[HN Gopher] Sailing the fjords like the Vikings yields unexpecte...
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Sailing the fjords like the Vikings yields unexpected insights
Author : pseudolus
Score : 133 points
Date : 2025-06-23 14:56 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Liquix wrote:
| a true scientist: _He even fashioned rudimentary blades out of
| his own frozen feces to test whether they could cut through pig
| hide, muscle, and tendon ... it did not work._
|
| bored and shored? board boats of boards o'er fjords. might strike
| a chord, see a fnord, expand your gourd
| j_bum wrote:
| Eminem? Is that you?
| GLdRH wrote:
| I'm Eminem and my wife is also Eminem.
| divbzero wrote:
| There's an old NOVA episode "This Old Pyramid" that applied
| experimental archaeology to the Egyptian pyramids: exploring how
| the pyramids were built by actually building one.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1460448/
| eesmith wrote:
| Going even further back in time, Kon-Tiki back in 1947
| demonstrated it was indeed possible to travel on a balsa wood
| raft to get from South America to Polynesia, settling that part
| of the debate.
|
| Of course, Heyerdahl's diffusion model was completely wrong,
| but that's a different topic.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Incomplete, perhaps, and vastly oversimplified, but not
| "completely wrong"; the more genetic evidence we get, the
| more it appears that ancient people moved around much more
| than we used to think.
|
| https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)...
| eesmith wrote:
| That's not Heyerdahl's diffusion model. From
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl
|
| > The expedition was supposed to demonstrate that the
| legendary sun-worshiping red-haired, bearded, and white-
| skinned "Tiki people" from South America drifted and
| colonized Polynesia first, before actual Polynesian
| peoples. His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures
| had been widely rejected by the scientific community, even
| before the expedition ....
|
| > Heyerdahl's hypothesis was part of early Eurocentric
| hyperdiffusionism and the westerner disbelief that (non-
| white) "stone-age" peoples with "no math" could colonize
| islands separated by vast distances of ocean water, even
| against prevailing winds and currents. He rejected the
| highly skilled voyaging and navigating traditions of the
| Austronesian peoples and instead argued that Polynesia was
| settled from boats following the wind and currents for
| navigation from South America. ...
|
| The genetic evidence does not support his theory.
|
| Nor is it right to attribute the idea of a possible
| connection to Heyerdahl. Nordenskiold wrote about
| "'Oceanian' Cultural Elements in South America" in 1931,
| https://archive.org/details/09-comparative-ethnographical-
| st...
|
| > As is well known, we find in South America quite a number
| of culture elements of which parallels are found in
| Oceania.1 These we may call ''Oceanian'', although this
| certainly does not imply any proof that they have been
| imported into America from Oceania. These "Oceanian''
| culture elements may derive their origin from the crew of
| some weather-driven vessel, because the possibility of such
| having landed upon the coasts of America is not entirely to
| be disregarded, as Friederici has fairly convincingly
| shown.
|
| > [p24]... Friederici has pointed out that there is much
| which speaks for the theory of weather-driven Oceanian
| vessels having reached America but nothing of their
| returning whence they came, or of Indians sailing westward
| and reaching any Oceanic island. It is important to note
| that all islands off the South American coast that cannot
| be seen from the mainland, such as the Galapagos, Juan
| Fernandez, etc., at the time of the discovery of America
| were uninhabited and, judging from everything, always had
| been so.
|
| (I think the Friederici reference is "Zu den
| vorkolumbischen Verbindungen der Sudsee-Volker mit Amerika"
| - "Regarding the pre-Columbian connections of the South
| Seas with America", 1929. Heyerdahl was born in 1914, so
| about 15 years old.)
|
| As I recall, the prevailing hypothesis was that any contact
| came likely from the Pacific. Heyerdahl didn't believe that
| was possible, and it must have been the other way. People
| argued that South Americans didn't have the sailing ability
| to reach Polynesia. Heyerdahl demonstrated that opposing
| argument was incorrect, by doing it. That doesn't mean it
| must have happened.
