Archaeologist Dr Greer Jarrett from Lund University recently proved that adventure and science do not have to be mutually exclusive. He wanted to find out how the Norsemen navigated over a thousand years ago, which routes they used and where they moored. He left almost 2,800 nautical miles in his wake along the Scandinavian coasts - largely without comfort and modern navigation technology, in open Nordic clinker boats with square sails, whose ancestors were already used by the Vikings.
His cruises took him to the Kattegat and the Gulf of Bothnia, but above all he explored the Norwegian west coast - freezing for research even up to the Lofoten Islands beyond the Arctic Circle.
As their experience grew, the crew developed a kind of mental logbook and sailed intuitively - as the Vikings once did, without charts or compasses. They orientated themselves by landmarks, recognised dangerous currents in fjords and discovered previously unknown Viking harbours along the Scandinavian coast.
YACHT: How did you come up with the Vikings as a topic for your doctoral thesis?
Greer Jarrett: I have always been interested in archaeology and initially did my bachelor's degree in archaeology in Scotland. From the beginning I was fascinated by the Vikings as people who travelled a lot and encountered many different cultures. At that time, many different groups met for the first time, different cultures and communities. That creates quite interesting processes and events in history.
I also wanted to do something maritime. Firstly because I come from a family of sailors and love the sea, but also because I had the impression that this is a very under-researched part of archaeology. Archaeology is normally a terrestrial subject, but the sea is central to the Viking Age. They were a seafaring culture, so I thought it was important to do a project from a maritime perspective.
How did you approach the project?
I was sitting in my office one day and thought: wait a minute, I know how to sail modern boats, but I really don't know enough about old, square-rigged wooden boats. And so I felt that if I wanted to write about it, I should have practical experience. Originally I was just going to spend a month or two in Norway practising on traditional boats. But when I got there, it was such a fantastic experience that I ended up staying for almost a whole year for my field research. Over the next three years, I returned every summer for a month or two.
You already had a lot of experience on modern boats. For your research, you sailed on traditional boat types, made of clinker and with only one square sail, very similar to those of the Vikings. How did it feel to sail with them?
It's very different in many ways. When you get on board for the first time, everything feels much more extreme because the boat is very low in the water compared to a modern boat. There's no deck, so you're still sitting deep in the boat, very, very close to the water. It feels like you're travelling very fast.
A boat like this is also very flexible because of the clinker construction, it twists in the waves, so to speak. And because it has very simple rigging, you can really feel the forces around you. You can feel the interaction between the wind and the sail and the hull in the waves and everything. Everything becomes very clear in a way.
How do the boats behave when sailing?
Quite different from modern boats because they are comparatively light. This means they don't sink into the waves as much, making them very suitable for larger waves. And because the hull can twist to a certain extent, it can adapt quite well to large waves.
Because of the square sail, they don't heel as much because the sail is perpendicular to the hull. In a way, it also feels more stable because the boat never leans as much. The square sail also has the advantage that you can simply drop it quickly. It hangs at the top of the mast on the yard and the halyard is only attached with a slipknot. This gives you a lot of control, because if it gets dangerous or a strong gust comes, you can drop the sail much, much faster than on a modern boat.
They say these boats can't turn up. Is that true?
Not quite. You can make good weight trim when tacking by sending two or three crew members forward or aft, which makes a big difference when steering. We had a go and tacked through a long sound. It was a lot of work, but 60 tacks later we knew we could do it.
You mainly sailed on the North Sea for your research, but also on the Baltic Sea. What differences did you discover?
The Baltic Sea is interesting because it is so shallow compared to parts of the Norwegian coast. The sea conditions therefore change much more quickly. That is perhaps the biggest contrast. You can have calm seas in the morning and then the waves can get really big in a few hours. So you have to be prepared for anything. But the coastline in Norway is also quite something. It is very steep with mountains right down to the coast. So you have very unpredictable wind patterns with downslope winds. The wind can also be very unstable. You could say that the waves are more stable in the North Sea and the wind is more stable in the Baltic Sea. I found it interesting that the traditional boats were also built differently.
Does that mean you sailed on the Baltic Sea with other boats?
No, but on our trip from Sweden to Finland we spoke a lot with people who drove traditional boats similar to ours. They are called Storbåt. They are large boats from the Åland Islands. They are also clinker-built, but they were designed to transport fish from the Åland Islands to Stockholm or St Petersburg. They are wider and lower, with a very large sail. This is good for bringing your fish into the harbour, but quite dangerous when the wind gets really strong.
These sailors said that you can almost always find a safe harbour in the Baltic Sea within a few hours. The boats don't have to be as strong as the Norwegian boats. In Norway there are some places where if you can't sail the boat properly or the boat breaks down, you are quickly done for. So the Norwegian boats are really designed for all kinds of scenarios.
That brings us to your trip to the Lofoten Islands. When you watch the video of your journey beyond the Arctic Circle, you immediately start to freeze. How did you get through it on the barren boat without heating?
It was cold, that's true! But we took turns in four-hour watches, so after four hours on deck you're in your bunk for four hours. And that works pretty well because you get cold in that time, but not super cold. There were 13 of us on board, so you sleep very close together and the body heat really helps. I don't remember freezing so much as being very demoralised by the constant rain and snow. On the way to Lofoten it rained or snowed for 13 days straight! And that is very demoralising. So it was almost more of a mental challenge than a physical one. You can warm up, but feeling happy is sometimes more difficult in these situations. It was a challenge, but we as a crew had been sailing together for six or seven months at that point. We were a very good team and were able to help each other to make everyone feel better.
On the way back, we had a nice north-easterly wind and sunshine. It took us two weeks to get to the Lofoten Islands and less than three days to sail back. That was fantastic! We literally sailed in a straight line for almost three days. That was super cool. And it shows you that if you choose your weather window well, the world is not such a big place.
So you're not cured after this trip. What are you planning next?
Greenland would be fantastic because very little research has been done there. But it's quite difficult to transport a boat there and then sail from there or even sail directly to Greenland. It's also dangerous. So there's a bit of logistics to deal with. Let's see if we can make it happen. But the plan is to at least continue with this research method.
