CHAPTER XX. 
SHIPBUILDING AND SHIPPING. 
In Norway there is a great consumption of wood as fuel 
for domestic purposes and in manufactures; there is also 
a great consumption of it in buildings constructed entirely 
of timber, and in carpentry, in the manufacture of furni- 
ture, in the construction of railroads, and in the construc- 
tion of carriages of various kinds. Surpassing all these in 
interest for foreigners, is the consumption of it in ship- 
building ; but that more in reference to the shipping pro- 
duced than the quantity of timber thus employed. From 
of old the Norsemen have been famous for their maritime 
enterprise. It may be that it was as sea-rovers that they 
found their way to Scandinavia. The course followed by 
the Lapps, and that subsequently followed by the Finns, 
can be traced from the east through Northern Russia ; but 
it is not so with the Norsemen. 
It is alleged that the Lofoden fishing boat of the present 
day is almost exactly of the same build as the war galleys 
of the ancient Vikings, in which they ravaged every shore 
of Europe from, the bleak and storm-beat coasts of Orkney 
and Shetland, to the sunny Isles of Greece. There is the 
same lofty prow, the same sheer, and the single lofty mast 
with its heavy square sail. 
In a treatise on Prehistoric Sweden, by Oscar Montelius, 
it is stated that there was found in a peat-bog at Nydam, 
in Jutland, two large boats, accompanied by Roman coins of 
the second century, and numerous articles belonging to the 
first age of iron. They were clincher-built. The one of 
oak, the other of pine. They were not decked, and they ter- 
minated beth before and aft in a point, were fitted only 
