Jeffrey canning 8D
Viking longships
Viking longships were long and rectangular boats with very
flat bottoms. They were able to come right up to shores or
banks and down rivers. Smaller boats had about twenty
rowing benches and bigger sized boats would have at least
30 and more. Although they were good for shallow areas
there bottoms were flat which would have made the boat
very unstable in rough and treacherous seas.
Longships and trading/transport ships
 Longships differ to trading and transport ships
because the longship was used as a war vessel, to show
crafting of men and superb quality, to carry kings or
earls and to send out messages to different villages.
Trading and transport ships were basically designed to
trade with other villages and with other tribes.
A Viking ship:
Looks like
Sounds/smells
• flat
• freshly cut wood
•Rectangular deck
•Fresh
•Benches
•Creaky
•Mast
•Lots of small oars
•Well designed shields on the sides
•Carved wood
•Long and big design
•Dragons head as a mast
•Overlapping planks
•All-wood design
•Lots of rope
•Wind ruffled sail
•Big steering oar
Feels like
•Rough parts
•Smooth parts
•Round
•Bumpy
•Hard
•Sharp
•Rough material
•Flat surfaces
•Splintery
Modern navigation
Viking navigation
similarities
•Compass points
north, by using
the earths
magnetic field
• constellations,
seeing the
positions of the
stars
•Maps ,
navigational
charts by using
the earths
satellites
•Using the
direction of the
sun, east and west
•Weather vanes used the
wind but wasn’t reliable
because the wind changes
direction
•Sun bearer used the sun to
pin point the way to a certain
destination, although when
foggy they loose sense of
direction.
A Viking voyage
 Today I am setting sail with some of
the most meanest, buffest and
toughest Vikings you would ever run
into. The trip was going well as we
set out, but I was wrong. As it got a
bit darker the seas got rougher and I
seriously needed a sickness bag. My
comrades didn’t seem to mind all
that much, except for when the
usual spray of water came crashing
over the side. These guys seriously
had some guts. Well none of us got
some sleep at night, even if we tried
to. It is now the morning and it’s
just been the same rough seas
during the night.
 The seas are now calmer but I’m
pretty sure we’ll be spending
another couple of nights out here.
We packed food from our homes
under the boat, and when we got
down to it, it was all pretty much
cold and a bit stale. We packed
tons of meat and heaps of bread to
eat on the way. By the third day was
hardly a morsel left to eat, and I was
starting to get sick of the same old
thing, wild boar or cattle sandwich,
but it always kept us going. It took
us four days to get to our
destination, Greenland!
This is a Viking boat that I drew using paint