General Accounts
The wikepedia entry on Longships. Comprehensive, with references and some pictures.
Overview of Longships, starts with the great ship of Roskilde (35M) dated to early C11AD – the reign of Canute the Great. Page has lots of text and isn’t particularly well structured. Some good graphics of the development of longships though. Some links were broken when I checked them (Nov 2007)
Re-enactment Societies/enthusiasts/craftsmen
Plans, information and photos of the Gokstad Faering. A faering seems to me to be an achievable size of project for your average enthusiast to build and row or sail. They are apparently a bit tippy to actually sail, but that probably means that they are tending more towards the racing boat than the cargo tug.
More plans (designed for use with plywood and the Hulls programme, may work, may not – Ian Oughtred is a better source for decent ply construction plans)
Regia Anglorums page.This page has some Good sketches and a focus on methods of construction. This organisation actually has experience of sailing longships.
Photos of afore mentioned longships
States based group, this page has some good photos of replica longships
This is a very amusing photo story of a man and his Dad following the dream. It’s a faering rather than a longship and he uses modern materials, but after abandoning the modern bulkhead construction method reverts to the keel up older method.
Historical and Archaeological
Very impressive site – The Sea Stallion The whole site is worth looking at, but in particular “longships magnified” is a detailed look at the range of evidence that lets us know about longships.
Home of the Sea Stallion, the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde is the Danish museum for ships, seafaring and boatbuilding culture in ancient and medieval times.
Want to learn to sail one? Book here;
The longships in skaldic verse. If you are interested in where some of the evidence for what we know about longships comes from this will interest you. The page is all text, and the evidence from the skalds is sparse though.
Related Traditions
This page has a photo of a baby dragon ship, and also details of a project to build faerings in the North of Scotland, up Aberdeen way.
Not strictly a longhip perhaps but something far more important (especially if you are Scottish). GalGael have revived the tradition of clinker building on the clyde. Make sure you don’t miss the pictures at the bottom of this page
A faering builder from fair isle
Some beautiful pictures of a faering built in Scotland using plans from Iain Oughtred
Other list pages and indexes
A listing of replicas and longship inspired constructions, with links to sites where available.
