Leif Eriksson by 50Minutes.com

Author:50Minutes.com
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 50Minutes.com
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leif Erikson discovering America, painting by Christian Krohg, 1893.

The ocean-crossing was only possible due to the knarr ship itself, strong enough to sail far from the coastline and take on the ocean. In 1996, Danish captain Gunnar Marel Eggertsson sought to construct a replica model of a Viking ship using ancient techniques, aiming to study the ship’s capacities and see if Eriksson’s voyage would really have been possible. He used the remains and wreckage from old ships found by archaeologists as reference points for his construction. The boat was named Islendingur. At 22.5 m long and 5.3 m wide and weighing more than 18 tonnes, it was made using Scandinavian oak and more than 5000 nails.

The year 2000 marked 1000 years since Leif Eriksson discovered the Americas. To celebrate this, Eggerston decided to set sail on the Islendingur and replicate the journey made by Eriksson a whole millennium before. A crew of 9 men left Reykjavik, Iceland on 17 June 2000 and arrived in Newfoundland, Canada on 28 July. This was longer than Eriksson’s original voyage because they made many stops along the way in Iceland, Greenland and Canada for commemoration ceremonies. The ship kept on sailing south and arrived in New York on 5 October 2000, though it is unlikely that any Viking ever set foot there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.