|
| So, no, Heyerdahl's hypothesis is completely wrong, and the
| new evidence we have more strongly support older hypotheses
| by others, which Heyerdahl disagreed with.
| SpicyUme wrote:
| Floating the Grand Canyon on a tule reed raft is another
| example of testing the methods to see if something was
| possible.
|
| https://lakepowellchronicle.com/stories/rafter-recounts-
| unus...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyjPX06Xeos
| BostonFern wrote:
| The follow-up attempt in 1999 where the team succeeds in
| raising a large obelisk by slowly draining sand out of a pit
| underneath it is a great watch.
| bombcar wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Stonehenge in my backyard" guy.
|
| https://youtu.be/jD-EMOhbJ9U
|
| My proudest moment (perhaps) was changing a tire without a
| jack a hundred miles from anywhere. I couldn't raise the car,
| but I could lower the ground!
| spauldo wrote:
| You might be interested in Guedelon Castle - a project to build
| a 13th century castle in France using our best guess at the
| resources and knowledge available at the time.
| atombender wrote:
| There is an excellent documentary series about it, Secrets of
| the Castle [1], with historian Ruth Goodman and archeologist
| Peter Ginn taking part in the building and upkeep. Very old-
| fashioned but highly rewarding stuff, as are all their
| series, such as Victorian Farm.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Castle
| zxexz wrote:
| > Others have tried to cook like the Neanderthals, concluding
| that flint flakes were surprisingly effective for butchering
| birds, and that roasting the birds damages the bones to such an
| extent that it's unlikely they would be preserved in the
| archaeological record.
|
| I found this statement a bit alarming, as flint flakes being
| quite effective in butchering is quite well known -- anyone who
| has practiced or studied "primitive living" ( that term doesn't
| feel right...) would know.
|
| However, that was not an explicit conclusion in the referenced
| paper, just by arstechnica. Not even a gripe, though, very
| interesting article!
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Flint fractures conchoidally to produce edges as sharp as 30
| angstroms - sharper than modern surgical steel which typically
| reaches only about 300-600 angstroms.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're probably looking for something more specific than "can
| make something that works well enough for youtube", like seeing
| if an exact copy of flint found in a site yields the same
| leftover marks as found on other bones in the site, or
| something.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Also, it's one thing to say that with modern techniques and
| design that flint flakes work for the purpose intended, it's
| quite another to say flint flakes as they would have been
| made in the neolithic can be used in specific ways not
| necessarily by design, and then collect and write up all the
| findings in an academically rigorous way.
|
| There's plenty of research on things that "everyone knows"
| which turn out to be not true, so validating these ideas is
| still worthwhile science.
| medstrom wrote:
| > In terms of the results themselves, the boats are extremely
| seaworthy crafts. When you get in them for the first time, you
| don't think that, because they're very, very light. They feel
| very flimsy, and they're very low in the water compared to a
| modern sailing boat. So you feel really in touch with the wave,
| which is kind of scary. But because they're so flexible and
| because of the way they're rigged, they're actually really
| stable, even in big waves.
|
| > "We kept going out thinking, 'Oh, this is maybe the limit of
| what this boat can tolerate,' and then it would be fine, and we'd
| be, 'Okay, let's go a little bit in slightly bigger waves with
| slightly stronger wind,'" Jarrett continued. "So I think our
| comfort zones definitely visibly expanded during that period. And
| I had the chance to work with the same crews over three years. By
| the end of those three years, we were doing stuff that we would
| never have been able to do at the beginning."
|
| Sounds like they had fun.
| wincy wrote:
| When is the last time someone used a vessel like this to sail
| to Iceland? I'd pay for someone to do that. Amazing what our
| ancestors accomplished.
