Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/231

 was attached to the side of the ship, upon the starboard quarter, and the anchor, originally of stone, was afterward supplanted by one of iron, somewhat similar in form to those now in use. When the vessel was in harbour a tent was spread over the ship at both ends. The vessel was supplied with a large boat, called the 'after-boat,' sometimes large enough to hold twenty persons [Egils Saga Skallagrímssonar, ch. 27], which was frequently towed behind the ship; in addition to this, a smallar boat often appears to have been carried upon the ship. [Cf. Egils Saga Skallagrímssonar, ch. 60, wherein we are told that three men enter the smaller boat, but eighteen the 'after-boat']. The knǫrr was swift and more easily controlled than the long-ship [langskip] or war-ship, as we may conclude from a passage in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, ch. 184, wherein Earl Hacon tells Sigmund Brestisson, when the latter is preparing to sail to the Færoes, to take vengeance for his father, 'the voyage is not so long as it is difficult, for long-ships cannot go thither on account of the storms and currents, which are oftentimes so severe there, that a merchant-ship [byrðingr] can scarcely cope with these, [wherefore] it seems to me best, that I should cause two "knerrir" to be equipped for your voyage.' Upon Queen Aud's vessel there were twenty freemen, and besides these there were probably as many more women and children, perhaps forty or fifty persons in all. As Aud was going to a new country to make it her permanent home, she took with her, no doubt, a considerable cargo of household utensils, timber, grain, live-stock, &c. In the Egils Saga mention is made of two vessels (knerrir, sing. knǫrr), presumably of about the same size as this 'knǫrr,' in which Aud and her people made the voyage to Iceland. We read there, that after the death of Thorolf Kveldulfsson, who received his death-wound from Harold Fairhair's own hand, because of his refusal to pay tribute to the king, that Kveldulf, Thorolf's father and Skallagrim, his brother, decided to go to Iceland. 'Early in the spring [878], Kveldulf and his son each made his ship ready. They had a considerable ship's company, and a goodly one. They made ready two large "knerrir," having upon each thirty able-bodied men, besides women and young persons. They took with them all of the property which they could.' [Egils Saga Skallagrímssonar, ed. Finnur Jónsson, Copenh. 1886, p. 81.] A recent writer, Tuxen, reasoning from this passage, concludes, that there could not have been less than forty persons on board each ship, there may well have been more, and to transport these, together with their probable cargo, would, he estimates, require a sloop of not less than forty tons burden, which would belong to the smallest class of vessels now making the voyage between Copenhagen and Iceland. Reasoning from a comparison of a vessel of this size with the ship unearthed at the farm of Gokstad, north of Sandefiord, Norway, in 1880, he concludes, that such a 'knǫrr' would have been somewhat over forty-two feet long, with a breadth of beam of from sixteen to eighteen feet, that is to say rather more than twenty feet shorter than the Gokstad ship, with about the same breadth of beam, but probably considerably deeper from gunwale to keel. It is not clear, however, why so small a size should be assigned to the 'knǫrr;' there seems excellent reason for the conclusion that these vessels were not only as large, but even decidedly larger, than the Gokstad ship. Sailing free, before the wind, these ships could doubtless attain a very creditable rate of speed, but the nature of the sail and its adjustment was apparently such that they could not make favourable progress when beating into the wind, especially in land-locked waters, and hence the frequent recurrence in the sagas of the statement, that 'the ship waited for a fair wind' [byrr], before setting sail. It was, probably, in ships of a