Pretty cool.
Posted on 02/25/2005 12:31:47 PM PST by franksolich
Viking ship cracking up
Eperts are worried about one of Norway's national treasures. Archaeologists have discovered cracks in the hull of he famed Oseberg Viking ship, which may halt plans to move the vessel to a new museum.
The archaeologists have been carefully going over the nearly 1,200-year-old ship, and are concerned about what they see, reports newspaper Aftenposten.
Removal of the vessel's top deck has revealed some exciting new details, like graffiti from the Viking age and details of the ship's rigging. But it's also exposed cracks that make archaeologists worry the ship won't tolerate any move to new quarters.
There have been plans afoot to build a new museum near the site of Oslo's first buildings east of downtown. The so-called "Middle Ages Park" already features the remains of ancient churches, albeit built after the Vikings ruled the waves.
Experts will spend the next several months trying to measure the ship's strength. Removal of the deck will allow the vessel to be scanned electronically. A 3-D drawing can then be made to help give the archaeologists an accurate basis from which to measure the vessel's structural capacity, Knut Paasche of the Vikings Ships Museum told Aftenposten.
White glove treatment
Working from cranes suspended over the Oseberg ship, conservationists have been using white gloves to carefully remove more than 100 deck parts without setting foot in the ship themselves. Their work is a far cry from that done in the 1950s, when workers went on board the vessel and even used a vacuum cleaner to remove dust.
Paasche described work during the past week as "incredibly difficult and somewhat risky." It's also been thrilling. None of those doing the work had ever seen the underside of the ship's deck.
They've seen signs of tools used on board the vessel when it was made for the burial mound of two women in the year 834. They've also found new decorations, that now will be photographed.
Viking researchers from all over Scandinavia are expected to travel to Oslo while the work is underway, to see the ship in an entirely new light.
My favorite:
You know why the new French Navy has glass-bottomed boats.
So they can see the old French Navy. Priceless.
Planned obsolescence no doubt.
"Viking longboats were shallow draft vessels that could be sailed or rowed up narrow waterways & beached."
A couple of those rivers would be the "Seine" and the "Volga."
The words "Rus" and "Slav" are nordic in origin, given by the Swedish Vikings that invaded and dominated Russia, for a long time.
Oh I thought this was about the football team.
I can answer that one for ya. In a word it is "oxygen". If a ship is buried in the mud, silt or sand underwater, there's almost no oxygen to feed the micro-organisms that 'eat' the wood. Raise the ship, and all those dormant organisms spring to life. I dove on wooden shipwrecks in the Great Lakes that date back to the Civil War period and they are virtually intact. The water has very low oxygen content.
Pretty cool.
Done, madam; even though the very first person on the Norway ping list was a woman, the delightful and sparkling JLO, they are a rarity here.
If one is a woman, the Norway ping list is a great place to be, being outnumbered by men seven to one.
The Norway ping list is an equal opportunity, affirmative action, ping list.
I've seen these ships. They are impressive.
Viking traders were operating in the Black Sea. The Byzantine Emperors' "Varyngian" bodyguards were probably Norsemen. Also, the Norse conquered and ruled Sicily for a time. They were operating a LONG way from home waters.
Well yeah! It's the home of the Viking Kitties. No need for police or courts. You jaywalk, and get all your hair singed off.
Thank you so much, Franksolich. Vikings can be girl types, too. ;-)
BTTT
You know, Madam, the largest ethnic group here in Nebraska is the generic "Scandinavian," of which 99% are Danish, the other 1% Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faeroese.
So both Norwegians and Swedes are a rare commodity here; but by chance, when I was a small child, I grew up in a town ten miles east of one of the two Swedish enclaves in this state (Gothenburg; the other is Stromsburg).
The Gothenburg high school band was named "the Vikings," and used the Swedish national anthem as their fight song.
As I said, I was a small child, and easily terrified; every time the cheerleaders and band marched on the football field, I had visions of England afire, men with horns growing out of their heads, fat women singing, ships resembling gravy-boats surging through the waters.
The "Viking" football team was no great shakes, though; we (Cozad) always beat them.
The vacuuming aspersion was probably archaeological. Who knows what may have been vacuumed up with the dust: nails, buttons, coins, etc.
So far as the boat degrading faster on land vs in the water, it's the relative availability of oxygen. The ship will oxidize in open air faster than underwater.
They could replace the decayed timbers. After all, if 50% of the ship remains original wood, it is still the original ship, isn't it?
It's just amazing that it exists at all.
Well, I never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the room, but I recall from high-school science classes that water is the ultimate acid, or dissolvent; that nothing can survive being eroded by water, if given enough time.
And so from that, I just assumed a boat submerged in water would deteriorate more quickly than a boat on dry land, but of course, there a multitude of other factors which I did not take into consideration.
One of the fringe benefits of being on the Norway ping list; one learns all sorts of unexpectedly different things, and in a "fun" way.
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