Scandinavian-Britain

30 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINsweeps that were the chief motive power of thegalley, and could drive the bronze-beaked prow, thatwas fixed to the curving end of the keel close to thewater, at a deadly rate into the enemy's quarter, orthrough his extended oarage. From this model theScandinavian took the mast, sail, rudder, and possiblyoar, but he did not servilely copy the build, whichwas unsuited to the Northern Sea, though admirablyadapted to the Mediterranean, where it had beenperfected by the Greeks.The finds of the last fifty years enable us to seefor ourselves what manner of ships the Norwegiansailors who were the first sailors to make long runsout of sight of land, and to cross the North Sea andAtlantic regularly year by year built and sailed.From the Nydam boats of the latter part of thethird century, by which time the type was alreadyformed, to the Gokstad ship of the eighth century,which representsit in its perfection, the chain ofevidence iscomplete for Sweden and Norway andthe Baltic coasts. We can see before us in thesecraft, the very kind of ship such as the Byzantinehistorians tell us threatened new Rome, the greatcity, Mickle-garth, from the middle of the ninth tothe middle of the tenth centuries, built with plankson a keel of a single tree sixty feet or more in length :masted, ruddered, holding from twenty to forty men,with weapons, water, and food. The Nordland boatof the Norwegian fisherman to-day is almost identicalin all essentials to the wicking ship of a thousandyears ago.