In 1904, a Viking burial boat was found at the Oseberg estate in Norway. It was a drakkar made of oak, it was buried around 834. The burial, as it turned out, was female, it is assumed that this ship belonged to Queen Asa from the Yngling family. Together with her, the remains of another woman were discovered, apparently a servant, as it turned out, she had a rare haplogroup U7, which is found only in Western Asia.
The burial was robbed in antiquity, the robbers took away all things from valuable metals. But there were many objects made of wood, as well as remnants of fabrics, in particular, there were many pieces of silk, modern research has shown that this silk was produced in Persia. It is assumed that the Vikings received silk fabrics as a result of trade relations with the East, as well as raids on the Transcaucasus and Northern Iran using the Dnieper and Volga rivers.
Excavations of the ship in Oseberg - the stern of the boat. (clickable)
Excavations at Oseberg. Local soils allowed the wooden ship to survive almost entirely. (clickable) 
Transportation of the ship from Oseberg to the museum. 
The boat from Oseberg at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. 
Ship after restoration. 
Aft part of the boat from Oseberg. The ship is 21.6 meters long and 5.1 meters wide. He had 15 pairs of oarlocks for 30 rowers. 
Together with the ship, a wooden ritual wagon and four wooden sledges, which also had ritual significance, were found in the burial. 
The wagon is decorated with carvings in the Scandinavian (Germanic) animal style. 
Reconstruction of the funeral in Oseberg. It is believed that the Viking queen was placed in the barrow when it was half finished. 
The burial also included the remains of ten paired horses and four dogs. 
Images from the sides of the ritual wagon from Oseberg. 
Wooden sleigh from Oseberg. 
Another Viking ship from the Drakkar Museum in Oslo is a boat from Gokstad. This ship was about 23 m long and 5.1 m wide. The Gokstad ship was found in 1880, dendrochronological dating showed that the tree for it was cut down around 890. 
Transportation of the Gokstad ship. 
The Gokstad ship had a wooden burial chamber in the form of a hut; on the boat from Oseberg, such a chamber was worse preserved. It was also equipped with wooden shields along the sides. In the burial chamber were the remains of a man in a sitting position, 1.8 m tall and over 50 years old, the skeletons of 12 horses and 6 dogs were also present in the burial, besides them, peacock feathers and bones were found on the stern of the vessel. 
Ruins of a wooden burial chamber on a boat from Gokstad. 
Reconstruction of a boat from Gokstad at the Viking Ship Museum. (clickable)
In short - yes, small, but it was. Its presence is clearly visible on the exhibits of ships that archaeologists managed to get. More on this later in the article.
First, remember that there are at least 2 types of Viking ships that are quite different: . The main differences are that the first was created so that the landing of the vessel was higher (better patency in shallow water) and the ship itself was lighter and faster. Accordingly - the total saving of space. The second (knorr) was created for a large carrying capacity and the maximum possible cruising range.
Knorrs
If we talk about knorrs, then there is no doubt about the presence of a hold. But this is not a full-fledged under-deck space in full growth, as everyone imagines. In knorrs, the landing of the ship was deep, the sides were higher. All this in order to accommodate as much cargo as possible, and so that the cargo is protected from sea waves and water as best as possible.
In the middle, the deck was open to accommodate oversized cargo, including animals. The latter still somehow had to be fed, to watch them during the journey. There was indeed a lot of protected space under the two deck halves. Real hold. But, of course, not for living. Even with such a height from the bottom of the ship to the deck, it is hard to imagine how people are accommodated there.
Universal ships, carvies
But with the space below the deck of a warship, the situation is different. First, let's look at the cross-section of the universal Viking ship using the Gokstad ship as an example:
There is very little of it. In the photographs of a replica of this 22-meter boat, you can see for yourself the scarcity of space.
In fact, this space would not exist if it were not necessary to make the deck even due to protruding beams - beams transversely strengthening the ship.
Pay attention to one more feature - this space could be used for laying ballast. Also, the hold had to be accessible for disassembly in order to scoop out water, which inevitably accumulated in turbulent weather. And, perhaps, they did not scoop it out until it reached the level of the deck or until the boat moored.
