How Fast Were Viking Longships?

In The Two Lives of Charlemagne, by the biographer Notker the Stammerer, we encounter a deeply troubled Charlemagne who witnessed an unusual event in southern France. A fleet of Northmen sailed up the coast to raid but, seeing a garrison of Franks stationed where they had hoped to strike, they fled. The Franks sent a fleet to pursue them, but they could not match the Northmen’s speed. Notker tells us Charlemagne recognized the imminent threat of the Vikings on his empire when he said, “I do not fear that these bandits will do me any harm; I am sick at heart to think that, even in my lifetime, they dared to attack this coast, and I am horror-stricken when I think of the harm they will do to my descendants and their subjects.”

Already in his lifetime, we learn that the Vikings’ longships had a reputation for sailing much faster than those of the Franks. The longship was an innovation that struck terrible fear in the hearts of their victims, and it has become one of the leading symbols for the Viking Age. Yet, for all the contemporary testimonies about their speed, historians and archeologists struggled for a long time to determine how fast a longship might have sailed. Not until modern reconstructions put their theories to the test did they manage to estimate longship speeds, and even then there are factors that may have affected speed for which they cannot account.

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, has built five reproduction longships based on those they have found in recent years, and they have put them all to the test. Theirs is one of the most educational efforts to assess the speed with which the Vikings might have sailed. Below are the four best longships among the five they’ve reconstructed, and the information the museum lists about them on their website:

Skuldelev 1 – The Ocean-Going Trader
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Ottar: Skuldelev 1. Photo Credit: The Viking Ship Museum.

Skuldelev 1 is a sizeable ocean-going cargo ship from Sogne