sled from the Gokstadt ship

Another carved dragon head

And another

Viking boots

The wheeled cart from Gokstadt

In the third hall is the remains of the Tune ship and a number of small boats. The Tune ship is much poorer condition that the others.

This cabin housed the body of the chieftain in the Gokstadt ship.

Along with a couple of small boats.

This style of boat is still to be seen in Scandinavian waters.

A couple of contemporary boats across from the Kon Tiki Museum a little way up the road.

As at 2022, the Viking Ship Museum is closed for reconstruction. It is planned to reopen in 2025-26. https://www.khm.uio.no/english/visit-us/viking-ship-museum/

If the rebuild looks anything like the artwork, the new museum will be magnificent.

Royal Ship Vasa (1626), Stockholm, Sweden

The rediscovery and salvage of the Royal ship, Vasa, has been described as Sweden's Apollo project - a technical undertaking totally unprecedented in its day. The lessons learned from the Vasa salvage have informed all subsequent shipwreck preservation projects. Before we talk of the salvage we first need to go back in time to 1626.

In the 17th century Sweden was a rising power in the eastern Baltic, expanding into what is now Finland, the Baltic states, northern Poland and western Russia. In order to project Swedish imperial power, King Gustavus Augustus (1594-1632) commissioned the construction of a powerful new warship for the royal fleet. The new ship was of the most modern design, following the latest naval architecture developments from the Netherlands and France. The design and construction of the ship was contracted to Dutch shipwrights. As the Vasa was intended to be Royal flagship, no expense was spared on its construction and decoration. The stern especially featured intricately carved ornamentation, with painted and gilded statuary. The ship was armed with locally cast bronze cannons carried on two decks.

After two years of construction, the Vasa - named after the Swedish royal dynasty - was completed, fitted out and ready for her maiden voyage. In summer 1628, a stability trial was conducted in port, where thirty men ran from one side of the deck to the other to test the ship's roll. The test was stopped after it became apparent the ship was top heavy and struggled to right itself naturally. Adjustments were made to the ballast and rigging to reduce her propensity to roll.

On 14 August 1628, the Vasa set off on her maiden voyage from the royal dockyards, just to the north of the royal palace on Gamla Stan (the central heart of old Stockholm). The whole of the city came out to watch the ship make her way past the palace and onward to the outer harbor and the Baltic beyond. There was a gentle breeze and the Vasa set only four sails, but as she turned away from the harbor toward the east, a gust of wind filled the sails and she heeled over. She righted herself momentarily before rolling completely over and capsizing in full view of the crowds of onlookers. The Vasa's maiden voyage had taken her less than one and a half kilometres from the shipyard where she had been built.

Fortunately all but thirty of the crew were rescued from the shipwreck. The captain and officers however were immediately arrested and interrogated in order to determine who was to blame for the loss. Both the crew and the shipbuilders blamed each other but despite weeks of questioning, no one was ever held accountable. Study of the ship after it was raised revealed that the ship had been built too narrow, with too high a centre of gravity, making her highly unstable. Additionally, the lower row of gun ports were very close to the waterline when the ship was running with the wind. When she began to heel over under the wind, water rushed in through the open gun ports, much as happened with the Mary Rose nearly a century earlier. https://militarymuseum.blogspot.com/2022/01/mary-rose-1511-portsmouth-uk.html

Attempts were immediately made to raise the ship by specialist salvors bought in from Venice. The first attempt resulted in the ship being righted on the sea-floor. The ship's masts, rigging and deck cannons were then removed to reduce weight. Cables were run under the Vasa and connected to two hulks anchored above her. The hulks were then partially filled with water, tightening the cable and then the water pumped from the hulks. As the hulks rose in the water, it was expected the Vasa would be lifted off the sea-bed and then hauled to the surface. Unfortunately, the Vasa remained firmly sunk in the mud and refused to budge. After the failed lift, the salvage team turned to recovery of most of the ships guns. A second attempt to recover the remaining guns occurred in 1663. Plans to recover the ship were considered on and off right through into the late nineteenth century.


