Reproduction ships
 
These are the reproductions produced in the shop detailed in another link. The ships are fairly faithful reproductions and quite sea-worthy. They are a mix between warships, cargo ships and exploration vessels. Besides each ship is a small plaque showing its name and vital statistics and there is one thing that immediately catches the eye. One of the things listed is their speed. These boats, especially the warships, are extremely fast fast. They will outpace most modern boat including many motor powered ones. Some of them can attain 20 knots or more. They are also beautiful, their lines are exquisite and they all look like racecars which they kind of were. They draw very little water which enabled the vikings to sail up rivers and attack almost anywhere close to any kind of water. The fact that the keel is very close to the surface, combined with the slope of the hull, makes its waterline length much smaller resulting in a much higher hull speed. The shallow draft allowed even fairly large ships to navigate water only one meter deep, it made the fast for the reasons stated above and they were light enough that they could be carried by their crew in many cases whenever portage was necessary. The longest viking ship ever found was dug out of Roskilde harbor and was almost 30 meters long yet could still achieve almost 20 knots of speed under optimal circumstances. You may have wondered earlier why there was no Skuldelev 4 ship. The reason is that this ship was so long that they originally thought that they had found two separate ships so when it turned out to be just one it was eventually named Skuldelev 2-4. Hence the number 4 is skipped in the numbering having been already taken by Skuldelev 2.

On the water
 
These aren't the greatest pictures but it does show a reproduction ship under sail. It tacks beautifully, far better than would have been expected with a square sail. At first it would seem that the edge of the sail would buckle and stop the ship when the angle became too shallow but it can cut very close to the wind and achieve very impressive results.