| SpicyUme wrote:
| There was an archaeologist who drowned last year during an
| attempted crossing from the Faroe islands to Trondheim.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvyge44nppo
|
| https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2024/08/american-archeologis-
| die...
| vidarh wrote:
| 2016?
|
| https://www.drakenhh.com/expedition-america-2016
|
| Not exactly the same type, but a recreation of a viking
| longboat.
| GLdRH wrote:
| This might not be the most scientific take, but the description
| reminds me of the Elvish boats of Lothlorien.
|
| Did Tolkien possess advanced knowledge of viking seafaring?
| nsavage wrote:
| I can't help but be remembered of the discovery of the HMS
| Terror, one of John Franklin's missing ships. It was announced
| that it was discovered conveniently located in what was already
| called Terror Bay, and that the ship's masts were even sticking
| out of the water. The local Inuit of course knew it was there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_Bay
| vintermann wrote:
| So not really like Vikings, but like Jekt traders. It looks like
| there is little written about the Jekt trade in English.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes and no, as the article says:
|
| > "The Viking Age ends in the 11th century, and we're talking
| about boats from 800 years later," he said. "But the
| construction techniques and the way they are rigged and their
| general performance characteristics are similar enough. Because
| this is a project about voyages and not a project about boat
| building, it seemed like a defensible analogy."
|
| His guess - whether right or not - is that this ship-structure
| is similar enough that it serves as a possible way to identify
| possible Viking era landing places.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Boat designs change very slowly, so I would bet on his guess.
| Most changes would be in improvements in smaller
| technologies, e.g. improved nails, than in major hull shape
| changes. As I understand it, Vikings did use barge-like
| boats, but they mostly used the longboat form, and the major
| change to long boats is to make them longer to carry more,
| which doesn't change the draft that much.
|
| To my mind, the greater change would have been to sea levels
| from the 11th century to now, which would alter landing spots
| more than the boat design.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Much respect to this man as a fundraiser. He convinced people to
| pay him to play Viking and go sailing as his job. Could be grants
| or private fundraising or both.
|
| It illustrates how one monetizes a PhD in a subject overtly
| noncommercial like archaeology. Plenty of people have sailed in
| these waters, maybe even played at being Vikings. But with a
| doctorate in the field, one is able to make the case that doing
| so will be Real Science because you have developed expertise in
| that knowledge domain, and research skills to fit whatever you
| find into the broader scientific context.
|
| I'm not being dismissive, by the way, it's a fantastic idea to
| explore for new archaeological finds. And it is absolutely true
| that academics need to have as much hustle as entrepreneurs to
| find funding.
| eesmith wrote:
| I find your use of "play Viking" dismissive, despite your
| disclaimer.
|
| The article mentions how some archeologists learn
| flintknapping, which helps them understand their finds better.
|
| Do you think they are playing Stone Age people?
|
| For what it's worth, https://www.ht.lu.se/en/the-
| faculties/staff-training/interna... says funding came from
| Erasmus+ traineeship, several other grants, "and my own
| earnings", and he started while a grad student. (That page is
| from 2023.)
|
| So no, he did not "monetize" his PhD as he didn't have one
| while doing this fieldwork, and he paid for part of it himself.
|
| Also, my high school grades got me a college scholarship. I
| don't interpret that as me monetizing my high school degree,
| but then, I don't view everything through a hustle lens.
|
| His has "a general interest in ancient seafaring and
| experimental archaeology" with a focus on "reconstructing the
| sailing routes used by sailors from the Viking Age in Western
| Scandinavia". He "spent 11 months learning about traditional
| sailing and boatbuilding techniques at Fosen Folkehogskole",
| "conducted a series of sailing trials and trial voyages onboard
| traditional clinker-built, square-rigged boats", and "spent
| about 500 hours sailing or rowing, often for several days at a
| time, enduring every kind of weather imaginable, in an attempt
| to test the performance of these boats under the widest
| possible range of conditions."