In the 1950s there was a push to locate and salvage the Vasa. Recent salvages of viking era ships had shown that wooden wrecks were exceptionally well preserved in Scandinavia's cold, oxygen-poor waters. The position of the Vasa was generally known, she was near the shore and not exceptionally deep. Amateur divers relocated the wreck in 1956 and a project commenced to raise her. After consideration of options, the plan was similar to those attempted in the 17th century. Cables would be slung under the Vasa's hull and connected to a barge anchored above the wreck. The gun-ports and other holes in the Vasa's hull were sealed up and the ship would slowly be winched towards the surface. To free the ship from the mud - which now buried much of the ship - tunnels were blasted through the mud under her hull using high-pressure water jets. The entire operation was extremely hazardous and required the salvage divers to conduct 1300 individual dives. In August 1959, the preparations were completed and lifing commenced. Slowly, inch by inch, the Vasa was lifted from the sea-bed. After each lift, the wreck was stabilized and slit pumped from the interior to reduce the ship's weight.

Gradually, the Vasa was lifted and transported towards the dry dock. The entire lifting operation took over a year and half until on 18 April 1961, the Vasa finally broke the surface after 333 years on the sea-floor.

Amazingly, once the water was pumped from the Vasa's hull, she was able to float on her own. She was floated into the dry-dock.

Once in the dry-dock the Vasa was propped up and the cleaning began. After 333 years under the water, the hull needed to be constantly hosed down to prevent it from drying out and rotting.

A postcard of the Vasa in her original open air drydock. The well-preserved condition of the ship's hull is obvious.

It was clear that the preservation of the Vasa could not be completed in an open air drydock. A temporary enclosure was built over the drydock, but this made both preservation and viewing difficult. A special restoration facility and museum was constructed in the late 1980s. The Vasa was transferred to the museum in 1988. The Vasa Ship Museum was opened to the public in 1990.

The Vasa ship has now been completely restored. The ship is in amazing condition. The one complaint I have about the museum is that it is fairly cramped and difficult to get a good photograph of the whole ship. It is also rather dark inside - a necessity to prevent decomposition of the Vasa's wooden timbers - adding to the challenge. These photos were taken in 2015. I'm sure the quality would be better with a better camera.

There are three viewing decks that allow visitors to view the ship from all angles. This is a view down onto the main deck. The main deck timbers are not original.

A painting of King Gustav Augustus in the guise of a Roman Emperor.

Looking forward from the stern quarter. In the foreground is a painted replica of one of the ship's decorative carvings.

A view from the stern

The extremely elaborately carved stern with the Royal coat of arms

A view of the stern

Ceramics from the wreck

A large model of the Vasa as constructed

The Vasa model showcasing the elaborately painted and gilded decorations.

Two part series by Drachinifel:

Mary Rose (1511), Portsmouth, UK

The Tudor warship, Mary Rose, is one of the most famous ships of the early modern period, thanks entirely to her unfortunate loss during the Battle of the Solent in July 1545 and her rediscovery and salvage in the late 20th century. Her preserved remains can be viewed at the Mary Rose Museum at the National Maritime Museum in Portsmouth, UK.

The Mary Rose was laid down as a carrack warship in 1510 and launched in July 1511. For her time, she was an extremely large ship at 500 tons. Over 600 trees were reputed to be used in her construction. She was initially armed with a single row of bronze cannon of various calibers and was without the distinctive high fo'castle and aftercastles. In her original format she fought in campaigns against the French from 1512 to 1518, then again in the Second French War from 1521-1526.

In 1525 the ship was placed in reserve and in 1536 was 'made new' in a substantial reconstruction involving the addition of a second gun deck and increasing the height of the fore and aft castles. The castles were highly decorated with paint and carvings and mounted numerous small cannons. This reflected the nature of fighting at sea at the time. The large cannon on the lower decks were slow to reload and fire, as well as being generally inaccurate. After one or two salvos at distances of up to 200 metres or so, ships would close with other and the crews would battle it out with personal weapons. Consequently, ships with high castles fore and aft held an advantage of being able to fire down into the masses of soldiers and crews on their opponents decks. However, this also made these ships unwieldy to maneuver and unstable in rough weather.

In 1545, in response to the Henry the Eighth's marital troubles, a coalition of European powers went to war with England. The French raised an army and fleet and attempted an invasion across the channel. The English fleet attempted to attach the French fleet massing Le Harve in a preemptive attack, but the attack failed and the English fleet returned to their base in the Solent. The French fleet arrived at the mouth of the Solent on 16th July 1545 trapping the English fleet within the harbour. Here, the French fleet, whose fighting ships were primarily oar-powered galleys, had an advantage over the English fleet, which were predominately sail-powered galleons.

