Grave of headless Vikings discovered in England

@saab,

saab wrote:

Sentanta, why are you so arrogant when someone says something which you don´t agree on?

You've got a gall to ask me that. This clown makes his statements, never provides a shred of evidence to back up his claims, and then routinely calls me foul names when i disagree with him. Do you think i should be cordial to someone who routinely refers to me as **** for brains?

1 Reply

@High Seas,

Longships probably did sail to Iceland--after all, they could get there quickly from the Faroe Islands, or Scotland or Ireland, if the weather was good. They certainly did not sail to North America. Bjarni Herjolfsson and traders like Thorfinn Karlsefni sailed knorrir, not longships.

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@High Seas,

Quote:

When do we correct that mistake in the history books?

Thats not as easy as it sounds. Revisionists are trying to make careers by disproving as much as they can. It is fairly solid ground though that the vikings were there first, what is debated is how far south they sailed.

Some say the Aztec myth of a tall, fair-skinned blonde-haired bearded man is a viking from the greenland settlement when it was collapsing. It is possible, but proof is required.

Actually there may even have been a medieval monk who sailed to the Americas as well. Columbus may have used his maps to convince himself the americas were indeed there. The story of his journey can be interpreted as sailing past iceland to greenland as it includes volcanoes and other features in a sequence not to found elsewhere.

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@saab,

I like someone who can keep calm in a storm. Very Happy

My understanding is that the Drakkar was the name for the war version and Knarr was a trader. When you say long boat, how is that different from a Drakkar or a Knarr ? I also thought that any Scandinavian ship of that era that was clinker built and had a certain length to width ratio was a long boat. I appreciate you taking time to explain it, and I thank you in advance .

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@saab,

saab wrote:

As far as I can find out in Swedish we call all the ships in daily use Vikingaskepp. ...

It's obviously the same word as "Viking ship" - it's interesting that the etymology of "skiff", an English word, is >

Quote:

Middle English skif, from Old French esquif, from Old Italian schifo, of Germanic origin.

> traceable to the Germanic root, even in French and Italian. Latin and Greek terms for boats were lost along the way. I don't know Spanish or Portuguese, maybe someone can look those up - they too were great navigators, but they obviously came long after the Vikings.

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@Setanta,

Your very first comment to me was "Jesus, where do you get this **** from ?" What an arrogant old fool you must be to jump in so obnoxiously. So I call you **** for brains. As soon as you think people arent going ohhh and ahhhhh at your self proclaimed knowledge you lose your temper and I bait you with insults. Its like a game to me but only I know the rules. When you stop being a silly old fool with an oversized ego I will respect what you have to say...which is never.

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According to the information I could get in Swedish Leif sailed to America in a longship or dragonship. Dragonship means the ship had a dragon head up front.
Now does the meaning of longship English and långskepp in Swedish have different meanings?

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@Setanta,

Thanks, but my post was about the Vikings discovering the Americas many centuries before Columbus - who never set foot on the main continent anyway - not on the type of ship they used. I was wondering why we still teach that Columbus discovered the continent.

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@saab,

Quote:

Now does the meaning of longship English and långskepp in Swedish have different meanings?

I dont know if they do....I suspect that we use long ship for all the ships that were scandinavian, clinker built and of a LONG length to width ratio. Is långskepp in Swedish the same broad class of ship ?

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@Ionus,

I am coastal person, but not a boatperson.
I have been looking at pictures and reading and I have the feeling a longship is the name for all the same kind of ships - like the word car today - and then there were smaller and bigger for war or trading and they all are longships.
Knarr is shorter than a longship
A snäcka was another form of shorter longship with 20 benches. (guess for people to sit on when roaing)
Karven was not a warship but a ship which gave the owner a very high status. Guess the Rolls Royce of those days.
Knarr was used for trading.

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@saab,

So perhaps we can say a longship or långskepp is the broad class and within that there are subdivisions based on purpose as these vary in ratio and weight. For a knarr to fall into this category it would still need to have alongship length to width ratio which varies. Wikipedia lists all those as longships. They all would still be clinker built, of scandinavian origin and within the long ship length to width ratio. Does that sound acceptable to you ?

