I have been reading about the Vikings a lot lately. And as I looked at one of their boats and red that the trip to greenland took 5 days, I started wondersing: How on earth did they spend 5 days in an uncovered ship in freezing temperatures and not die of hypothermia?
Its not liek they had Gore-Tex or hollowfil jackets. How did they stay alive?
Building the Metrodome helped out a lot.
Touche, Bob. Touche.
I assume they wore a lot of wool. Wool is a good fabric for cold, damp weather, because it is not very absorbant, and it leaches water away from the skin. Hence the popularity of the wool sweater in Ireland.
I also recall that in my whitewater canoe training classes, many moons ago (and before space age fabrics were as common as they are now), we were advised to wear wool as the best protection against hypothermia. Unlike other fabrics which absorb the cold water and hold it against your skin, wool releases the water and continues to provide you with insulation once you get out of the drink.
the vikings? you do not need to go that far back. Well into this century men were manning huge sailships and working aloft for hours in freezing weather. I guess, they would have some protection (but no heat) when their watch went below. Those were hard times and people were tough. It was common for a sailship to lose a man or two to accident on a long voyage. The living conditions of the rest were awful.
You might want to read this classic: The making of a sailor and also Two Years before The Mast
they are classics where you can read what the life os sailors was like
In additon to wool and other fabric “layering” (the European 'ice man" discovered in the Alps who pre-dated the Vikings by several thousand years used this to good effect) people simply get physically acclimated to colder temperatures and can handle temperatures (within limits of course) that would send the average modern person into hypothermic shock.
I wondered that myself and asked in my topic about waterproofing a coat. The best answer most would give me is just go buy a raincoat.
Probably oilcloth was used. But it makes you wonder how much personal gear a sailor could bring aboard a ship, or canoe in the vikings case.
Did they paddle/sail 24/5?
The shores of Newfoundland have been fished since 1005 AD so they probably knew something about survival at sea in weather.One could assume it was common practice to try to be the last fishing boat in before ice.
sailor, I just read Shakelton’s diary from his trip on the Endurance. Same thing. You wonder how tough they were. But even if they were tough, they were still homo homo sapiens. Wool or no wool, spending 5 days, soaking wet in sub freezing temps seems impossible. I wonder if they huddled up at night. Tehre was no “below deck” on a viking ship. It was just a big rowboat with a sail .
But that’s my point. If they were wearing wool, they weren’t “soaking” wet. Wool just doesn’t hold water like other fabrics. Try an experiment. Put on an old wool sweater. Now splash yourself with cold water. Watch what happens. The wool will repel most of the water and leach off the rest, all the while continuing to keep you cozy and warm. I’m sure it has something to do with the natural oils in the wool. Remember, sheep’s hair is genetically designed to keep its owner warm and dry. It works for the sheep, it works for us, too.
I imagine a cloak of animal fur might be handy for repelling water and retaining warmth as well.
Obviously, the Vikings did successfully brave the elements. They just as obviously had a very limited number of fabrics available to them. (In fact, wool might have been the only fabric available.) Wool seems like it must be the answer.
I can personally attest that it works. When I was doing the whitewater canoeing thing (in winter, mind you), I wore layers of wool. (A wool sweater over a wool shirt.) Since I was a beginner, I endured multiple dunkings, but the wool kept me warm.
wool or no wool those were very tough men and the value of human life was not that much. Many men were lost and it was considered part of the cost of doing business
For the record, the vikings did indeed wear a lot of wool.
I hunted a lot back when wool was the best fabric available. And I have rafted a few rivers in the rockies. But getting wet and then having 10 minutes to dry off is a little different that gettign constantly sprayed. Not to mention that the bottom of the boat probably had water in it most of the time. Even if they could keep their torsos dry, I am sure that their feet were wet a lot.
I wonder what the rate of death and the rate of frosbite was. Of course, we will never know.
It just blows my mind how they withstood the cold and pain…and how they lived through it. I wonder if we are just a bunch of woosies now.
