Half -Light over Cold Seas 83 



explore. When they did return later in search of such newly sighted 

 coasts, moreover, they did so solely for the most practical purposes, 

 such as to find new sources of food or other raw materials. Both 

 Basques and Norsemen were primarily fisherfolk, and to them 

 whales were the most valuable "fish." They went anywhere after 

 these sea products and thus only incidentally discovered new lands. 

 Even the British and Dutch were far more interested in finding 

 sources of animal oil than in discovering a northeast passage, and 

 this was desirable only as a new route to the spices and other lux- 

 uries of the Orient. A rounded picture of these odd and compara- 

 tively rare maritime peoples is thus a substantial part of our whole 

 story, and the origin of the Basques, Japanese, and Norse is of just 

 as much importance as that of the blue, sperm, and bottle-nosed 

 whales. Unless you know where the people concerned came from 

 and how they lived, you cannot possibly understand, for instance, 

 why the Scots built icebreakers or the Norwegians are today milling 

 about the Antarctic in vast floating factories. 



It was in shipbuilding, however, that the Norse made their great- 

 est contribution to history and it was through their seafaring ex- 

 ample that western Europe was first stimulated to assert itself. The 

 Norse used two kinds of craft known rather logically as "long ships" 

 and "round ships." Both were clinker-built of oak on a frame of 

 numerous strong, naturally curved timbers that were gutted to re- 

 ceive the planks. The timbers were grown crooked deliberately by 

 being tied down when saplings. The planking was bolted and riv- 

 eted together from the inside, and then lashed to the frames with 

 withes made from tree roots. These ships were caulked with three 

 strands of corded cow hair laid in when they were built. Both types 

 were double-ended and they were virtually without keels. Bow- 

 sprits were unknown and there was no rudder post, steering being 

 effected by a large outside oar which was always on the "star- 

 board" — meaning the "stars" for navigation and the "board," or 

 oar, for steering. Apart from these points, the two types differed 

 considerably. A great deal is known about the long ships because of 

 the Norsemen's habit of burying their sea kings in their own boats 

 under a mound of earth known as a howe. Four of them have been 

 dug up in a very fair state of preservation. The round ships are even 

 better known, for they are still built today on the coasts of Norway, 



