The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway/Volume 1/Chapter 4
CHAP. IV.
STATE OF THE USEFUL ARTS AMONG THE NORTHMEN.
The architectural remains of public buildings in a country—of churches, monasteries, castles,—as they are the most visible and lasting monuments, are often taken as the only measure of the useful arts in former times. Yet a class of builders, or stone-masons, wandering from country to country, like our civil engineers and rail-road contractors at the present day, may have constructed these edifices; and a people or a nobility sunk in ignorance, superstition, and sloth, may have paid for the construction, without any diffusion of the useful arts, or of combined industry, in the inert mass of population around. Gothic architecture in both its branches, Saxon and Norman, has evidently sprung from a seafaring people. The nave of the Gothic cathedral, with its round or pointed arches, is the inside of a vessel with its timbers, and merely raised upon posts, and reversed. No working model for a Gothic fabric could be given that would not be a ship turned upside down, and raised on pillars. The name of the main body of the Gothic church—the nave, navis, or ship of the building, as it is called in all the northern languages of Gothic root—shows that the wooden structure of the ship-builder has given the idea and principles to the architect, who has only translated the wood work into stone, and reversed it, and raised it to be the roof instead of the bottom of a fabric. The Northmen, however, can lay no claim to any attainment in architecture. The material and skill have been equally wanting among them. From the pagan times nothing in stone and lime exists of any importance or merit as a building; and the principal structure of an early age connected with Christianity, the cathedral of Drontheim, erected in the last half of the 12th century, cannot certainly be considered equal to the great ecclesiastical structures of Durham, York, or other English cathedrals, scarcely even to that of the same period erected in Orkney—the cathedral of Saint Magnus. We have, however, a less equivocal test of the progress and diffusion of the useful arts among the Northmen than the church-building of their Saxon contemporaries, for which they wanted the material. When we read of bands of ferocious, ignorant, pagan barbarians, landing on the coasts of England or France, let us apply a little consideration to the accounts of them, and endeavour to recollect how many of the useful arts must be in operation, and in a very advanced state too, and very generally diffused in a country, in order to fit out even a single vessel to cross the high seas, much more numerous squadrons filled with bands of fighting men. Legs, arms, and courage, the soldier and his sword, can do nothing here. We can understand multitudes of ignorant, ferocious barbarians, pressing in by land upon the Roman empire, overwhelming countries like a cloud of locusts, subsisting, as they march along, upon the grain and cattle of the inhabitants they exterminate, and settling, with their wives and children, in new homes; but the moment we come to the sea we come to a check. Ferocity, ignorance, and courage, will not bring men across the ocean. Food, water, fuel, clothes, arms, as well as men, have to be provided, collected, transported; and be the ships ever so rude, wood-work, iron-work, rope-work, cloth-work, cooperwork, in short almost all the useful arts, must be in full operation among a people, before even a hundred men could be transported, in any way, from the shores of Norway or Denmark to the coasts of England or France. Fixed social arrangements too, combinations of industry working for a common purpose, laws and security of person and property, military organisation and discipline, must have been established and understood, in a way and to an extent not at all necessary to be presupposed in the case of a tumultuous crowd migrating by land to new settlements. Do the architectural remains, or the history of the Anglo-Saxon people, or of any other, in the 8th or 9th century, and down to the 13th, give us any reasonable ground for supposing among them so wide a diffusion of the arts of working in wood and iron, of raising or procuring by commerce flax or hemp, of the arts of making ropes, spinning, and weaving sail-cloth, preserving provisions, coopering water casks, and all the other combinations of the primary arts of civilised life, implied in the building and fitting out vessels to carry three or four hundred men across the ocean, and to be their resting place, refuge, and home for many weeks, months, and on some of their viking cruises even for years? There is more of civilisation, and of a diffusion of the useful arts on which civilisation rests, implied in the social state of a people who could do this, than can be justly inferred from a people quarrying stones, and bringing them to the hands of a master-builder to be put together in the shape of a church or castle. Historians tell us that when Charlemagne, in the 9th century, saw some piratical vessels of