In 1990, two researchers probingthe roof of a 12th-century stone church in northern Norway made a remarkable find: stuffed into a gap between the roof and walls were the tattered remains of a 650-year-old woollen sail. Although maritime archaeologists had long suspected that Vikings plied the oceans in ships with woollen sails, this ragged piece of cloth offered the first definitive proof. When the pair joined forces with traditional handcraft expert Amy Lightfoot to weave this reproduction, they hoped to learn how such a sail would perform on the open sea. But copyingthe old sail yielded far more than just cloth. Lightfoot found herself exploringthe very warp and weft of Viking life. Viking voyages were only possible, she realised, because of their sheep 鈥� and the women who stayed behind to spin the wool.
THE Gulatingslovi, a Norse law dating from about AD 1000, was very clear on the subject of sails: 鈥淭he man on whom responsibility falls and who lives near the sea, shall store the sail in the church. If the church burns this man is responsible for the sail鈥︹�� Norse sagas describe a ship鈥檚 sail as a prized possession, crucial to the defence of Norway鈥檚 long coast against rival clans and foreign invaders. Indeed, every settlement was responsible for providing and outfitting a leidangskip, a communal boat for defence, and for keeping its sail safe.
Since the middle of the 1800s, maritime archaeologists have been able to study a series of well-preserved Viking ships, either excavated from grave mounds or raised from the bottom of fjords. What they were missing was a sail: such old cloth rarely survives in the environments that preserve wood. But after delving into old documents and laws, Jon Godal of the Norwegian Craftsmen鈥檚 Registry and Eric Andersen from the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde in Denmark decided old sails might be preserved in an entirely different sort of place 鈥� old churches. They struck it lucky in the church at Trondenes. Crammed into the seam between the walls and the roof, they found a fragment of sail. It may have once been stored in the church for safety, but it ended its days blocking the wind instead of filling with it. Laced into one corner was an eyelet that clearly identified it as part of a sail.
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Amy Lightfoot, head of the T酶mmervik Textile Trust in Hitra, Norway, had been researching and documenting the traditional handcrafts of coastal Norway and the Shetland and Faroe Islands for the Norwegian Craftsmen鈥檚 Registry since the late 1980s. She had studied coastal peoples鈥� use of a tough, lanolin-rich wool to knit garments and weave vadmal, a thick woollen cloth used to make durable clothing. She knew, too, that woollen sails had powered Norwegian boats well into the 1800s. When the Coastal Museum in Hitra decided in 1991 to build a replica of a Norwegian coastal boat first used locally in the 1300s, it decided that it should have a woollen sail based on the newly discovered fragment from Trondenes, and that Lightfoot was the only person with the expertise to weave it. There was only one catch: the knowledge needed to produce such an object had disappeared with the sails themselves. 鈥淣o one had made sails since the middle of the 1800s. We couldn鈥檛 talk to anyone about it,鈥� says Lightfoot. 鈥淏ut people still made vadmal, and we could talk to them about that.鈥�
Even the simplest sail is a highly complex tensile structure. The fabric must be heavy enough to withstand strong winds and strain from the rigging, but not so heavy that it slows the ship or is difficult to raise or lower. It must be elastic, so that it fills with enough wind to form an area of low pressure in front of the sail, but not so elastic that it forms irregular pockets. The sail鈥檚 form must also be correct: too flat and it won鈥檛 propel the boat, but too bowed and the boat won鈥檛 manoeuvre in the wind. The trick to achieving this balance lies in the strength of the different threads, the tightness of their twist, and their interlacing and watertightness. The discovery of the Trondenes sail meant that, for the first time, these intricacies could be examined in Viking-age cloth.
Microscopic analysis of the sail showed that its strength came from the long, coarse outer hairs of a primitive breed of northern European short-tailed sheep called villsau (Ovis brachyura borealis). Small flocks can still be found from Finland in the east as far as Iceland in the west. Norwegian coastal farmers had long favoured this breed, which could thrive on the limited amount of forage, chiefly heather, found on the Norwegian coast. Villsau were extremely hardy: they did not need shelter in winter, nor extra food to survive outdoors throughout the year. The result was less work for the farmer and, because the sheep were always outside, a wool saturated with water-repellent lanolin.
When it came to making a sail for the Coastal Museum鈥檚 boat, the Sara Kjerstine, Lightfoot was able to provide a limited amount of villsau wool from a flock of 25 sheep she kept herself. The remainder came from a modern relative called the spelsau. Both types of wool had to be worked by hand to preserve the lanolin and to separate the long, strong outer hairs from the weaker inner wool. Following tradition, Lightfoot and her colleagues 鈥渞ooed鈥� or pulled wool from the villsau in midsummer. This was not a trivial undertaking: the Sara Kjerstine required an 85-square-metre sail that consumed 2000 kilograms of wool, a year鈥檚 production from 2000 sheep. To prepare the wool for spinning, the outer hairs had to be separated by hand from the inner fleece. That job took Lightfoot and three helpers six months. Spinning the wool into 165,000 metres of yarn and weaving the sail took another two-and-a-half years. The Sara Kjerstine made her maiden voyage with her woollen sail in 1995.
After finishing the Sara Kjerstine鈥檚 sail, and a second, 50-square-metre sail for a group of Danish Viking ship enthusiasts, in 1997 Lightfoot joined forces with the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde. The museum wanted a woollen sail for the Ottar, a replica it was building of a Norwegian-made Viking cargo ship. This time Lightfoot took a short cut: instead of rooing the wool, it was sheared. Still, she and her colleagues had to spin 188,000 metres of yarn for the 90-square-metre sail. The sail took three years to complete and the Ottar set sail in August 2000.
As Lightfoot spent endless hours working the wool, she thought about the enormous amount of time and material needed to produce just one sail. Outfitting a fleet seemed nearly impossible, and yet the Danish king Knut II is believed to have had more than 1700 ships at his command when he laid plans to oust William I from England in 1085. 鈥淵ou think about the Vikings鈥� western expansion, and you look at all the wool it took,鈥� she says. 鈥淎nd you think, maybe the sheep had something to do with their expansion.鈥�
Sheep and women 鈥� women with their drop spindles, looms and infinite capacity for work. 鈥淯nless there were women ashore making sails, Vikings could have never sailed anywhere,鈥� says Lightfoot. But there was more. Each sail required so much wool that Vikings had to perfect their sheep husbandry. In Norway, they managed the landscape to feed more sheep by burning the heaths.
Historical and radiocarbon data from as early as 1400 BC show that Norwegian coastal farmers kept sheep and burnt the heather. Villsau must eat a rich variety of grasses in the summer to gain the weight they need to survive winter on heather. The sheep themselves encourage new fodder, suppressing new growth of heather and enabling nourishing summer grasses to flourish. Fire augments the process by keeping down the heather and preventing the invasion of young pines that would eventually turn good grazing land to forest.
Lightfoot鈥檚 three woollen sails have provided some unexpected insights into the handling of Viking ships. For example, woollen sails power Viking ships about 10 per cent faster upwind than modern sails, and can be sailed far closer to the wind than anyone guessed. In September, the Roskilde museum鈥檚 latest ship, a reproduction based on the Skuldelev 2 wreck, is due to make its maiden voyage to Ireland. Ironically, this ship won鈥檛 have a woollen sail. 鈥淚t鈥檚 too expensive,鈥� says Andersen. Unlike the Vikings, the museum doesn鈥檛 have huge flocks of wild Norwegian sheep to produce the wool it needs. Nor does it have an army of women to spin and weave its sails.