Viking Long Ship, ca 815-820

Location: Upper Deck

 

The Ship

The original Oseberg ship, measuring a little over 70 ft. long, was found in a burial mound on a farm south of Oslo, Norway in 1904.  Scientists have dated it to the period of Viking Expansion, ca 815-820.  The ship is known as a karvi, clinker-built with 12 strakes on each side.  Evidence indicates that the mast was about 40 ft. high and set a single square sail.  The vessel probably served as a chieftain’s private ship, not as a warship, and its low freeboard suggests that it was built for coastal rather than offshore sailing.  The ship was painstakingly reassembled from thousands of pieces of wood and is now on display in the Viking Ship Hall at Bygdoy, Oslo.

 

(From notes by David Leach in the Call Pipe)

 

The Model

Plastic model

H 16”  L 27”  W 7”

 

Thanks to the generosity of Howard Rockstad and the Scandinavian Cultural Center at California Lutheran University, a model of the famous Oseberg ship is now in our museum.