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@High Seas,

Hi, High Seas,

Quote:

I was wondering why we still teach that Columbus discovered the continent.

Not so much.
Columbus gets a lot less credit these days than he did when I went to high school. I think it has to do with the big celebration in 1992 of his supposed anniversary of discovery. We did a lot of re-reading and re-writing the history then, adding in the really early explorations of the Norseman and the monk Behan.

Poor Columbus thought he had it rough in his day, you know he had to struggle to get any real recognition for what he did actually achieve which was the discovery of new lands and islands across the Atlantic, (Lief touched North America, Columbus got to South America and what is now Mexico.) Didn't matter, because there were plenty of other people printing up their own set of voyages and they had better friends in Europe than those crummy monarchs of Spain.
Columbus isn't even cold in his island grave in 1507 when the big, new (all NEW!) flashy map of the world has this along it's bottom edge:

Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptolemaei traditionem et Americi Vespucci aliorumque lustrationes -

So much for getting credit for the discovery.

We, in the US, have numerous towns and cities named after Cristo Columbo, but we live on the continent (one of a pair) Norte Americano.

You want to see some historians yell at each other, ask them if they think Amerigo was a con artist.

Joe(

http://static.stanfords.co.uk/images/originals/1507-map-40890.jpg

)Nation

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Quote:

You want to see some historians yell at each other, ask them if they think Amerigo was a con artist.

Yep ! That should fire them up. Very Happy

Do you think he was badly treated ? Being sent home in chains and dying a has been ? And there is controversy over where they buried him. Seems a bit harsh for someone with his drive...and regardless of being first or not, he started something big.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Viking is an activity, not a nationality.

Quote:

Anyone suggesting that your ancestors can't have been Vikings because your ancestors were Christian is simply displaying ignorance.

And what have you displayed here in this thread, if not ignorance, Setanta. Perhaps **** for brains is much too much the compliment.

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@High Seas,

High Seas wrote:

I was wondering why we still teach that Columbus discovered the continent.

not sure about the U.S. but they haven't been teaching that in Canada for close to 40 years now

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@High Seas,

Quote:

That's true, and I can't understand why schoolchildren are still told that Columbus discovered the Americas - the Vikings are known to have landed on the main continent, which Columbus never did, and to have done it many centuries before him. When do we correct that mistake in the history books?

Schoolchildren in the USA are told all manner of lies, High Seas. When do you figure that thy'll be told the truth about the rapacious, murderous nature of the biggest terrorist nation since the UK retired?

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@saab,

saab wrote:

According to the information I could get in Swedish Leif sailed to America in a longship or dragonship. Dragonship means the ship had a dragon head up front.

That's a "dreki". The other type of longship ("langskip", when used as warship "herskip") is called "snekka" (all related to the ornamental stem).

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@Ionus,

I think that is the same result I came to.

885 Charles the Fat ruled the West Frankian country. He was in Italy when the largest viking fleet which ever existed arrived on Seine in the end of November.
If we should believe the cronicales 700 large ships with 40 000 northmen arrived.

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@High Seas,

Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of the island of Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders.
There are around 1000 words which are of Scandinavian origian in English
Many words regarding farming and houses came into English around 800 from the Nordich languages

Exempel: hammer, harrow, plough/plow, window, door, calf (ungnöt), horse, b

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@saab,

saab wrote:

885 Charles the Fat ruled the West Frankian country. He was in Italy when the largest viking fleet which ever existed arrived on Seine in the end of November.

The defence of Paris was done by the 'count of Paris', who three years later, as Eudes de France, was the first of the king of the Robertiens dynasty. And thus ended the Carolingian Empire ...

saab wrote:

If we should believe the cronicales 700 large ships with 40 000 northmen arrived.

30,000 men or even 40,000 - very questionable numbers, I think.:
Abbo Cernuus (Abbo of Saint-Germain) has been the only eye-witness who wrote about the siege of Paris - he praised the above mentioned Eudes de France as the war's hero .... which can be understood that he wrote those verses at the bequest or insistence of Eucles.

1 Reply

Grave of headless Vikings discovered in England

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