|
| How do you get from that hard work to "playing Viking", without
| being dismissive?
| gwervc wrote:
| Researcher here: yes it's playing. And playing isn't a bad
| thing. If we hadn't fun, a lot of us would have quit already.
| eesmith wrote:
| Sure. In my 20s I remember telling my boss that I had so
| much fun programming that I would do it even if I wasn't
| paid. (That was probably a mistake, but at least it was a
| state job with salary guidelines.)
|
| But having fun and playing as part of work is doesn't mean
| I was "playing programmer." Even had I been an unpaid
| trust-fund baby.
|
| What does "play Viking" mean to you, and how do we know
| that's what this researcher is doing?
|
| Would you also say that he "plays sailor", given that he's
| an actual sailor?
|
| Should we say the people building the 13th- century style
| castle at Guedelon are playing serfdom?
|
| Those trying to rediscover ancient building techniques are
| playing Egyptians, Romans, Eastern Islanders, Incans, etc.?
|
| Was Thor Heyerdahl was "playing a 'Tiki person'" in his
| famous raft voyage, when that culture doesn't exist, or was
| he trying to demonstrate that the raft hypothesis for human
| migration could not simply be rejected as impossible?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I think you're the only person in this thread who took
| "play" as dismissive. This tells us a bit about you but
| not much else.
| eesmith wrote:
| No, I didn't say "play" was dismissive.
|
| I said that describing the researcher's work as "play
| Viking", done as a way to monetize one's PhD, is
| dismissive.
|
| The more so as the researcher was partially self-funded,
| and didn't have a PhD.
|
| I don't think it's right to characterize everyone doing
| experimental archeology about Norse practices as "playing
| Viking", nor to only pick out those studying shipping
| routes.
|
| The same for other fields - I wouldn't say that people
| researching how the ancient Romans made concrete are
| "playing Romans".
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you seem so fired up about this turn of
| phrase using the word "play". But, in recognizing that
| you are, I'm simply going to let you do you and wish you
| well :)
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > This tells us a bit about you
|
| Unnecessary Personal attack
| pimlottc wrote:
| I read "playing viking" affectionately. How many people
| manage to turn a childhood dream into a sustainable career?
| eesmith wrote:
| The article doesn't mention when he started this goal. How
| do you know it was in childhood and not, for example, as an
| undergraduate student?
|
| Is it a sustainable career? He only recently got his PhD.
|
| As a kid I dreamed about being a programmer (among many
| other things), and I am one.
|
| If I bought an old PDP 11/70 to get hands-on experience on
| using early Unix systems work, would that mean I'm playing
| a Bell Labs researcher?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Give it a rest.
|
| If that word bothers you, substitute "recreating" or
| "testing".
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Historical reenactor here.
|
| "Playing" is only dismissive if you view the incredible, fast
| learning children achieve (compared to adults) as "mere
| child's play".
|
| By "playing" at reenactment, we test out theories on how
| things worked, how people did things, and why they did them.
|
| My favorite example is a Dutch hat. Every instance two
| friends found in artwork had a spoon slipped into two cuts in
| the raised brim. They thought that looked stupid, and made
| one without the spoon (they merely pinned the brim up). The
| hat wouldn't stay in place, so they decided it needed a
| weight to stabilize the raised side of the brim... like a
| spoon.
| eesmith wrote:
| Where do you see me dismissing play?
|
| What does "play Viking" mean to you, in the context of what
| this researcher is doing?
|
| Don't overlook that snowwrestler coupled playing Viking to
| monetizing one's PhD.
|
| Do you do historical reenactment in order to monetize your
| play?
|
| If I learn to operate a 1907 Avery steam tractor, would you
| say I am playing farmer?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Farming is a job, which people do to eat. I've known
| farmers, and yes, if you bought a tractor and drove it
| around SF I would accuse you of "playing farmer" as well.
