About the log book

The log book on the website contains extracts from the log book of the Sea Stallion from Glendalough. The log book is the ship’s most important documentary record and is kept by the skipper, Carsten Hvid, and the mates, Vibeke Bischoff and Kjetil Sildnes.

Skipper and the mates

Carsten Hvid works in the Viking Ship Museum’s boatyard and has trained as a rope maker since 2003. He has twenty years’ experience sailing traditional boats and open, clinker-built square-riggers, and for a four-year period he worked as a sailing instructor at Fosen Folkehøjskole in Norway. Carsten Hvid has been the Sea Stallion’s skipper since January 2005.

Vibeke Bischoff works at the Viking Ship Museum as a restorer of archaeological ship-finds. Since 1976 she has amassed wide experience in restoration, model-building, and the building and sailing of full-size reconstructions of Viking ships. She has taken part in the museum’s experimental voyages since 1984 and has been mate on the Sea Stallion since 2006.

The log book

The log book records all significant information about the voyage and will be used in the analysis of the reliability of the reconstruction, the ship’s sailing qualities, and the organisation on board. It is supplemented by the electronic log, which keeps a continuous record of time, position, speed at sea and on land, the course steered and kept, and the wind’s force and direction.

The Sea Stallion from Glendalough is fitted with modern navigation, communication and life-saving equipment, weather prediction and measurement systems, and documentation equipment. This means there is no comparison between the degree of safety on this experimental voyage and that possible in Viking times, and the equipment precludes, for example, experiments in Viking navigation. The modern equipment reflects the research priorities of the project: everything is designed to test the reconstruction itself and to investigate, measure and document the sailing qualities of the ship, and the physical conditions in which it sails.

The testing of the reliability of this reconstruction is described in the Boatswain’s Journal.

The ship’s sailing qualities will be studied by means of both the experimental voyage from Dublin to Roskilde and standardised sailing trials on the way.

This experimental voyage will allow us to investigate and document the seaworthiness, manoeuvrability and speed of the ship in real conditions. Rests and delays are included in the calculations, which will make it possible to estimate the total journey time. The results will give us a standard travel speed for Viking longships, comparable with results achieved for other types of ship over the same distance.

The standardised sailing trials will shed light on the performance of both ship and crew in various conditions. The tests will take the form of repeated trials in various conditions over the same stretch, and will test the capabilities of the ship both under sail and when being rowed. Comparison of the ship’s sailing qualities and performance with those of other types of ship will put into perspective what the longships offered their time.

Every day, the skipper and the mate in charge will write a summary of the last 24 hours’ log for the website log book.

» Download the research plan... (pdf, 144 kb )