Based on all this, it is difficult to imagine that such a hold was seriously considered for storing anything. What is the direct responsibility of the hold. But, nevertheless, some simple, not bulky cargo could be placed there. For example, shields, tackle. At the same time, given that the hold was not flooded with water.
Here is another replica of the Gokstad ship, built in Norway in 1892-1893. Now it is stored in Chicago, USA. The photographs clearly show the volume of space:
Here is what is written on the website of the museum, where the Gokstad boat is stored:
The deck consists of planks of pine that could be lifted so that the crew could easily bale out water if necessary. This also provided storage capacity for a little cargo.
The deck consists of pine planks that could be raised to allow the crew to easily bail out water when needed. Thanks to this, there was access to space for a small load.
The Gokstad ship is a universal ship (karvi), i.e. it was used both as a combat and for transporting cargo (on deck). This type of boat was common until the beginning of the 11th century, when a clear division into merchant ships and combat ships appeared - longships(longskips) or longships(drakens, dragons).
Drakkars
cross section longship, longship indicates that space also exists, but has a different form. The reason is the peculiarity of the drakkar - it is narrower and longer. For example, the width of Skuldelev-2 is only 3.8 meters versus 5.1 for the Gokstad boat. Although the length of this drakkar is much longer (30m versus 23.8m).
Look at the image of the cross section of the deck of Skuldelev 2 (Skuldelev 2) at the top. The space below deck gains in height, but loses in width. Don't forget about ballast and water accumulation.
Results
Finally, if we consider viking drakkars- yes, there was a hold. It could be used to store some small items, but no more.
Despite the inconvenient shape, the lack of full access to the entire space, flooding with water make such a hold, nevertheless, a very good way to save space on the deck. In cases where nothing should interfere in order to cope with the elements in stormy weather or for large space, for mobility in boarding combat or side-to-side combat.
Characteristic
Image of warriors in a drakkar on Stura-hammar stone I
The dimensions of drakkars varied from ten to 19 meters, and later, with the development of shipbuilding, they began to reach up to 30 meters. Drakkars were used as for everyday tasks, for example trade, and for military purposes (most often for the latter), as well as for long-distance sea voyages, which became possible due to the special design of the ship. On drakkars, the Vikings first sailed to the shores of Iceland, England, Greenland and North America.
The heads of carved dragons mounted on the bow often made it clear what was the social and financial position of the owner of the ship. Because due to their status and abilities, the heads of dragons were decorated in different ways. The dragon's head on the bow of the ship was also used to intimidate enemies. This was especially true when raiding new lands. For example, when the Vikings first went to the Western Lands, they sailed to the shores of an unknown country - it was Northumbria.
When the Viking ship swam ashore, the monks noticed it and were frightened by the mere sight of a ship with a dragon on its bow. They then thought that it was the devils who came down to earth to punish Christians for their sins. The soldiers, seeing such ships, often abandoned their posts and fled.
Safety and success in navigation largely depended on the design and properties of the ships used by the Vikings - their strength and stability, seaworthiness, carrying capacity. It was in the Middle Ages that shipbuilding radically changed navigation. The drakkars of the legendary northern warriors and Viking travelers are a prime example of these changes. The abundance of wood - oak and pine, as well as the availability of first-class iron ore, which allowed the Scandinavians to make excellent iron tools, contributed to the rapid construction of many ships. Which became the real basis of their civilization. warships were called "drakkar" (dragon).
Many hevdings (noble Normans) had purple sails embroidered with gold, and on gilded masts they had golden lanterns or weathervanes in the form of birds with spread wings. An important advantage of the drakkar was the keel - a longitudinal beam made of a solid oak trunk, running along the entire bottom from bow to stern. The keel gave the ship strength and stability on the wave and allowed the ship to be dragged ashore without damaging the hull.
In the middle of the ship there was one mast 10-12 meters high, which could be removed and stored on the deck in calm weather. The length of the oars could be 4-6 m, the number of rowers from 14 to 20 rows and even more. The steering oar, which was turned using a short transverse handle - tiller, was usually located on the stern on the right.
