So, you have some neighbors across the sea you feel like raiding and plundering. Gosh, it would be swell to sail – or row – your way over there and take care of business, but you need a ship…
If you have some time and the inclination, following these plans can help you build your own Viking longship. Clear illustrations and step-by-step directions show you which parts go where and how they were made back in the good old dark ages.
While this page is in English, other parts of the site are written in Norwegian. In either language, the work is exquisite.
Lykke bygge skipet ditt!
I heartily recommend building a boat… if only for a true test of hobby endurance. I’ve been working on one for nearly a year and a half now.
one of the nice things about building a boat is that given a certain set of principles, (make sure the water stay on the proper side etc.) there’s very little in the way of hard and fast rules. I have a bookshelf full of boatbuilding books, all of which go into great detail describing the only proper way to build boats, but none of them actually agree. (though everyone of them references the same book of structural physics/engineering for finding out how thick to build the hull. fortunately that book thinks everyone is right and lists all the alternatives… (and has been recently updated))