the Northmen cruising at a distance in the Mediterranean, to which they had for the first time found their way, that he turned away from the window, and burst into tears. Was it the barbarism of these pirates, or their civilisation, their comparative superiority in the art of navigation, and of all belonging to it, that moved him? None of the countries under his sway, none of the Christian populations of Europe in the 7th, 8th, or 9th centuries, had ships and men capable of such a voyage. The comparative state of ship-building and navigation, in two countries with sea coasts, is a better test of their comparative civilisation and advance in all the useful arts than that of their church-building. Compared to Italy, Sicily, or Bavaria, Great Britain or Scandinavia, or the United States of America, would be utterly barbarous and uncivilised, if structures of stone were a measure of the civilisation and general diffusion of the useful arts among a people. It is to be observed, also, that the ships of the Northmen in those ages did not belong to the king, or to the state, but to private adventurers and peasants, and were fitted out by them; and were gathered by a levy or impressment, from all the country, when required for the king's service. The arts connected with the building and fitting out such ships must have been generally diffused. The fleets were not, like those of King Alfred, created by, and belonging to, the king. We need not have any great notion of the kind and size of the vessels gathered by a levy from the pea¬ santry; but the worst and least of them must have been sea-worthy, and of a size to navigate along the coast from the most northerly district, such as Halogaland, to the Baltic,—a distance of twelve degrees of latitude; they must have been of a size to carry and shelter men, with their provisions, clothes, and arms; and the arms of those days required great room for stowage. Stones were an ammunition which it was necessary to carry in every ship; because on the rocky steep coasts of Norway, or on the muddy shores of the Baltic, pebbly beaches at which this kind of ammunition could be replaced are not common. Swords, spears, battle-axes, arrow-heads, bows, and bow-strings had all to be kept dry, and out of the sea-spray; for rust and damp would make them useless as weapons. These, consequently, had to he stowed under a deck, or in chests. The shields alone could bear exposure to wet, and they appear to have been hung outside from the rails all round the vessel; so that they would occupy the place of quarter-cloths, or wash-boards, above the gunwale of our shipping. The stowage of their plunder also, which consisted of bulky articles, as malt, meal, grain, cattle, wool, clothes, arms taken in the forays on the coast, (and they had transport vessels as well as war vessels with them on their marauding expeditions,) required vessels of a considerable size. We need not suppose that, of the 1200 vessels which King Olaf in his last levy to oppose Canute the Great had assembled and brought to the Baltic, the greater number were more than large boats, of perhaps thirty feet of keel, with a forecastle deck, a cabin aft, and the centre open, and merely tilted over at night to shelter the crewr. Yet to construct many hundreds of such rude craft as this,—and any kind of boat or ship below this, as a class of vessels, could not have withstood sea and weather along the coast of Norway, and across the Skagerackto the Sound,—implies a general diffusion of the art of working in iron; a trade in the arts of raising and smelting the ore; and a knowledge, in every district of the country, of the smith-work and carpenter-work, and tools and handicrafts necessary for ship-building and fitting out ships for sea. We have some data in the sagas from which we can arrive at the dimensions and appearance of the larger class of vessels used by the Northmen, allowing that the ordinary vessels of the peasants gathered by a levy could be no larger or better than large herring boats. We have in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvesson some details of the building of the Long Serpent and the Crane, sometime between the years 995 and 1000. The Long Serpent is called the largest vessel that had ever been built in Norway to that time. These were long-ships, which appear to have been a denomination of ships of war, distinguishing them from last-ships, or ships for carrying cargoes. The long-ship was of much smaller breadth in proportion to the length. The long-ships appear to have been divided into two classes: dragon ships, from the figure head probably of a dragon being used on them, and which appear to have had from twenty to thirty rowers on each side; and snekiars, or cutters, with from ten to twenty rowers on a side. The Crane had thirty banks for rowers; and the forecastle and poop were high, and the vessel very narrow in proportion to her length. The Long Serpent had thirty-four banks for rowers, and the saga gives some interesting details concerning her. The length of her keel, we are told, that rested upon the grass, was 74 ells. This