A viking ship

Peter Hardy
On board and waiting the weigh anchor!

Christian Skottun
I live near by the excavation site of the Gogstad ship, the one you have the photo of, and I know it very well. I am here to help if you need any first hand research. Good luck!

Luis Alvarez
Thank you guys! This is my first all-wood ship build and is taking a lot of time to cut and glue all those planks. I'll upload a few pictures of my current work, but a couple of doubts come in mind. 1) A viking ship was manned by a single community and thus all the side shields wore the same pattern/color? and 2) Did the sails and the head at the stem had colors?

Gordon Sørensen
Looking forward to following your progress, Luis! I went to the Viking Museum in Roskilde a few years ago, and they had quite a few remains of old ships, as well as a replica. Very interesting and highly recommended if you are ever in the area!

Holger Kranich
I´m in! Till Valhall!😉

Christian Skottun
All the shields had the same pattern and colors. The research in the Gogstad ship indicates that they where yellow and black. The stem of this ship propably did not have colors, for the sail we don't know

Christian Skottun
If you Google Saga Oseberg you will find an exact copy of the Oseberg Ship, this is propably the most exact copy of a Viking ship and they use a sail in natural whool color, and I guess that is based on research on the real ship, concerning the shields they should be every other black and yellow

Luis Alvarez
Thanks for the support. Now I'm going through all the planks for the deck. Measure, cut and paste once and again....then I'll tackle the superstructure and rails. I guess that the planks on the deck had a random pattern and length, right? However, for the sake of simplicity I decided a uniform pattern/sizes.

Luis Alvarez
Black and yellow it is...I found an article (cs.finescale.com/fsm..ts/f/7/t/155395.aspx) that describes exactly that pattern. Nevertheless, I doubt the sails were checkered yellow and black. I agree they were natural wool.

Luis Alvarez
Well, I'm stuck with the oars. I made a few of them according to the kit's instructions. However, they look too short to me. The kit refers to four sizes! My references show a uniform oar size, but is hard to establish a size. Any help?