This viking canoe (the only one found or known of as yet!) is from Årby Gård - that could be literally translated and pronounced Orby Farm in english, and is located near Rasbo-Kil, just east of Uppsala and north of Stockholm in the heart of eastern Swedens viking country (ever heard of The Vendel period? see The Viking Times!) and about 45 minutes drive inland (what was once waterways is today fields and cows.) from my home here in Östhammar on the edge of the Baltic archipelago. The boat grave was accidentally uncovered in modern times - a summer in 1938 - in connection with some drainage pipe installations in the fields there and is dated to the early 900s. The boat having been used for over a hundred years before burial, as the worn marks, repairs and other clues would indicate. A lot of head scratching commenced as to why a obviously prominent person of high standing in the community would be buried without weapons until 1981 (!) when some very astute dude came up with the idea that it could be a woman! Still today some reports only mention this as a possibility. This boat also occupies a very interesting place in marine archeological history as its shape and structure bear a certain influence from another ethnic population, that of the reindeer orientated Laplanders or more properly called Samara or would that be the same tribes? Little is known about how these groups wandered or mingled before the actual viking period starting about the 500s but obviously they had contact and traded skills and shared in some various cultural activities. Anyway, an english archeologist named Owain T. P. Roberts re-drew and did an excellent job of building a facsimile boat around 1984. The Museum of National Antiquities/Stockholm (also known as the Histerical Museum) published a really poorly edited and sadly un-translated (from the german/english and Swedish materials - you have to be able to read all three languages well in order to make use of the book, idiots!!) After that I had to sneak around the original boat (in 1990) that is displayed at the fore mentioned museum in order to get complimentary measurements for my own satisfaction. Academic snobbery still flourishes and is indeed rampant in Sweden as a common boat builder has a very low status within their hierecy. The attitude is entirely different in Denmark, Norway and Finland. Each person that measures a boat finds new stuff and lines, as some of it is guess work. A comparison between the lines from 38 and Owain T.P. Roberts versions make one wonder if they had the same material as a starting out point. My guess work from the point of a experienced boat builder was again a third interpretation though they are closer to Roberts rather than Arbmans from 1938.

Address: Gerrie Warner, PL 4090 Ed, 742 91, Östhammar SWEDEN
Website: http://www.algonet.se/~gwarner/canoe.htm