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BEFORE THE VIKINGS
The Viking Era has received a lot of attention recently
because of the Millennium. The Vikings were farmers, fishermen, craftsmen
and traders as well as raiders. They were master ship builders, but
they didn't become so overnight. Boats and ships were important for
transportation, travel and fishing for thousands of years before the
Vikings. |
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The first
boats were hollowed out tree trunks. These boats (left and above)
were used in Scandinavia during a period called the Hunter Stone Age, more
than 5000 years before the Viking era. |
Later, boats
were made of planks. |
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The boats in the pictures above are reconstructions and are located in the
Stone Age Village at Höör in southern Sweden.
(The site has most information in Swedish; the English version is mostly
tourist information. If you click on the link Stenåldersbyn in the
lefthand frame on their site, then on the picture of a horse and rider in a lighter
brown than the background, you will find more pictures.) |
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Petroglyphs of boats can
be found on flat rocks.
These
pictures from the Bronze age (1800 – 500 B.C.) were carved on a rock at Simris in southern Sweden more than 2,500 years ago, about 1,500 years
before the Vikings.
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