Turning from eugenics to more practical matters, it was the brain and
the manual skill of the Viking that invented and perfected our modern
sailing ship. Stripped of its barbaric excrescences at stem and stern,
and of its rows of shields and ornaments, the lines of the Viking ship
of Gokstad[17] found there buried but entire, are the lines of our
herring boats of fifty years ago. Sharp and partly decked at stem and
stern only, like those boats, the Viking ship could live, head to the
waves, even in the roughest sea. It was, too, a living thing, a new
type of vessel handy to row or sail, and far in advance not only of
the early British ship and Pictish coracle[18] but also of the Roman
galley with lines like those of a canal barge, and also far in advance
of the Saxon ship of war or merchandise. The only points of difference
between the older type of herring boat and the Viking ship were the
stepping of the mast further forward and the use of the fixed rudder
in the modern vessel.
Not only did the Viking brain invent our modern ship, but it was
the Viking spirit that impelled us as a nation to use the ocean as
a highway. The Norseman had discovered America and West Africa many
centuries before Columbus or Vasco di Gama.
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