I believe that you have been thinking of solutions to a problem that the vikings simply did their best to avoid. If there is no easy solution to a problem, then avoid the problem… Yes, GoreTex was not around in 800 AD, and crew facilities at longboats were admittedly a bit crude. So vikings simply did their best not to be caught up at sea during freezing weather.
We know that most vikings were farmers, who would spend the better part of the year–including the winter–in their home village. In spring, as the weather got better, they would head out by longboat in order to trade (and, where defenses were not too strong or sophisticated, raid and plunder). Thus, freezing temperatures were the exception rather than the rule.
Also, recall that the climate in northern Europe is thought to have been more benign during the heydays of the vikings. Even around Iceland and Greenland, the springs and summers must have been relatively warm. Indeed, a key reason why the vikings were able to establish settlements on Greenland was that the climate in the coastal regions of Greenland for a while was conducive to some farming (and the decline and extinction of said settlements coincided with the cooling of the climate in the 14th and 15th centuries).
Furthermore, remember that the vikings travelled far and wide. Not all vikings sailed across the North Sea and the Atlantic. For a viking leaving southern Sweden and travelling to the Black Sea, freezing temperatures must surely have been one of the minor concerns. (That goes for the modern variety of Swedish vikings as well, who nowadays come armed with hairy legs and video cameras…)
Thus, while conditions at the sea could be rough, freezing temperatures were normally avoided.
Of course, the OP is perfectly right in assuming that the vikings would have had a hard time at sea in freezing weather–that is presumably exactly why the vikings avoided that type of situation…
Jonas–born in Sweden, presently plundering Philadelphia
>> if we are just a bunch of woosies now.
Yup, we are. Those were the times of wooden ships and steel men. Previous generations (even our parents who fought WWII) had it very tough and it is thanks to them that we enjoy a better life today. That is why I hate so much all this revising of history where past generations are all bad. If the woosie idiots doing the revising had to live in that time they would not last long.
I have posted here a 1931 national geographic article which I am transcribing but I have not scanned all the photos yet. I will leave it there for a few days so you can see it but i will probably take it down after a while.
I hope you enjoy it.
This guy claims that many norwegian folk sayings come from the vikings. This sounds reasonable, but he also claims that one of these sayings attributed to the vikings is this: “There is no such thing as bad weather. Just bad clothes.” (I am not going to try to type it in Norwegian.)
I don’t submit this as enlightening information but merely as an amusing, related anecdote.
Using common sense lets look at the viking warships.Which is the only thing I have
heard them called.
They were not large enough to use to trade grain like jonas would like us to
believe. They had sails, and I’m sure an extra one for emergencies. Being so small there
could not have been much room for personal gear so what you wore was what you had. It
would be pretty hard for each man to carry aboard his own bearskin.
The vikings were warriors. Taking that into account they were also opportunists. When
weather beset them they would have headed for the nearest settlement and taken what
they needed to survive. They would also have to have used whatever plunder they had on
board and if that wasn’t enough they had that extra sail.Each man with his own poncho
sweating while pulling on the oars they could probably have stayed warm enough in
pretty horrific conditions.
Losing a toe or two to frostbite was probably not a really big thing then. The innuit knew
about mukluks and so we can assume that the more technically advanced vikings did too.
There is a procedure for waterproofing leather by smoking it over a fire. I would assume
that any human advanced enough to build a big boat would know about that also.
Are you saying homos can’t be tough? 
Well, I would like to clarify that when I said that Vikings were traders in addition to being plunderers, I did not mean that they were trading grain. AFAIK, grain has never been an important good in long-distance trade in Europe (?), at least not during medieval times (it can be produced almost anywhere, spoils easily, and is worth too little in relation to its weight). Instead, too the degree Vikings traded, they brought things that could be produced in abundance in their homelands and were worth relatively much in relation to its size and weight–such as furs, weapons, slaves, wax, honey, and walrus ivory–and traded it for what was difficult to produce back home–silver, salt, silk, etc.
