SOME PREHISTORIC VESSELS. 81 



excavations, and sent Mr. Nicolaysen, a learned and skillful antiquary, 

 to superintend them. They were continued under his direction during 

 April and May, and finally brought the viking's vessel into view. 

 The ship was twenty-two and a half metres (or about seventy-two 

 feet) long, five metres (or seventeen feet) wide in the middle, would 

 draw a metre and a half (or five feet) of water, and had twenty ribs 

 or benches for rowers. It is considerably the largest vessel of an- 

 tiquity that has yet been discovered. 



The Danish Professor Engelhardt, in 1863, unearthed from the 

 turf -pits of Nydam, in Schleswig, a vessel fourteen metres (or forty- 

 five and a half feet) long ; and another vessel was found in 186T, at 

 Tune, thirteen metres (or forty-two feet) long. Neither of these ves- 

 sels could be compared, however, as to its state of preservation or its 

 dimensions, with the one found at Gogstad. 



The tumulus is now nearly a mile from the sea, but the nature of 

 the alluvial soil makes it evident that the waves formerly washed its 

 base. The vessel had, it then appears, been drawn immediately out 

 of the fiord, and placed upon a bed of fascines or hurdles and moss. 

 The walls had then been covered with clay, the hold filled with earth 

 and sand, and the whole covered over so as to form a tumulus. The 

 prow of the vessel was turned toward the sea, for at that period it 

 was believed that, when God should call the chief, he would come out 

 of his grave and launch his ship all equipped upon the waves of the 

 ocean. 



Some interesting objects were found on the prow of the vessel, 

 which at first escaped attention. A piece of a beam showed the hole 

 in which the shaft of an anchor had been inserted, but only bits of 

 iron were found. The remains of two or three small oaken canoes of 

 very fine form were unearthed, and by their side were found a num- 

 ber of oars, some of which were intended for the canoes, and some 

 for the vessel itself. They were eighteen or twenty feet long, and of 

 a shape much like that of the oars which are used in England in re- 

 gattas. The blocks were worked very thin, and some of them were 

 ornamented with carvings. The floor of the ship was as well pre- 

 served as if it had been built yesterday, and was adorned with curved 

 lines. Some pieces of wood seemed to have formed parts of drag-nets. 

 Certain beams and planks are supposed to have formed partitions 

 separating the benches of rowers from one another, leaving a passage 

 in the middle. A neatly shaped hatchet, several inches long and 

 of the form common to hatchets of the iron age, was found on a pile 

 of oaken chips. Some beams had dragons' heads at their ends, rudely 

 carved and painted in the same colors as the walls of the vessel that 

 is, in black and yellow. The colors are still bright enough to show 

 that water has not greatly affected them. As olive and other vege- 

 table oils were then unknown, we must suppose that the colors were 

 prepared with some kind of fat, perhaps with whale-oil. 



TOL. XIX. 6 



