Playing chicken, with a horse

So it has been over a week since my last blog post, and I can only apologise for that. I just came back from a holiday in Wales in which we saw many castles, waterways and best of all sampled many different beers. Now, you may be wondering how on each does this relate to the Vikings and how does any of this fit in with Vinland?

The secret to Viking power?

Well, firstly there was life on the water, clearly this wasn’t somewhere in the North-Atlantic during the mid-winter storms but still one had to consider the etiquette on the canals and generally ensure that you do not crash into the banks, or worse another boat... this is harder than it sounds. On the first day we managed to get wedged up with another boat just outside of a bridge, then a couple of hours later nearly crashed into another boat in what became a rather amusing game of chicken, in which one of the chickens was actually a horse.

Eh, what!? I can hear you exclaim, well a boat was coming right at us, and our pilot was adamant that the oncoming vessel was on the wrong side of the canal and that it would move. Unfortunately he did not reckon with the fact that it was being pulled along by a horse on the towpath. It had no motor and was entirely unable to avoid us, and apparently it is too much to ask a horse to get in the water and swim in order to move the boat aside. Finally seeing the problem our helmsman swerved the boat off to the far side of the canal after having scared most of the passengers nearly to death. He did this not once, but twice. On the same day. With the same boat. 

Thus you will see that life in the water-lane is actually quite stressful, I can only imagine how the Vikings felt when they were not only dodging other boats, but pirates, icebergs, seagulls and the dragons at the edge of their maps. 

Now to become a little more serious for a moment, I took a book called “The Hammer and the Cross” by Robert Ferguson with me on the trip. It is at its heart a exploration into the relations between the Christian missionaries and the Norse heathens, and how the Christians tried to convert the Vikings for nearly 200 years with often catastrophic results. Now while this was interesting, it was the little details that he highlighted which were the most interesting to me, including a very in depth rendition of the buildings found in Greenland which was a major revelation to me.

The Vikings basically lived in bunkers, yes, bunkers! Essentially they had massive houses which eventually reached something like 60 rooms. Due to the lack of wood in Greenland, they tended to be built out of stone and turf, and were built a little into the ground in order to conserve heat. There is far more to tell about them as they really are fascinating structures, but to find out, you will just have to read my book!

 

With thanks to : http://planetoddity.com/russian-world-war-2-bunkers/