An archaeologist has uncovered new evidence about Viking seafaring routes, showing that Norse sailors may have ventured farther out into open water than scholars had long assumed. Greer Jarrett, a doctoral student in archaeology at Lund University in Sweden, has spent the past three years retracing Viking routes across more than 5,000 kilometres of northern seas in a square-rigged clinker-built vessel based on Viking Age designs.
Jarrett’s fieldwork has taken him from Trondheim up to the Arctic Circle and back, testing how such vessels perform both near the coast and in open waters. His findings suggest that Viking voyages were not limited to coast-hugging routes, as previously thought, but could involve extended legs across exposed seas.
Greer Jarrett – Photo: Catrin Jakobsson
“I can show that this type of boat sails well on open water, in tough conditions. But navigating close to land and in the fjords sometimes presents challenges that are just as great, but not as obvious. Underwater currents and katabatic winds blowing down from mountain slopes, for example,” says Greer Jarrett.
The voyages have not been without incident. During one 2022 expedition near the Lofoten Islands, the wooden yard holding up the mainsail snapped, forcing the crew to make emergency repairs while at sea.
“The cold in the Lofoten Islands was a challenge. Our hands really suffered. At that point I realised just how crucial it is to have a good crew,” says Jarrett.
Mapping Viking Routes and Harbours
The sailing routes taken by Greer Jarrett during the research project. The image also shows the four possible Viking harbours identified by Jarrett. Photo: Greer Jarrett
Jarrett has also been studying how Vikings navigated and where they might have stopped along the way. By comparing traditional sailing knowledge from the 19th and early 20th centuries with his own experiences and interviews with modern sailors and fishermen, he has pieced together possible Viking sailing routes.
“I used the experience of my own journeys and the sailors’ traditional knowledge to reconstruct possible Viking Age sailing routes,” Jarrett explains.
Vikings did not use maps or compasses, but instead relied on “mental maps” formed through memory and myth. Jarrett has highlighted how oral stories linked to landmarks like Torghatten, Hestmona, and Skrova helped Viking sailors understand their environment.
“Examples include Viking stories about the islands Torghatten, Hestmona and Skrova off the Norwegian coast,” says Jarrett. “The stories serve to remind sailors of the dangers surrounding these places, or of their importance as navigation marks.”
Jarrett refers to this cultural-geographic approach as a “Maritime Cultural Mindscape,” suggesting that entire networks of stories—passed down through generations—once helped sailors make sense of the coasts, skerries, and fjords they encountered.
Reconstruction of two of the harbours mentioned in the research article. Image: Greer Jarrett
In his latest publication, Jarrett identifies four likely Viking harbours—or “havens”—along the Norwegian coastline. These locations are set farther out to sea than previously known Viking ports and may have served as informal but crucial rest stops along major trade routes.
“With this type of boat, it has to be easy to get in and out of the harbour in all possible wind conditions,” says Jarrett. “There must be several routes in and out. Shallow bays are not an issue because of the shallow draft of the boats. Getting far up the narrow fjords, however, is tricky. They are difficult to sail upwind with a square rig, and the boats are sensitive to katabatic winds.”
“A lot of the time, we only know about the starting and ending points of the trade that took place during the Viking Age. Major ports, such as Bergen and Trondheim in Norway, Ribe in Denmark, and Dublin in Ireland. The thing I am interested in is what happened on the journeys between these major trading centres. My hypothesis is that this decentralised network of ports, located on small islands and peninsulas, was central to making trade efficient during the Viking Age.”
Braving the Northern Seas
Photo: Benjamin Vilella
Some of the risks Jarrett and his team encountered underscore how dangerous these journeys could be in the Viking Age. When the yard broke in Vestfjorden, 25 kilometres from shore, they improvised a repair using two oars lashed together.
“We had to lash two oars together to hold the sail, and hope that it would hold. We made it back to the harbour safely, but then we had to spend several days repairing the boat before we could sail again.”
There were also unexpected encounters with wildlife. “On another trip, a minke whale suddenly surfaced and flapped its huge tail fin just metres from the boat.”
In the end, Jarrett believes the success of Viking voyages rested not only on strong ships but on tight-knit crews capable of withstanding the harsh environment and each other.
“You need a boat that can withstand all kinds of weather conditions. But if you don’t have a crew that can cooperate and put up with each other for long periods, these journeys would probably be impossible,” Jarrett concludes.
The article, “From the Masthead to the Map: an Experimental and Digital Approach to Viking Age Seafaring Itineraries,” by Greer Jarrett, is published in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Click here to read it.