Drakkars were very well designed, which made it possible to navigate rivers and fjords. For the same reason, drakkars made it possible to land troops in the depths of enemy territory. The low sides made the drakkar barely distinguishable against the backdrop of sea waves, which made it possible to merge with the waves.
Some drakkars, discovered during archaeological excavations and carefully restored, have survived to this day. Now they are exhibited in the Viking ship museums in Norway and Denmark.
The sides of the drakkar were covered with shields to protect the rowers. There was nothing on deck to make the ship heavier. Similar in design to the Viking merchant ship, the knorr could even transport livestock.
Scientists know about this thanks to the most famous embroidery of the Middle Ages - the "carpet of Queen Matilda", which immortalized the exploits of her husband, King William I the Conqueror.
On a huge strip of canvas 68.3 m long and 50 cm wide (“Bayenne canvas”) that has survived to this day, 58 scenes of the conquest of England by William I the Conqueror are embroidered.
The ships on which William I transported his army from Normandy to England were also embroidered on this canvas. Striped sails and masts are clearly visible, decorated with “golden” weathercocks - wind indicators, most likely made of slotted gilded tin. Then, in 1066, to transport troops and cavalry, William I gathered a whole fleet of more than 100 drakkars, on which he crossed the English Channel. Due to their design, it was possible to enter the very shallow water on the Drakkars, which allowed the soldiers to quickly leave the ships.
Varieties of Drakkars
The Norwegians challenged the primacy of Columbus in the discovery of America by sailing to Chicago on an exact copy of the Gokstad drakkar.
One of the representatives of the Drakkars can be called gokstad ship(Nor. Gokstadskipet) - this type of Viking ship of the 9th century was most often used as a funerary ship. Discovered in 1880 in a mound on the coast of the Norwegian Sandefjord (Vestfold province). This ship from Gokstad, exhibited in the Drakkar Museum, has a length of approximately 23 m and a width of 5.1 m. The sailing rig consists of one large rake sail sewn from vertical panels. The length of the rowing oar is 5.5 m.
A beautiful and slender ship with a steeply raised side line on both sides was built entirely of oak and richly ornamented. The excellent seaworthiness of this type of vessel was proved by 12 young Norwegians in 1893. They built a replica of the Gokstad ship, after which they crossed the North Atlantic and arrived in Chicago for the Columbian exhibition, the ship showed average speed travel 9-10 knots, which was a very good indicator for later large sailing ships.
Oseberg boat.
oseberg ship- an oak Viking ship (shnekkkar), discovered in 1904 near Tønsberg in the Norwegian province of Vestfold. The ship was dug out of the ground and with all its contents is in the Drakkar Museum in Oslo. Judging by the data found, the ship was launched around 820 and was used in coastal waters until 834, after which it was used as a funeral ship.
The length of the ship is 21.6 meters, the width is 5.1 meters, the size of the mast could vary from 6 to 10 m. With a sail area of 90 m², the ship could reach speeds of up to 10 knots. 15 pairs of barrels indicates that there were about 30 rowers on the ship. The bow and stern were painted in the form of woven animals.
Although the mound was plundered in the Middle Ages, archaeologists were able to find the remains of two women of high social status (young and old), fragments of oriental silk fabrics, a well-preserved wooden cart and even peacock bones in the ship. This speaks of a flourishing trade.
Scandinavian scholars have been trying for a very long time to connect these women with the Yngling dynasty. But preliminary DNA analysis indicates that the younger of them had the U7 haplogroup, which is practically absent among Europeans, but is often found in the Middle East, especially among Iranians.
Tyun ship, exposition in the museum
Tyne ship(Nor. Tuneskipet) - this ship of the 10th century was used by the Vikings for funeral events. Discovered in 1867 by archaeologist Oluf Rüge in a boat mound on the Haugen farm in the village of Rolvsey in Thune, Ostfold, Norway. Exhibited at the Drakkar Museum, Oslo.
The ship was built around 900 AD. e., sheathing is made of oak overlap. The vessel is partially preserved, and was probably 22 meters long with eleven or twelve rows of oars. The width of the vessel is 4.35 meters, the length of the keel is 14 meters. The ship is a massive structure with frames made of unbent logs of the appropriate shape, thick beams and a solid railing.
