Vikings of the 800s and 900s bury their important leaders in fully rigged ships beneath burial mounds, accompanied by a wealth of domestic utensils and funerary offerings.
The so-called Gokstad ship burial in southern Norway, dating to about 900, exemplifies Norse seagoing longships of the age.
Measuring more than seventy-five feet (twenty-three meters) long and seventeen feet (five and a quarter meters) wide, and built of oak and pine, with a heavy wooden keel and high prow and stern, its overlapping planks are nailed together and lashed to nineteen ribs and cross members.
Sixteen oar holes pierce each side of the hull; a corresponding thirty-two shields are mounted one over the next along the gunwales.
A single mast carries a huge square sail whose yard measures thirty-six feet (eleven meters) across.
An oar fixed at the aft end on the starboard side steers the ship.