Top Image: The sailboat is a so-called færing (four-oared boat). It was built at a folk high school in Norway as part of Greer Jarrett’s research project. Photo: Greer Jarrett
An archaeologist has uncovered new evidence about Viking seafaring routes, showing that Norse sailors may have ventured farther out into open water than scholars had long assumed. Greer Jarrett, a doctoral student in archaeology at Lund University in Sweden, has spent the past three years retracing Viking routes across more than 5,000 kilometres of northern seas in a square-rigged clinker-built vessel based on Viking Age designs.
Jarrett’s fieldwork has taken him from Trondheim up to the Arctic Circle and back, testing how such vessels perform both near the coast and in open waters. His findings suggest that Viking voyages were not limited to coast-hugging routes, as previously thought, but could involve extended legs across exposed seas.
“I can show that this type of boat sails well on open water, in tough conditions. But navigating close to land and in the fjords sometimes presents challenges that are just as great, but not as obvious. Underwater currents and katabatic winds blowing down from mountain slopes, for example,” says Greer Jarrett.
The voyages have not been without incident. During one 2022 expedition near the Lofoten Islands, the wooden yard holding up the mainsail snapped, forcing the crew to make emergency repairs while at sea.
“The cold in the Lofoten Islands was a challenge. Our hands really suffered. At that point I realised just how crucial it is to have a good crew,” says Jarrett.
Mapping Viking Routes and Harbours
Jarrett has also been studying how Vikings navigated and where they might have stopped along the way. By comparing traditional sailing knowledge from the 19th and early 20th centuries with his own experiences and interviews with modern sailors and fishermen, he has pieced together possible Viking sailing routes.
“I used the experience of my own journeys and the sailors’ traditional knowledge to reconstruct possible Viking Age sailing routes,” Jarrett explains.
Vikings did not use maps or compasses, but instead relied on “mental maps” formed through memory and myth. Jarrett has highlighted how oral stories linked to landmarks like Torghatten, Hestmona, and Skrova helped Viking sailors understand their environment.
“Examples include Viking stories about the islands Torghatten, Hestmona and Skrova off the Norwegian coast,” says Jarrett. “The stories serve to remind sailors of the dangers surrounding these places, or of their importance as navigation marks.”
Jarrett refers to this cultural-geographic approach as a “Maritime Cultural Mindscape,” suggesting that entire networks of stories—passed down through generations—once helped sailors make sense of the coasts, skerries, and fjords they encountered.
In his latest publication, Jarrett identifies four likely Viking harbours—or “havens”—along the Norwegian coastline. These locations are set farther out to sea than previously known Viking ports and may have served as informal but crucial rest stops along major trade routes.
“With this type of boat, it has to be easy to get in and out of the harbour in all possible wind conditions,” says Jarrett. “There must be several routes in and out. Shallow bays are not an issue because of the shallow draft of the boats. Getting far up the narrow fjords, however, is tricky. They are difficult to sail upwind with a square rig, and the boats are sensitive to katabatic winds.”
“A lot of the time, we only know about the starting and ending points of the trade that took place during the Viking Age. Major ports, such as Bergen and Trondheim in Norway, Ribe in Denmark, and Dublin in Ireland. The thing I am interested in is what happened on the journeys between these major trading centres. My hypothesis is that this decentralised network of ports, located on small islands and peninsulas, was central to making trade efficient during the Viking Age.”
Braving the Northern Seas
Some of the risks Jarrett and his team encountered underscore how dangerous these journeys could be in the Viking Age. When the yard broke in Vestfjorden, 25 kilometres from shore, they improvised a repair using two oars lashed together.
“We had to lash two oars together to hold the sail, and hope that it would hold. We made it back to the harbour safely, but then we had to spend several days repairing the boat before we could sail again.”
There were also unexpected encounters with wildlife. “On another trip, a minke whale suddenly surfaced and flapped its huge tail fin just metres from the boat.”
In the end, Jarrett believes the success of Viking voyages rested not only on strong ships but on tight-knit crews capable of withstanding the harsh environment and each other.
“You need a boat that can withstand all kinds of weather conditions. But if you don’t have a crew that can cooperate and put up with each other for long periods, these journeys would probably be impossible,” Jarrett concludes.
The article, “From the Masthead to the Map: an Experimental and Digital Approach to Viking Age Seafaring Itineraries,” by Greer Jarrett, is published in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Click here to read it.
Top Image: The sailboat is a so-called færing (four-oared boat). It was built at a folk high school in Norway as part of Greer Jarrett’s research project. Photo: Greer Jarrett
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