Team
The number of people on the ship depended on the size of the ship itself. There was one rower behind each oar. The captain and his assistants also formed part of the team. When the Vikings went hiking on drakkars, it became their home, where each Viking had his own place. In military campaigns, much more people were transported on drakkars. There are cases when drakkars transported relatively large detachments (up to one and a half hundred Viking warriors), however, in this case, the ships most often sailed in coastal waters, and at night the detachments always landed on the shore.
building
This is how the skin was attached to the drakkars.
Drakkars were built from many types of wood, among which the most important were ash, pine and oak. Shipbuilders specifically chose trees with natural curves for the keel and frames for Viking ships. As soon as the tree was cut down, they did not wait for it to dry, the tree was split in half with wedges, and then the resulting blanks were split further, exclusively along the fibers. The resulting boards could be bent without fear that they would crack. To give the boards additional flexibility, they were moistened with water and held over a fire. The carpenter's ax was the most important tool. It was believed that one of them was enough to build a ship, but other tools were also used: chisels, drills and others.
Overlapping boards were used for sheathing. Depending on what the tradition of the builders was, the boards were fastened with iron nails and rivets, wooden nails, or even tied together. Then the whole structure, just like now, was caulked and pitched. Thus, when moving through the water, an air gap was created, which increased stability, stability and speed of movement: the greater the speed became, the more stable and smoother the ship moved.
Construction of Drakkars today
Various historical organizations tried to recreate this or that ship using original technologies. For example, "The Sea Horse of Glendaloo" (Dat. Havhingsten fra Glendalough), a 30-meter warship, is an almost exact copy of the Skuldelev II ship, built in 1042 in Ireland and sunk at the end of the 11th century in the Danish fjord Roskilde (the ship is named after the village of Skuldelev, not far from which, in 1962, marine archaeologists found on the bottom of the fjord are the remains of 5 ships). About 300 oak trunks, 7000 iron nails and rivets, 600 liters of resin and 2 km of ropes were spent on the creation of the "Sea Horse of Glendale".
Joining the ranks of the drakkar-builders, you subconsciously try to resemble the images of the harsh northerners drawn by your imagination. The Vikings were considered among the finest storytellers in Europe, whose sagas continue to fascinate modern readers. One of the hallmarks of Old Norse poetry, legends and sagas is black humor (humor of the gallows). Usually, when one of the heroes voices such a joke in the Viking sagas, it becomes a bad omen, in such works there are much more such jokes than one might expect. Unfortunately, modern man it is difficult to withstand such literary competition, especially within the framework of a short article.
However, this also applies to the ship component, given that in those distant times there were masters the highest qualification, capable even "by eye" of building an excellently stable and high-speed ship. Such a master was accompanied by a whole team of various specialists: woodworkers, board masters, carvers in figured details and blacksmiths, as well as a number of auxiliary workers. Fortunately, I have to build a boat five dozen times smaller, so the work team is limited to the cat Dasha, and the overseas lumberjack Proxxon.
Considering that the review of the construction of the drakkar model from the Italian company Amati is not unique in the modeling community, therefore I will try to be more or less brief and focus not on general plans, but on trifles and nuances.
I'll start with the box and contents. It fully corresponded to the declared. Unless some rupture of the corner of the box lid caused aesthetic dissatisfaction, but the seller's 10 percent discount ("Shipyard on the table") completely compensated for it. The paper component of the content is shown in the photo. There are no complaints about the quality of drawings and instructions, both standard and translated in Russian.
Having overcome with great difficulty the age-old desire of the modeller to assemble the skeleton of the ship as soon as possible for its speedy 3D visualization, I started working on the plywood issue, which, in my opinion, is eternal for European manufacturers. Starting with pasting the ends of the frames-toptimbers-beams (Underline whatever applicable) and keel, continued with double cloning above the underlined elements. I glued lime (in the good sense of the word) 0.5 mm thick veneer on bends with a soldering iron, depriving myself of smoke breaks for the period of glue drying, since the process took place almost instantly. Beams, processed on both sides, have a thickness of 3 mm, which, after not tricky calculations, gives a thickness of 15 cm of natural size, which may not be entirely correct, but not fatal.