ell is stated by Macpherson, in his " Annals of Commerce," on the authority of Thorkelin, a learned antiquary, who was keeper of the Loyal Library at Copenhagen, to have been equal to a foot and a half English measure. We have, therefore, 111 feet at the least, as the length of keel of this vessel. This would be within about 10 feet of the length of keel of one of our frigates of 42 guns, and of 942 tons burden, and of a breadth of 38 feet and a depth of 13 feet; or, taking a steam vessel of 111 feet of keel, the extreme breadth would be 22 feet, the depth 13½ feet, the tonnage 296 tons, and the horse-power 120. These are dimensions and proportions given for 111 feet of keel in the able articles on ship building and on steam navigation in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The Long Serpent, being a rowing as well as sailing vessel, would have as much rake of stem and stern as a steamer; and would be as long on deck. She is described as of good breadth, but the breadth is not stated; well timbered, for which the saga refers to the knees for supporting the beams, which were then to be seen; and with thirty-four benches or banks for rowers, which would be the beams in a modern vessel. One of our long large steam vessels, with high poop deck and forecastle deck, low waist, and small breadth, would probably have very nearly the same appearance in the water as such a vessel as the Long Serpent; only, instead of paddle-boxes and wheels on each side, there would be thirty-four oars out on each side between the forecastle and the poop. The Northmen appear by the saga to have been lavish in gilding and painting their vessels. One of these long low war-ships of the vikings, with a gilded head representing a dragon on the stem, and a gilded representation of its tail at the stern curling over the head of the steersman, with a row of shining red and white shields hung over the rails all round from stem to stern, representing its scaly sides, and thirty oars on each side giving it motion and representing its legs, must have been no inapt representation of the ideal figure of a dragon creeping over the blue calm surface of a narrow gloomy fiord, sunk deep, like some abode for unearthly creatures, between precipices of bare black rock, which shut out the full light of day. Dragon was a name for a class or size of war-ships, but each had its own name. The Crane, the Little Serpent, the Long Serpent, the Bison, and other vessels of about thirty banks for rowers, are mentioned; and vessels of from twenty to twenty-five banks appear to have been common among the considerable bonders, and cutters of ten or fifteen banks to have been the ordinary class of vessels of all who went on sea. A vessel of thirty or thirty-four banks for rowers would have that number of oars out on each side, and not fifteen or seventeen only on each side; because the breadth of such a vessel would be sufficient to give two rowers, sitting midships, a sufficient length of lever between their hands and the fulcrum at the gunwales on either side, to wield and work any length of oar that could be advantageous: but in the smaller class of vessels of ten or fifteen oars it is likely that one oar only was worked on each bank, as in our men-of-war's boats, the whole breadth of the vessel being required for the portion of the lever or oar within the fulcrum or gunwale. Under the feet of the rowers, in the waist of the vessel, the chests of arms, stones for casting, provisions, clothing, and goods, have been stowed, and protected by a deck of moveable hatches. Upon this lower deck the crew appear to have slept at night, sheltered from the weather by a tilt or awning, when not landed and under tents on the beach for the night. Ship-tents are mentioned in the outfit of vessels as being of prime necessity, as much as ship-sails. In the voyages in the sagas, we read of fleets collected in the north of Norway, from Drontheim, and even from Halogaland, sailing south along the coast every summer as far as the Sound, and thence into the Baltic, or along the coast of Jutland and Sleswig, and thence over to Britain, or to the other coasts. The major part of the vessels appear to have taken a harbour every night, or to have been laid, on the coast of Norway, close to the rocks, in some sheltered spot, with cables on the land, or with the fore-foot of the vessel touching the beach; and the people either landed and set up tents on shore, or made a tilt on board by striking the mast, and laying the tilt cloths or sails over it. The large open vessels which at present carry the dried fish from the Lofoden isles to Bergen, although open for the sake of stowage, are of a size to carry masts of 40 feet long which are struck by the crew when not under sail, there being no standing rigging, and only one large square-sail. This appears to have been the rig and description of all the ancient vessels, great or small, of the Northmen. They appear to have had a certain show and luxury about their sails; for we read of them having stripes of white, red, and blue cloths; and we read of Sigurd the