Having said that, it is clear that the Vikings preferred to just take what they wanted, whenever they could get away with it. People in present-day England, Ireland, and France seem to have considered them as nothing but pirates and barbarians. These areas were poorly defended (at least in the 9th and 10th centuries), and isolated towns, villages, and monasteries were an easy match for the fast-sailing Viking longboats. The warships had a very shallow draft that enabled them to get close to any beach for a quick hit-and-run raiding party. Scientific American has an article about the Viking longboats here: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0298issue/0298hale.html
However, the Vikings could not get away with the same thing in Constantinople or in the Kiev region. Indeed, try to imagine a Viking ship or even a Viking fleet trying to attack Constantinople, or trying to attack towns in the Byzantine Empire more than once… The Vikings may have been brutal, but they were not stupid. People in these areas could defend themselves, so in these areas, the Vikings made the bulk of their living out of trading, not plundering. Ibn Fadlan and Ibn Khordabeh clearly describe them as traders, and not as plunderers.
Some information about Viking travels seems to be available at this site (I can not vouch for the accuracy of the information on this site): http://viking.no/e/travels/etravels.htm
I’m sorry for the hijack…
Almost all of the long distance Viking voyages (at least the ones done on purpose) weren’t done in the classic dragon-beaked “longship”. Erik the Red’s ship that he took to Greenland, Bjarni Herjolfsson’s ship in which he was blown to Labrador (which was also the one that Leif Eriksson took to Newfoundland) and the four ships that Thorvald Erifsson and Thorfinn Karlsefni used for the colonization attempt at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, were a type called a knarr (or knorr). It was a cousin to the longship, clinker built, double ended, with a single mast and a single square sail and a side rudder. But they were longer, beamier, much greater displacement and a lot of freeboard. They had a foredeck and afterdeck but amidship it was open. Their cargo was laid in the open hold and covered with greased tarpaulins.
In Norse graves in Greenland, the men are clothed in hooded, ankle length woolen gowns. Mariners had big sleeping bags made of sheepskin or cowhide. These would have been handy since the partial deck and tarps would have provided little comfort from the spray and continual leaking.
A longship, being long and narrow with almost no freeboard would have broken or been swamped by any half way bad storm. It has been said that, while the longship was an excellent way to terrorize the coastal people of Europe, in the open sea, the only people it scared were its own passengers.
As mentioned above, the climate was better during the Viking Era. Prior to 3000 BC , the Climatic Optimum, the Arctic was a much nicer place to sail. It is possible that the Arctic ice completely melted during the summer. The weather then deteriorated until about the year 0, making it much worse then it is even now. Pytheas, sailing in these waters in 330BC, reported pack ice a day’s sail north of Iceland. About 400 AD, the weather started getting better. By 800 AD, it was much warmer and drier with fewer cyclonic storms than it is now. There was little sea ice in the summer, which probably was the source of the idea that one could sail the Arctic to China. This warmer period, called the Little Climatic Optimum, lasted until about 1200 AD. It was probably only warmer by 4 to 5 degrees but what would have helped the Vikings cope would have been the decrease in violent storms.
So the weather was better and the ships were better than one might have thought. I think the most important factor was that the Norse were some tough hombres. Edward Gibbon wrote that the North was not a nursery for weaklings.
When a bunch of Scandinavians were sailing a longship replica to America for the Chicago World Fair, they stopped in France to kick off one of their party who wanted to sleep under a blanket.
Mipsman
Thanks I had forgotten about the longboats.
How long was the typical boat?
How large was it’s crew.
I’ve been on the replica of Columbas’s ship The Nina. Thats still small if you ask me.
Good OP!
Wool coming off the beast is oily - we remove those oils for wools today but Vikings and those who make the beautiful Irish sweaters did/do not. It’s the oils that help keep the wearer dry, rain just rolls off. The main oil must have been lanolin and lanolin would help protect the face and hands, they could probably just have wiped their faces and hands on the sweater to get that protection.