[Regia-NA] Re: Viking naval warfare

[Cory W. Nielsen]

Hi again, Brett. :) 

I know I replied to your questions once already, but as luck would have it I 
just finished reading "The Viking Art of War" by Paddy Griffith last night. 
In the last chapter, the book outlines several (about a dozen?) examples of 
naval combat in various sagas, and the author dedicates a few pages to the 
"marine-style" ship-to-ship combat described in these sources. If you're 
still interested in this subject, I would recommend this as a source. Just 
keep in mind the author's own disclaimer (about piecing together a vision of 
this kind of combat from the sagas) and the fact that some of his 
conclusions are disputed by other historians. 

Alternatively, I could send you a list of the battles (with names and dates) 
in that list and you could research the sagas themselves. I would guess that 
you could probably find out quite a bit on various internet sites. I'm at 
work now, but if you're interested let me know and I can send you the list 
tonight. 

Cory 

Brett W. McCoy writes: 

> A discussion arose the other night amongst some compatriots over whether 
> the Vikings had ever fought battles from their longships, part of the 
> question being how they might have rowed and battled at the same time, and 
> part of the question being whether or not this ever happened in the first 
> place (making the first question irrelevant). 
> 
> Tom provided some interesting info this morning from Snorri Sturluson 
> about King Harald Sigurdsson's battle on the Nissa River.  Is there any 
> other written evidence that the Vikings ever did combat from their ships? 
> 
> -- Brett 
> 
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