Ships and shipbuilding were important elements of Viking culture and a precondition for trade, warfare and conquest. The important excavations at the Viking towns of Hedeby and Schleswig-Holstein revealed a rich body of finds of wrecks and parts of ships. This is a report on this material and also examines the role of the towns as ports and the role of trading in their development.

The Sagas of Icelanders are enduring stories from Viking-age Iceland filled with love and romance, battles and feuds, tragedy and comedy. Yet these tales are little read today, even by lovers of literature. The culture and history of the people depicted in the Sagas are often unfamiliar to the modern reader, though the audience for whom the tales were intended would have had an intimate understanding of the material. This text introduces the modern reader to the daily lives and material culture of the Vikings. Topics covered include religion, housing, social customs, the settlement of disputes, and the early history of Iceland. Issues of dispute among scholars, such as the nature of settlement and the division of land, are addressed in the text.

From sewn planked boats in Early Dynastic Egypt to Late Roman wrecks in Italy, and the design of Venetian Merchant Galleys, this huge volume gathers together fifty-three papers presenting new research on the archaeology and history of ancient ships and shipbuilding traditions. The papers have been grouped into several thematic sections, including: ships of the Mediterranean; the reconstruction of ancient ships, from life-size reconstructions to computer models; the study of shipyards, shipsheds and slipways of the Mediterranean and Europe; Venetian Galleys of the 15th and 16th centuries; and North European medieval and post -medieval ships. These papers which were presented at the Ninth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology (ISBSA), held in Venice 2000. Carlo Beltrame is a freelance archaeologist and contract professor of Maritime archaeology at Università Ca' Foscari of Venice and of Naval archaeology at Universita della Tuscia of Viterbo. He specializes in the archaeology of ship-construction from antiquity until the Renaissance period and methodology in maritime archaeology.

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction: Rocks and Rhymes ' -- The Karlevi stone -- Runic inscriptions, skaldic verse and the late Viking Age -- Literacy and orality -- The runic corpus -- The skaldic corpus -- Verse in prose contexts -- Reconstructing viking verse -- The manuscript transmission -- Viking verse as a historical source -- Semantic study of skaldic verse and runic inscriptions -- Skaldic vocabulary in context -- Runes and semantics -- Comparative angles -- Sources and conventions -- Ships and men in the late Viking Age -- 2 Viking Activities -- Vikings -- vikingr -- viking -- Death and war -- 'He died' -- Battles and raids -- The fall of warriors -- Trade -- Pilgrimage -- 3 Viking Destinations -- 'East' and 'west' -- The western route -- 'West' -- England -- Britain and Ireland -- Further west -- The European continent and further south -- Saxony and Frisia -- Brittany and points south -- Normandy and southern Italy -- Africa -- The eastern route -- 'rast' -- The Baltic area -- Russia -- Byzantium and Jerusalem -- Ingvarr's expedition -- Serkland -- Scandinavia -- Hedeby -- Denmark to Sweden -- Two more towns -- 4 Ships and Sailing -- Words for 'ship' -- skip -- skeid -- snekkja -- dreki -- knQrr -- Oak and pine -- Miscellaneous words -- Summary -- Names of ships -- The ship and its parts -- The hull -- The stems -- Inside the hull -- Rudders, oars and shields -- Masts, sails and rigging -- In harbour and on land -- The vocabulary of sailing -- Description and metaphor -- Preparing and launching -- The ship in the sea -- Shipwreck and landing -- 5 The Crew, the Fleet and Battles at Sea -- Manning a ship -- The owner -- The captain -- The crew -- The fleet and the troop -- lid -- Compounds with -lid -- fioti -- leidangr -- The troop -- Units of the fleet -- Summary -- Battles at sea -- Maritime warfare -- Place and time -- Preliminaries to battle -- Bringing the ships together -- Attack and defence -- Victory and booty -- Not like leeks and ale -- 6 Group and Ethos in War and Trade -- The group and its vocabulary -- drengr -- fdlagi -- heimpegi -- huskarl -- gildi -- The ideology of battle -- 'He fled not' -- 'He fed eagles, ravens and wolves' -- The symbolism of battle: ravens and banners -- Murder and betrayal -- Kinds of killing -- Treachery -- Loyalty -- Treachery and politics -- 7 Epilogue: Kings and Ships -- From vikings to kings -- Royal and other ships in the eleventh century -- After the Viking Age -- Conclusion -- Works cited -- Appendix I: The runic corpus -- Appendix II: The skaldic corpus -- Index of words and names -- General index

12 expert nautical archaeologists, present the latest information from excavations and explore the conceptual basis for shipbuilding traditions.

The design, construction and verification of complex two- and three-dimensional shapes in architecture and ship geometry have always been a particularly demanding part of the art of engineering. Before science-based structural design and analysis were applied in the construction industries, i.e., before 1800, the task of conceiving, documenting and fabricating such shapes constituted the most significant interface between practitioner's knowledge and learned knowledge, above all in geometry. The history of shape development in these two disciplines therefore promises especially valuable insights into the knowledge history of shape creation. This volume is a collection of contributions by outstanding scholars in their fields of study, archaeology, history of architecture and ship design, in classic antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The volume presents a comparative knowledge history in these two distinct branches of construction engineering.

This title is a comprehensive survey of maritime archaeology as seen through the eyes of nearly fifty scholars at a time when maritime archaeology has established itself as a mature branch of archaeology.

This volume presents a comprehensive exposition of both the prehistory and medieval history of the whole of Scandinavia. The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

"Although this book provides a selection from sources and interpretations of warfare in Viking-Age England, and presents a consideration of them, it is more than a purely historiographical study. It investigates the current state of scholarship and the key points of its development, indicating areas for enquiry and point out some less familiar sources along the way. The intention is not to deal with the canon of historical works on the Anglo-Saxon army, for remarkably there is no 'canon' as such. Much, though by no means all, scholarship on the organization of military systems in the Anglo-Saxon state has been undertaken by historians and scholars from related disciplines for whom warfare is not a primary concern. Many of the sources used will be familiar to students of early medieval England, but others are included because they are less often considered ... I have not attempted to use a chronological structure, nor have I retold any particular narrative history of the English Kingdom during the Viking Age, although for the reader's convenience a chronology of events is included as an appendix. The focus is rather the exploration of the practice and politics of warfare."--Preface.