The Gokstad ship was a viking longship found in a burial mound on a Norwegian farm in 1880. In 1893, for the Chicago World’s Fair, twelve men sailed a replica, the Viking, across the Atlantic, up the Hudson river and all the way to Chicago, to show that it was capable of crossing the sea.
I bring this up because there’s this cool project to build a seaworthy replica of another longship, the 9th century Osebergskipet, using authentic viking techniques and tools. The National Geographic Channel is making a documentary about the project. The Oseberg ship was very well preserved, but still in a thousand pieces, making any reconstruction educated guesswork. (Two previous attempts at building replicas were unseaworthy, but there is some evidence that the original ship would have been sailed before it was buried.)
In the burial mound, along with the ship and other assorted treasures, two women were buried. The budget for building a modern-day replica is nearly two million dollars: clearly, these were important women. The elder of the two women has been thought to be either a queen or a seeress. Among the treasures in the grave was the so-called Buddha bucket, which is ornamented with a human figure sitting in a lotus position. (It’s highly unlikely that there is any connection to Buddhism, but it’s a funny coincidence.)
dailymeh posted this on October 7, 2011