In addition, with the help of a simple engraving device (by the way, very light and convenient) from Proxxon, I created a kind of wood carving on pre-planned parts of the keel. The word "type" is used to distinguish between real carving and that primitive, semi-rock painting that I did. That's when I regretted the missing figure carvers mentioned above. The only thing I can say in my defense is that such "refined cubism" is found on the neck and partly on the head of a dragon that adorned the stem of a ship found at the mouth of the Scheldt River.
Awakening the spirit of a sadistic animalist in myself, I shamelessly sawed off a potential dragon of his strange-looking dog tail from the notorious plywood, and, as far as my talents allow, cut a new, more elegant one from an apple tree (by the way, the material for cutting is simply wonderful), after which spliced it on the pins with the "torso".
Finished with preparatory work, quite quickly and seamlessly assembled the "skeleton of the ship" from the keel and frames. Malkovka also passed without excesses, and he removed the "extra" from all the frames, and not just the three step-like ones indicated in the instructions. Another nuance is the impossibility of processing the skin from the outside, because plywood, uncompromising in its uncontested nature, has three multi-colored layers, which, as the file or sandpaper is exposed, festively and joyfully demonstrate themselves to the outside world.
As a result, it was not possible to perfectly combine the skin. Either because of the crooked Amati laser, or a similar defect in my hands. True, one moment is slightly inspiring: the case turned out to be surprisingly strong and resistant to deformation, especially after the nailing operation I had undertaken. I don’t see the point in describing this action again, I will only note that the distance between the dowels is 4 mm and the number is uncountable.
It's a joke. Two packs of 600 pieces were enough (during my laziness I used only the tips sharpened on both sides, I left the “carcasses” for future turning experiments), the toothpicks turned out to be bamboo and rather heavy to process, so the prepared grinder turned out to be almost useless for outdoor work, but completely rehabilitated itself in the processing of the skin from the inside. In general, in order to save sandpaper and not demonstrate to others your rich supply of obscene words, it is better to use birch dowels.
After nailing with bamboo, it was time to install the deck, more precisely 4 of its components, as well as the missing beams, with a strange coincidence equal to the number of those that were taken out. Having installed all of the above, as well as some additional elements on the stem and stern, I moved on to the next logical operation - to decking. To do this, I first had to overcome my innate laziness and decide to cover not with solid deck boards, but, as expected, with small floorboards lying on T-shaped beams, which were not fixed by anything and, of course, without any nailing - for accessibility in case any hold stash of harsh northern men, as well as the performance of an unattractive, but such a necessary job of scooping up dark bilge waters. Two tools were very useful for this work: the aforementioned in an unequal battle with bamboo toothpicks - a grinder and a mini patchwork iron, an ideal thing for welding planks to PVA glue.
After some deliberation, I decided to make this ship not some kind of "windy" (in the sense of sails only), but as powerful as the nature of Scandinavia, that is, rowing against the seething northern waters. The oars were not inserted into the oarlocks, but passed through special holes - "rowing hatches". Consequently, their closing lids had to be made in the open position, by the way, the lids themselves are nothing more than the remains of a "tile" from the stern of the Black Pearl, fortunately I chopped these round pieces of glossy cardboard coated with bituminous varnish with a huge margin.
The appearance of rowing hatches directed creative potential to the next step: to the fact that they should actually enter and row. I won't say that this part of the work was the most interesting, but 7 types of oars, four of each, were made within a week. Each oar consisted of three parts to facilitate the work (see photo), one of which was plywood, which initially caused internal protest, but after experiments with bituminous coating, the protest came to naught.
The solution to the next logical problem was the rowing question: where, in fact, the rowers sat. During the excavations of the Viking ships, benches for rowers were not found, but the height at which the oarlocks are located in relation to the floorboards excludes the possibility that the rowers were standing. Some scholars have suggested that they were sitting on their sailors' chests, and such chests were not found on the ship because they were the personal property of the sailors, and not part of the ship's equipment.
Arguing with archaeologists is a long and vague matter, it is easier and faster to make the required number of chests, especially since the rowing team sitting right on the deck looks rather comical.
