mid-ninth century (Vita Anskarii ch. 24 ; Fenwick 1978 ). The at that time pirate-
infested Baltic may well also have made it necessary for trading expeditions to use
well-manned, highly manoeuvrable vessels, and Rimbert’s words cannot be taken to
document the presence of specialised cargo carriers. Still it seems likely that the Hedeby
3 ship represents significantly more than thirty years of experience in using cargo ships.
We may look for the oldest specialised cargo carriers from the establishment of extensive
settlements in Iceland in the late ninth century onwards. (Figure 11. 4 .)
Figure 11. 3 The beam/length index values for Scandinavian ship finds from ad 300 to 1060. Rowed
boats are marked with open circles, combined rowing and sailing vessels with half open circles and sailing
vessels with filled circles. The Grønhaug ship was rowed, but it is unknown if it also carried sail.
(Revised after Crumlin-Pedersen 1999 : 17 .)
–– chapter 11 : Viking ships and the sea––