a sepulchral tumulus known as the King's Mound, in Lower Gokstad, on a peninsula of Southern Norway. It cannot be decided with certainty when the vessel was buried; though Mr. N. Nicolaysen, who was then President of the Antiquarian Society of Christiana, assigned the craft to the later iron age, or between a.d. 700 and 1000, and inclined to the belief that she was of the ninth century. Nor can it be determined whose ship she was, and where built. She may have formed the tomb of some leader who died while on a foray far from home. On the other hand, she may have belonged to a chief whose home was at Gokstad. Other so-called Viking ships
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THE GOKSTAD SHIP.
(Plan of Oar.)
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| THE GOKSTAD SHIP. (Details of Planking.) |
THE GOKSTAD SHIP. (Supporters for the Awning.) |
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have been discovered, but none larger or finer than the one in question; and we may, perhaps, safely take it that this Gokstad relic fairly represents the type of vessel that was ordinarily employed by the northern pirates, whether Danish or Saxon, of the days of Alfred the Great.
The dimensions of the ship are: length over all, seventy-eight feet; length on keel, sixty-six feet: beam, sixteen feet six inches, and depth, four feet. The hull is of oak, unpainted, but the stem and sternposts are decorated. The planking is laid clincher-wise over the frame timbers, and the planks are fastened to one another