After 28 items of personal property of sailors, it was not difficult to make a few more, already public ones. In the photo, you can easily distinguish self-built and home-made items from Amati's "museum quality" items.
The alteration also affected the more complex parts of the ship. For example, "mast fish" or mast fishers, or "old woman", or curling, I don’t know what else to call this piece of wood. The problem turned out to be that the manufacturer of the whale for some reason decided to make it iron, which did not arouse my enthusiasm at all. Still, the expression - an iron piece of wood sounds somehow strange. I think that this photo also shows the difference between the product of Italian masters and what I got, after two hours of fiddling with a piece of the back of a former crib made of an incomprehensible tree, and, in addition, a stopper cover for a walnut mast.
I don't see much point in describing the following operation in detail. Is that a small literary digression ... Looking at the drawings and drawings, it is easy to make sure that the rudder of the Viking ships was not located on centerline stern, as we are used to, but on the side, on a special mount. And trial modern voyages prove that even with a fierce wind and strong seas, only one person easily steered the ship with the help of this side rudder!
After coating the deck with linseed oil, and everything else with a diluted bituminous varnish, it's time to place all sorts of "pleasant little things" - barrels, bags, sewn personally from "canvas", a tub of water, as well as a bow with a string of monofilament and axe. Almost everything was fixed with a glue gun. In principle, I liked it, the only thing is that the cooling rate is very high, this does not give time for unnecessary reflection.
History is silent, at least from me, whether the "fisherman's bayonet" knot was known to the Vikings. But it was he who, according to the already established tradition, was attached to the anchor to the rope (the anchor chain provided for this by the manufacturer somehow does not fit either with the ship itself or with the time of its existence).
Painting work is a separate topic. Firstly - shields, secondly - the head of a dragon. Both are very vividly described in the Latin text about the Viking fleet that brought Knut to England in 1015: "So magnificently were these ships decorated that they dazzled the onlookers, and to those who looked from afar, it seemed that they were made of of fire, and not of wood. For every time the sun shone its rays upon them, weapons shone in one place, and shields suspended in another. Gold burned on the prows of the ships and silver sparkled. Truly, so great was the splendor of this fleet that if his master wished to conquer any people, then only the ships would frighten the enemy even before the soldiers could enter the battle ... "
I think to add something to select the color palette of the representative's horned head ancient civilization from the constellation Sirius, quite difficult...
The shields, in turn, were painted in different ways, depending on the taste of the owner. They could be painted completely in one color, or in segments. Considering that your obedient servant is the owner of all this wealth, I left the coloring at the mercy of my opinion, naturally within the limits of reasonableness and relevance, while trying to create some second-hand and vintage.
Much more questions about the white turnover of the shields. I will not cite here a rather heated scientific debate of respected scientists about the fiction or reality of existence in Scandinavian myths - the white inner part of the shields in case of "diplomatic negotiations", the horns on the helmets of warriors, and finally, the red and white striped sails. I'm not talking about the discussion about the time of occurrence of the legends themselves, we are talking about a difference of tens of centuries. With all this, if desired, you can find on the Internet. Taking into account a certain mythical nature of historicism, I made a strong-willed decision: to be white shields and a striped sail ... at least from an artistic point of view, this is more interesting.
It's time to spend some time on that sail, mentioned several times. The manufacturer of the whale suggests making a rather strange design - stick 3-4 mm strips of it diagonally crosswise on a solid panel. Again, I will not give here the directly opposite opinions of respected people about the stones from Gotland with images of ships sailing with an unfolded sail. Where the sails are usually covered with a pattern of diamonds, while written sources state that the sails are painted with stripes of contrasting colors. Either the Gotlanders preferred other designs, or, more likely, the diamonds represent a network of ropes or leather straps that covered the surface of a loosely woven sail, strengthening it. Having plunged into a lot of assumptions and hypotheses, I realized one thing, since there are no exact facts, then I will be based on those that are most widespread. In addition, I got the basic information for myself from the book "Viking Court" by Jochen von Fircks, therefore I will continue to be based on the author's conclusions. This, in particular, applies to a striped sail made of wool. Having decided for himself to give up wool, but not red and white stripes, he decided for a long time how to achieve this. Stitching multi-colored stripes, albeit on a 50th scale, is not very good for me, the seams in any scenario will not be large-scale, and to achieve evenness, with my rudimentary seamstress skills, a big problem. After several experiments, I finally found a solution. With a red pencil, I drew the necessary pattern on the fabric, then decorated it with acrylic paint on both sides. After drying, the fabric was subjected to both mechanical stress and lying in hot strong tea, but showed very good color fastness. After that, it remains only to make an imitation of seams with a stitch on a sewing machine along the edges of the drawn stripes.