|
| You don't have to take it personally - roleplay can be an
| effective tool. If you're training to operate a tractor
| on a farm, then you are consciously "playing farmer" with
| the intent of driving positive results.
| eesmith wrote:
| We are agreed that the first is meant more negative, and
| the second more positive, yes?
|
| Is this researcher more like the first case or the second
| case?
|
| The Norse used their ships for trade and pirating, and to
| travel places where alternative transit was far too
| difficult. Like your farming example, trade and pirating
| helped put food on the table.
|
| This researcher did none of those. His income came from
| other sources.
|
| What does it mean to "play Viking", and how is it
| connected to monetizing one's PhD, which is the other
| half of what I complained about?
|
| (In any distinctive sense. Anyone with a career in their
| PhD field has by definition monetized their PhD, and in
| some careers (like my high school teachers), a PhD in any
| field gives you a salary raise. But none of the examples
| are referred to "playing X" in order to monetize their
| education.)
| djtango wrote:
| Well he is playing Viking. Sailing in that way was not only
| their living but it was also life or death for them.
|
| They struck out into the ocean without a map of the world,
| let alone GPS and satellite phones. They didn't even have
| life jackets.
|
| Without downplaying this researcher's earnest efforts,
| nothing we do today could come close to truly recreating what
| it was like back then for people to live and breathe the sea
| like your life depends on it and to reacquire whatever deep
| nuanced tacit wisdom they accumulated about how their ships
| handled in the waves.
|
| Whenever I've watched interviews or studied people at the top
| of a craft, any craft, you'll be surprised at the amount of
| detail they are sensitive to. A recent thing that comes to
| mind is how much Chopin studied and analysed the anatomy of
| the hand to deepen his understanding of piano technique
| petsfed wrote:
| Back when I was "playing" (in the dismissive sense) at being
| physicist and physics teacher, what I found was that the
| secret to actually understanding something was being free to
| fiddle with the parameters of the thing to try to dive a
| preferred outcome. That's more or less the mission statement
| of Bell Labs in its heyday.
|
| I don't understand how you can exist in _this_ space (that
| is, Hackernews and the larger startup culture) while being
| dismissive of folks out there exploring their particular
| parameter spaces, outside of practical constraints.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it is generally fine to consider the things we do
| playing with stuff--I consider myself very lucky to enjoy
| playing with computers as they'll let you have careers in
| that.
|
| But, for example, if I say that this site is a bunch of
| people playing at being engineers, in most contexts (maybe
| other than this thread) I'd expect to get some pretty
| annoyed responses.
|
| Firstly, because there's a difference between saying we're
| playing with a problem, and saying we're playing at being
| something.
|
| Secondly, because it is great to be self-effacing, but less
| so to be others-effacing.
| spauldo wrote:
| "Play" has a specific meeting for reenactors. When I was in
| the SCA, I "played" an 11th century Welsh longbowman. It's
| certainly not a derogatory term when used in this context,
| and the amount of effort put into it isn't relevant. I just
| wore the clothes and learned to hit a target with the bow
| more than half the time, but I played alongside people who
| spent a lot of time and money learning the languages and
| skills of the roles they played.
| andoando wrote:
| I think its just implying he had fun doing it. I mean I
| sincerely hope he did, would you really rather believe this
| was a super serious endeavor, no fun allowed research?
| gdubya wrote:
| Watch out for fulings on the plains!
| Henchman21 wrote:
| And _deathsquitos_!
| mlhpdx wrote:
| > You are able to ask very different questions the minute you
| walk away from your desk and get on a boat
|
| Indeed. Read this as I am heading out to sail my Skerry.
| floren wrote:
| A man of culture! Where do you sail yours? I'm not much of a
| sailor yet, so the Skerry feels plenty... scary... even in 10
| knot wind inside a breakwater at Alameda
| kzrdude wrote:
| They should mention Helge/Anne Ingstad who did the original
| thinking and sailing like a viking to help find
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows in
| Newfoundland!
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