Note (return) — Chapter XI

Turning from eugenics to more practical matters, it was the brain and the manual skill of the Viking that invented and perfected our modern sailing ship. Stripped of its barbaric excrescences at stem and stern, and of its rows of shields and ornaments, the lines of the Viking ship of Gokstad17 found there buried but entire, are the lines of our herring boats of fifty years ago. Sharp and partly decked at stem and stern only, like those boats, the Viking ship could live, head to the waves, even in the roughest sea. It was, too, a living thing, a new type of vessel handy to row or sail, and far in advance not only of the early British ship and Pictish coracle18 but also of the Roman galley with lines like those of a canal barge, and also far in advance of the Saxon ship of war or merchandise. The only points of difference between the older type of herring boat and the Viking ship were the stepping of the mast further forward and the use of the fixed rudder in the modern vessel.