Crusader waiting for a fortnight at the mouth of the Dardanelles with a fair wind for going up the strait, until he got a wind with which he could sail up with the sails trimmed fore and aft in his ships, that the inhabitants on shore might see the splendour of his sails. These large rowing vessels had one advantage belonging only to steam vessels in our times, that they could back out of seen dangers; and being under command of oars, and with small draught of water, shallows, rocks, and lee shores were not such formidable dangers to them as to our sailing vessels. Many important towns in those times, as for instance all our Cinque Ports, appear to have been situated rather with a reference originally to a good convenience for beaching such vessels, than to good sheltered harbours for riding at anchor in. The whole coast of the peninsula, from the North Cape round to Tornea, is protected from the main ocean by an almost continuous belt of islands, islets, rocks, and half-tide reefs, or skerries, within which the navigation is comparatively smooth, although very intricate for vessels with sails only. This inland passage "within the skerries" is used now, even in winter, by small boats going to the cod-fishing in the Lofoden isles from the Bergen district. It is only at particular openings, as at the mouths of the great fiords, that this continuous chain of sheltering isles and rocks is broken, and that the eye of the ocean, as the Norwegian fishermen express it, looks in upon the land. By waiting opportunities to cross these openings vessels of a small class, we may suppose, have accompanied King Olaf in his foray to the Danish islands, in hopes of booty more profitable than fish; and we need not believe his fleet of 1200 vessels raised by bis levy to have been all of a large class. When his son Magnus the Good went to Denmark to claim the crown, upon the death of Hardicanute of England, in consequence of an agreement that the survivor of the two should succeed to the heritage of the other, he is stated to have had seventy large vessels with him, by which we may suppose vessels of twenty banks or upwards, such as the considerable bonders possessed, to be meant; and this number probably expresses more correctly the number of large ships then in the country. The size of the war-vessels appears to have been reckoned by the banks, or by the rooms between two banks of oars. Each room or space, we may gather from the sagas, was the berth of eight men, and was divided into half-rooms, starboard and larboard, of four men for working the corresponding oars. When the ships were advancing two men worked the oar, one covered them with his shield from the enemy's missiles, and one shot at the enemy. When the ships got into line, they were bound together by their stems and sterns; and the forecastles and poops, which were decked, and raised high in the construction of their vessels, and sometimes -with temporary stages or castles on them, were the posts of the fighting men. The main manoeuvre seems to have consisted in laying the high forecastles and poops favourably for striking down with stones, arrows, and casting spears, upon a lower vessel. They used grappling irons for throwing into the enemy's ship, and dragging her towards them. But these and similar observations will occur to the reader of the many sea-fights recounted in the Heimskringla.
One of the most indispensable articles for a large vessel,— one for which no substitute can be found, and which cannot be produced single-handed, but requires the co-operation of many branches of industry,—is the anchor. Boats may be anchored by a stone, or a book of strong wood sunk by a heavy stone attached to it; but vessels of from 50 to 111 feet of keel, such as the war-ships and last-ships of the Northmen, must have carried anchors of from ten to fifteen hundred weight at the least, and we read of their riding out heavy gales. To forge, or procure in any way such anchors, betokens a higher state of the useful arts among these pagan Northmen than we usually allow them.[1] Iron is the mother of all the useful arts; and a people who could smelt iron from the ore, and work it into all that is required for ships of considerable size, from a nail to an anchor, could not have been in a state of such utter barbarism as they are represented to us. We may fairly doubt of their gross ignorance and want of civilisation in their pagan state, when we find they had a literature of their own, and laws, institutions, social arrangements, a spirit and character very analogous to the English, if not the source from which the English flowed; and were in advance of all the Christian nations in one branch at least of the useful arts, in which great combinations of them are required—the building, fitting out, and navigating large vessels.
- ↑ The Museum of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen contains many articles, both of ornament and use, which display great ingenuity and good workmanship in metal, and betoken a considerable division of trades and of labour in their production, even in the earliest times.