The Northern Crusades Read Online Free PDF

long. If you went from Denmark to Sigtuna, in eastern Sweden, and took the land-route, the journey was estimated at four weeks; by sea, five days. In winter the difference might be more, or less, depending on whether the snow was deep – since it was then possible to take short-cuts across rivers and lakes, and the traveller might well be equipped with skis or a sledge; but, on the whole, nobody travelled in winter unless he had to, or was drawn by the profits of raiding or hunting. May to October were the months for moving, and during that period the sea was preferable to the land.
    It was a very navigable sea, once the ice melted. Nowadays Danish coastal waters freeze only one winter in three, and never for longer than three winter months. The average duration of ice in south-Baltic harbours varies from three days in Flensburg Fjord to three weeks at Stralsund. Riga and St Petersburg are closed by ice about six months a year, the Estonian ports about four, like the Bothnian coast. Then the good weather begins, with easterly winds frequent from April to midsummer, and prevailing Westerlies from July to September. The mariner then faces a long stretch of water, never more than 200 miles across, along which his course is made easy by numerous islands and shallow anchorages.
    The art of navigation was the art of staying within sight of the coast,knowing the landmarks and taking soundings of dangerous shoals; above all, of reading weather from the sky. Compasses were not used in the Baltic until the sixteenth century, and were hardly needed then, except by strangers, for the previous 300 years had seen the coastline punctuated with tall spires and crosses, immediately recognizable ten miles out to sea, and the difficult channels marked out by ‘booms’ and stakes. The dangers were dense fogs, sudden high winds, and pirates; and the proximity of shelter made it easier to avoid at least the first two of these than in the North Sea, the Channel or the Mediterranean.
    The earliest Baltic sailors were probably the Finns, who erected birch-bushes in skin boats to catch the wind. The Germanic peoples developed the techniques of oar and sail, until the ‘Viking ship’ became the dominant sea transport over the whole of Northern Europe, both for warriors and for goods. Whoever controlled the men who knew how to build and manage such craft got wealth and power, and from the ninth to the eleventh century Viking leaders tended to apply this rule in the regions where wealth and power were greatest the British Isles, Western Europe and the Russian riverways. By 1100 the opportunities for this kind of adventure were much reduced, but, within the Baltic region, power and the warship still went together, and a ruler’s importance depended on the size of his fleet. The kings of the Danes and Swedes had attempted to provide themselves with vessels by imposing military duty on their more powerful subjects. They met with little success, and had to appeal for the crews of their raiding fleets. After c. 1170 Danish kings relied on a public contribution by ship-districts to man defensive levy-fleets, and for this the whole kingdom was assessed at some 860 ships. No more than 250 could be expected for offensive campaigns. 5
    However, there were many varieties of ship, and each one brought a different reward to its owner and crew, and influenced social organization in a particular way. There were at least two classes of warship: the large sixty-oar ‘dragon’, or skeior , which the Norwegians had perfected, and which was usually too deep in the water for effective use in shallow seas and river wars, and the ordinary forty-oar levy ship, snekke to the Danes, snakkja to the Swedes, which the Slavs built somewhat lighter and lower than the Scandinavians. These needed crews of trained warriors, provisions for overseas expeditions, and a complicated technique of building and maintenance; therefore the kings and pirate chiefs whocontrolled them had to