I don’t see much point in writing about the manufacture of a mast, yardarm, spiers, everything is standard: on a cone. Spirts are a little more complicated, they also have a kind of fork made from one edge. Finishing - bituminous varnish and linseed oil.
About rigging work, too, you won’t particularly spread, in comparison with any single-masted vessel, even with a slanting, even with a straight sail. Here everything is even simpler, and, I'm not afraid of this word, sometimes even primitive. I wound the threads myself, whales traditionally cause only sadness.
The question of the stand has been in the air for a long time and periodically kept me awake, and when I installed the steering wheel, I realized that the case could stand on its own, even if it could no longer roll over from side to side, it became simply the most relevant. To be honest, several options were made, but only one, the one in the photo, passed the artistic council. I can’t call it a work of art, especially considering that there was only one holder for the ship (I didn’t want to start a story with an online purchase of another one), but somehow it was necessary to get out of the situation.
With that, I say goodbye and hope to see you soon...
(About Knud's dakkarsII Great, England, 1015).
Good day.
The warm summer is over. Summer cottages, gardens, kitchen gardens and vacations, including “vacations” from hobbies, have ended. Such a kind of vacation for me was a model of a Viking ship called the Drakkar, in 1/50 scale from Revell.
A bit of history.
Drakkar (Drage - "dragon" and Kar - "ship") - a long and narrow wooden Viking ship, with a high bow and stern.
The dimensions of the drakkars reached 18.5 meters and had up to 35 pairs of oars. Drakkars were propelled by oars and a rectangular sail. A carved dragon's head was attached to the bow (stem) (hence the name of the type of ship), and on the sides there were shields for transporting the protection of the rowers. Management was carried out using a steering oar with a short transverse tiller mounted on the starboard side. Drakkars were distinguished by their versatility - the ships were used for military operations, transportation, as well as for long-distance sea voyages, which the ship's design allowed. In particular, the Vikings reached Iceland, Greenland and North America on drakkars.
Archaeologists, scientists and historians have released a mass scientific works according to Scandinavian mythology, created another large quantity works on everyday life, customs and customs of the Scandinavians, but ... we are not interested in this, we need ships - Drakkars. And archaeologists have them too.
Most famous ships that have come down to our time are ships from Gokstad, Oseberg, Skullelev, Ladby, Nydam, Thune, Kvalsund. By the way, the ship offered by Revell is most similar to the Gokstad ship.
In addition, runic (picture or memorial) stones, in particular the Satura-Hammar stone from Gotland (Sweden), give some idea of the ships of the northerners.
In general, this topic is quite interesting, but I think those who are addicted will be able to find the information they need without my tediousness, so let's get down to business.
Box.
So, Revell brings to our attention four brown plastic sprues with two halves of the hull, deck, lodgements, mast, yardarm, oars, rudder, bow and tail figures, shields, anchor, rigging and some kind of stand with a nameplate. Plastic sail, hank of thread and decal.
After studying the kit, I came to the conclusion that the only advantage of this model is the very well-crafted and molded wood grain on the hull and deck. Everything else leaves much to be desired. A decal in the form of a stern Viking in a horned helmet on a sail is an unintelligible thing, like the plastic sail itself.
I would rather call the oars spears, because they look like them. Shields would be nice if (yes, if only) it weren’t for a truncated imitation of leather edging and conical umbones.
Assembly.
As I said above, in my opinion, by the hull contours, the presented ship most of all resembles the ship from Gostad. But I decided not to make the Gokstad ship, but, if I may say so, a collective image, which resulted in smoothing and giving smoother, rounded forms of the stem and stern, as well as replacing figures and various small things.
