Knarr
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- For the type of modern yacht, see Knarr (type of yacht).
A knarr is a type of Norse merchant ship famously used by the Vikings. The knarr (also known as knorr or knörr) is of the same clinker-built method used to construct longships, karves, and faerings.
The knarr was primarily used to transport trading goods like walrus ivory, wool, timber, wheat, furs and pelts, armour, slaves, honey, and weapons. It was also used to supply food, drink, and weapons and armour to warriors and traders along their journeys across the Baltic, the Mediterranean and other seas. Knarrer routinely crossed the North Atlantic carrying livestock and stores to Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland as well as trading goods to trading posts in the British Isles, Continental Europe and possibly the Middle East.
[edit] Design
The hull frame of a knarr is shorter and wider, and is broader in the beam and has a deeper draught than the Norse longships used by raiding parties, and it has a heavier mass than a Viking longship. The knarr is a square rigged, single masted trading vessel that relies solely on its single square sail for propulsion at sea. It is usually half-decked and typically features the traditional built-up castle at the stern and a carved stern and sternposts. The square sail rig and lack of keel gave the knarr a poor performance to windward. Also they were less reliant than longships on oars as a means of propulsion and more on the use of sails.
There was a legacy associated with each boat. According to the sagas, when Leif Ericson travelled to North America, he purchased Bjarni Herjólfsson's ship - the self-same vessel which had taken Bjarni west from Greenland to North America when he was blown off-course. It is speculated that the keel from the vessels would be kept generation after generation, and that the ship would be re-built around it, such was the mythology surrounding a particular seaworthy vessel. Alternatively, reusing a perfectly sound keel from a ship would save the shipbuilders time, money and energy.
The knarr had some influence on the design of the cog, used in the Baltic Sea by the Hanseatic League, although this is an altogether different design.
[edit] History of the Knarr
The only knarr found to be well preserved was in a shallow channel in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark of 1962 along with two warships, a Baltic trader, and a ferryboat. Archaeologists believe that the ships where placed there to block the channel against enemy raiders. Today, all five ships, known as the Skuldelev ships, are being restored at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
The knarr might have been in use in colonizing Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. It was possibly the same kind of sailing vessel that the first European colonists used to sail to North America.