On the 19th July 1545 the English fleet found itself becalmed in the harbour. The French sent their galleys against the fleet. A fierce battle ensued between the French galleys and English 'row barges.' Despite losses, the English managed to slow the French advance until a wind began to pick up. The two largest galleons, the Henry Grace a Dieu and Mary Rose led the advance on the French galleys. As the Mary Rose drew close to the French galleys she turned and fired a broadside, then as she turned about to present her second broadside, she was caught by a gust of wind and heeled over. Water flooded through her open gun-ports and the ship rolled over and sank. Only 35 of her crew of 400 escaped the ship. This was due both to the speed with which the ship went down and the fact the decks had been hung with anti-boarding netting. The netting was intended to make it difficult for boarders to clamber aboard the ship, but in this case it trapped the crew within their sinking ship.

Despite the loss of the Mary Rose, the battle was ultimately inconclusive and the French eventually withdrew and returned to France. There were recriminations against the crew for the loss of the ship with blame being assigned to the gunners for failing to close the cannon ports when the ship turned. As the ship had been lost relatively close to shore, it was expected that the ship would be raised and a specialist Venetian salvage team were hired. Their plan was to run cables through the lower gunports in the ship's hull and attach them to two hulks at low tide. As the high time came in, the Mary Rose would then be lifted from seabed and slowly dragged to shore. However, when the first attempt was made in August 1545 it was found that the ship was lying on its side and stuck fast into the mud. There was no way for the salvors to run cables under the hull so the cables were tied to the masts in an attempt to right the ship, but this only resulted in the masts being snapped from the hull. In the end, the masts, rigging and a small number of cannon were salvaged. Over the next decade or so attempts were made to salvage the cannons and other items from the wreck.

The wreck was discovered again in the 19th century and more artefacts were salvaged. In 1970, the wreck was rediscovered after a five year search and plans were put in train to salvage the wreck. Prince Charles was one of the project's patrons. After several years of excavating arefacts from the wreck in-situ, it was recognised that these excavations were damaging the wreck, so plans began to raise what remained of the ship. As the Mary Rose's hull had collapsed over the centuries, it could not be raised whole, therefore a large metal cradle was constructed around the wreck so that it could be lifted from the seabed. On 11 October 1982, the Mary Rose saw daylight for the first time in 437 years.

Preservation of the ship's waterlogged timbers required special treatment to prevent them drying out and rotting so a very art-deco museum and preservation centre was built to house the wreck and its artefacts in the lee of HMS Victory.

A model of the Mary Rose at the time of her loss.

The Mary Rose had laid on her starboard side, deep in the mud. The port side of the ship had subsequently rotted and collapsed over time. Within the museum, the ship's starboard side has been braced and set upright within an airtight room that is constantly misted and flushed with fresh water to remove mud and salts from the wood.

From the observation decks looking onto the wreck, you can effectively view into what would have been the rear half of the ship. I must admit that after having seen the amazing Swedish warship, the Vasa, several times I had never been that interested the Mary Rose wreck as I believed there would be little to see. However really surprised and impressed with the scale of the remains and the way they have been presnted. There is much more of the wreck than the photos of the salvage would suggest.

It wasn't only the sailors who went down with the ship. The ship's dog also shared their watery grave.

The ships oven. Fire was always a risk on wooden ships so the ships kitchen had a carefully built brick oven.

The kettle drum stove

The officers silverware

An officer's chest

The cannons were a mix of 'modern' muzzle-loading bronze cannon on naval carriages and older breech-loading iron cannon on heavy and largely immobile carriages.

An older-style iron cannon and stone shot

The ship's carpenter's tools

Personal possessions including books, hats, shoes, pipes were well preserved in the mud.

I had not expected much from the Mary Rose museum as the salvaged wreckage seemed rather meager to me. Instead, I was really impressed by the amount of artifacts, the quality of the display and the scale of the ship's remains. The surviving starboard side is actually quite huge and even though it is still undergoing preservation, it is really well displayed. I highly recommend the museum for anyone interested in maritime history. https://maryrose.org/

Do check out the Vasa museum in Sweden:
https://militarymuseum.blogspot.com/2022/01/royal-ship-vasa-1626-stockholm-sweden.html