The first stage, after gluing the halves of the hull, was its “nailing”. That is, initially I wanted to make metal rivets, but in the process of painting I decided that wooden dowels looked more advantageous. This process was perhaps the most tedious and time-consuming in the construction of the model: first, holes were drilled in the boards of the hull plating, then the dowels themselves were made and glued. The process of their manufacture consisted in melting synthetic brush bristles over candles, resulting in spherical caps on a stem. In total, about 1200 pins were made (600 not each side), which is hardly a third of the required number, but this would have been too much, to the detriment of entertainment.
Further, a dragon's head was carved from the linden for the stem and the tail for the stern. The deck was used from the kit, without modifications (although it needed them - at least beams, and perhaps frames at the same time), the only thing was that I had to add flooring in the bow myself (which is still available in the stern in the kit).
“Ducks” were made and glued to the bulwark, of which only six were given in the set, out of the required fourteen. Replaced with wooden cradles for the spars, on which I also fixed the pole for the tent, well, the twist itself with the latter. Lodgments for oars are made.
I did not like the oars themselves, I had to make new 32 oars from linden. Well, it would not be very convenient to turn them while standing, besides, the harsh northern robbers needed to “stash” the unjustly obtained somewhere, therefore, he made the corresponding number of chests, plus a chest for the helmsman and a chest for the jarl.
For the entourage, I added a few home-made little things to the deck - several barrels, a tub with a lid, a bucket, an ax and a bag. Plus one barrel (at the stern) is a prefabricated wooden model (unfortunately I don’t know the manufacturer).
Converted to a wooden steering wheel and its mount. The mast and yardarm were also replaced with wooden ones carved from poplar. Anchor from Amati.
The last detail taken from the kit was the shields, of which the manufacturer did not skimp on as many as 64. Perhaps this is logical - there could be several shifts of rowers on board during the combat campaign, but such a number of shields on the sides of the model, in my opinion, is too much.
And again, as I wrote above, I did not like the cone-shaped umbones, which were ruthlessly cut off and replaced with brass hemispheres. The leather edging on the front side is done well, but on the back it is absent as a class, to say the least - it has gone into the minus.
The sail was naturally replaced by a woven one. Initially, a special canvas was purchased for shipbuilders, but I didn’t really like it - the weaving is very small. I wanted a more brutal look, for the sake of which a coarser fabric was purchased.
There are still disputes over the color of the sail, in particular, whether the sail was striped (with contrasting colors) or not. Again, at the beginning of the article, I wrote about the images of Viking ships on rune stones, where a diamond-shaped pattern is visible, which is a crossed strip of skin sewn onto the canvas (to strengthen it). I like this theory more than red and white striped ones. The sewn stripes would have looked luridly on the model and I was content with a simple stitching, but I was too smart with turning the edges in two layers - it turned out massive and not even, one would be enough, but “after a fight, they don’t wave their fists.”
The final touch was the installation of rigging. In general, the rigging was quite primitive: stay, fordun (shrouds), halyard (archstay). For management: bras, spruyt and sheet.
Coloring.
If we already make the ship one of the most famous sea robbers, then make it brutal, and accordingly dark and gloomy.
The hull was painted with a muddy brown color that was selected “by eye”, and with a dry brush I selected the texture of the wood in two passes. Tempera - natural sienna and light ocher. To give the effect of dark wood, everything was covered with bituminous varnish with a solvent in a 1: 1 ratio.
The deck is painted in sand color, spilled with Tamiya dark brown wash, and highlighted with the same natural sienna and light ocher.
The wooden parts were painted with bituminous varnish.
Stand.
The stand is made of pine board brushed with brushes and varnished "under the walnut". Figures holders - "drips for vipers": D (who is not in the subject - a drip-type mouthpiece for electronic cigarettes), I saw and purchased it by chance in the corresponding store.
I apologize in advance for possible errors in specific terminology (I have never been a shipbuilder).
Thank you for your attention.
P.S. I forgot to point out a couple of my mistakes. Firstly, the fastening of the stay, halyard (archstay) and fordun (shrouds) is not fully reproduced. Secondly, the armature rod is fixed parallel, not perpendicular to the horns. It seems that everyone repented :)
