be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner
had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with
the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other
articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral
according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft
has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well
quote the passage in full:--

[Footnote 193: See his _Larger History of the United States_,
pp. 32-34.]

[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]

She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and
sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of
the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep.
She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She
was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the
shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame
were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards
of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and
stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but
were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended.
The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of
any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to
pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out.
The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side,
had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to
be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was
the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being
originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was
like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached,
not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood
which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost
two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length,
and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's
side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps
also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred
vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which
might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved,