Medieval maritime culture

The medieval maritime culture began with the remnants of the naval tradition of the Roman Empire, included the technological advances that enabled the Vikings to colonize North America in 982, suffered tremendously during the crises of the 14th century, prospered to serve the European demand for cod on Roman Catholic days of abstinence, and ultimately culminated in the Columbian exchange that began in 1492.

After the Fall of Rome

The inhabitants of ancient Denmark began building large seaworthy vessels in ancient times. A crew of some two dozen paddled the wooden Hjortspring boat across the Baltic Sea long before the rise of the Roman Empire. Scandinavians continued to develop better ships, incorporating iron and other metal into the design and developing oars for propulsion. The Nydam oak boat of 315 AD measured 100 feet in length.

The Vikings, Norse, and Danes

During the Early Middle Ages, the Vikings (also known as Norse or Danes) developed the longship, capable of voyaging beyond sight of shore. This ship developed a reputation for speed and agility. The Vikings learned celestial navigation and developed other means of finding land. They used the sail to propel their boats quickly in the winds of the North Sea.

Norwegian Vikings first attacked the Isle of Portland in the British Isles in 787. They continued to demonstrate their naval prowess to dominate European trade and commerce for the next few centuries, establishing colonies along the European coast from the Baltic to the Balkans. They also sailed up many rivers, establishing their dominance well inland through much of Russia. The Normans successfully invaded Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 and installed William the Conqueror as King.

The Vikings dominated all European maritime culture around the year 1000 and developed a square rigged sailboat, the knaar as a merchant ship. Historians speculate that the Vikings used this boat to form and trade with their colonies in the Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. Icelandic sagas make many references to sea voyages.

Map of Viking Expansion

The Norse did not stop at Greenland. Sagas refer to journeys to Baffin Island, Labrador, and Newfoundland, although others contend that the Vikings sailed as far south as New England. Leif Ericson led a seminal expedition to Vinland in 1000. At least one colonization attempt followed during the next few decades. The archaeological record reveals an outpost in L'Anse aux Meadows on the shore of Newfoundland. The Greenland colony--mostly a glacial ice cap with some tundra along the coast--lacked trees and timber; therefore, these voyages enabled the Vikings to obtain precious wood necessary for house construction and charcoal production. Although the Vinland enterprise ultimately failed because the small population of Viking sailors who reached its shores could not defend themselves against the indigenous peoples (Skræling in Norse), it proved that medieval Europeans could reach the New World with contemporary sailing ships.

Norse navigation technologies helped European trade to flourish throughout the High Middle Ages and enabled large numbers of medieval Christians to participate in the Crusades to the Holy Land. The primary difference between Viking-era vessels, and later designs was use of the stern-mounted rudder instead of a steering-board mounted to the side of the ship.

The Scots used the birlinn galley in the Hebrides.

The Little Ice Age

Norse dominance of European maritime culture could not last forever. Although demonstrably capable of making the voyages across the rough North Atlantic Ocean, Viking ships frequently sank or were blown off course along the way; as many as a quarter to a third of ships that departed Scandinavia never returned to the home port. As the Medieval Warm Period closed in the 13th century, pack ice began to advance southward. Fierce ocean storms associated with the Icelandic low increased in frequency and intensity, sinking ships even during the mid- and late-summer navigation season.

Because of the dangers inherent in open-sea navigation, Viking mariners preferred to travel along the shoreline whenever possible. To reach the most marginal colonies of Greenland from Iceland, they traditionally sailed due westward across the Denmark Strait then followed the Greenland coast toward the Eastern Settlement near the southern tip of the island. Even sailing near shore posed its risks; sailors on one voyage ran aground and reached shore only to perish stranded of starvation. Pack ice advancing southward, however, choked this preferred route with sea ice, leading mariners to undertake a more perilous route southwestward through the open sea. Greenlanders consequently suffered from a lack of trade opportunities; shipping to the Western Settlement disappeared entirely with the onset of the Little Ice Age in the 14th century.

As the Greenland tundra cooled through the 13th century, the economic mainstay of the Viking colonies shifted from pastoral livestock--which required hay to survive the long, bitter winters--toward fishing, hunting, gathering, and consuming such marine mammals as seals. Glaciers advanced from the Greenland ice cap toward the farms along the fjords. Summers provided a critical grazing and hay-raising season for the livestock because snow covered the ground through most of the year. By the 14th century, summers frequently failed entirely, sometimes in succeeding years, in the Western Settlement. Trading ships could not reach the isolated colony, and grass failed to produce pasturage and hay, so the desperate colonists ate their livestock and even their prized hunting dogs to stay alive. They then abandoned the Western Settlement. Historians do not know where they fled, but they might have joined the Inuit, removed to the Eastern Settlement or in Iceland, or sunk at sea.

Other developments on the European continent left mariners less willing to make the daring voyage to the marginal, forlorn colonies. African elephant ivory entered European markets as Arab and Muslim trading caravans brought goods across the Sahara from West Africa. This ivory displaced the prized Greenland export of walrus tusk ivory, and obtaining it carried much less risk. The Great Famine of 1315-1317, Black Death, and popular revolt in late medieval Europe caused the population of Europe to decline precipitously. Many mariners and merchants died of starvation and disease before they could pass their skills to apprentices or descendants. The Famine hit northern Europe particularly hard but largely spared southern Europe. The old Vikings declined rapidly, unable to afford trade with destitute "charity" colonies.

Still another development directed Atlantic maritime commerce away from Greenland and even Iceland. The original Viking fleets subsisted on Atlantic cod and herring while afloat and brought extra fish back to Europe for consumption. The disciplinary requirements of fasting and abstinence in the Roman Catholic Church at the time forbade many Christians from consuming "hot" flesh--usually the flesh of any non-marine warm-blooded animal--on most Friday, during Lent, and on several other days during the year. By the end of the Middle Ages, papal edicts extended these requirements to a majority of days during the year. Although many Europeans simply ignored the rules, the clergy (two to ten percent of the population including monks and nuns) and the pious laity demanded so much fish to eat that all the rivers and near-shore marine fisheries of Europe could not supply them. Because it kept well when dried and salted, the untasteful Atlantic cod largely fulfilled this demand. As the oceans cooled below 2 °C, however, these fisheries largely moved south the Icelandic coast.

Cod-fishing Fleets

Scandinavian shipbuilding technology failed to advance beyond that of the Viking days. The traditional Viking ships performed quite well in the relatively tranquil summer seas of the medieval warm period, but the stormier climates rendered these vessels particularly dangerous to the point of obsolescence. Viking technology spread earlier throughout Europe, and craftsmen along the Atlantic seaboard of western Europe began to develop ships capable of withstanding heavy seas and the gales that struck commonly even during mid-summer. Rarely did a medieval mariner without a death wish dare to venture beyond easy sight of port during the long winter season.

The Hanseatic League promoted trade throughout the Baltic Sea aboard cogs and hulks that mariners propelled with square sails and oars. The pious European population--especially the monasteries, convents, and bishops--demanded enormous quantities of fish, and Dutch, English, other British, Breton and Basque mariners sought suitable fishing grounds. Earlier generations of Europeans frequently fished in Norwegian waters and in the North Sea; however, the cooling climate led to the decline of the former fisheries, and the reduced supply in the latter could not satiate the increasing demand for salted cod, herring, and other fish.

In an era of very brief life expectancies and an imploding medieval demography, the clearly risky maritime culture provided an attractive means of subsistence. Death constantly haunted medieval Europeans, who took risks unconscionable to the modern mind; the overwhelming majority of the population lived in a state of desperate poverty comparable or perhaps even worse than most Third World countries today. Most medieval Europeans toiled long hours to produce or earn much less than the equivalent of $2 per person per day, from which they paid tithes, taxes, and rents. To make fishing a viable economic alternative to other means of subsistence, however, a significant majority of fleets leaving port had to reach the fisheries and return alive and intact.

The cooling climate and increasing storminess, however, led to a sharp increase in the proportion of traditional Norse-style boats that left port never to return. These casualties at sea led shipbuilders to develop a stronger boat that could ply the Dogger Bank and return full of fish with some reliability. Boat builders, especially prominent in Dutch ports and Basque seaside towns, however, prospered as they provided new vessels to budding mariners or to replace those wrecked or lost at sea. These new ships proved adequately seaworthy for the expectations of the era.

Declining fishing stocks and frequent tax evasion led the Hansa cabal to close the fisheries near Bergen off the Norwegian coast in 1410. English fishermen responded by taking their craft to the closed Icelandic colony and trading and fishing there in 1412. Besides several local fishing boats, very few if any ships had visited Iceland in several decades. English ships, however, began to set sail for Iceland early each spring through the frigid gales and freezing spray to trade and fish just as their Danish predecessors did centuries earlier. Each dogger that successfully returned to Britain in the autumn carried roughly 30 tons of fish. Although the Danish masters of Iceland convinced King Henry V of England to forbid the Icelandic cod trade, English fleets continued to visit the otherwise isolated island. The Hanseatic League copied the shipbuilding technologies of their English rivals and began to reassert Scandinavian sovereignty over Iceland. This struggle led to piracy and pillaging on the high seas and ultimately to the development of modern naval warfare.

The settlement probably disappeared during the 15th century.

The historical record, however, does reveal a competition between Basque, English, and other fishermen and pirates for the North Atlantic fisheries. Foreigners moved beyond peaceful trade with Iceland, and pirates plundered the utterly defenseless Scandinavian community severely and repeatedly during the late 15th century. Some English fleets began to reach the western North Atlantic Ocean by 1480 and found fish so plentiful that the British port of Bristol prospered immensely from the trade.

See also

• Medieval ships
• Rolls of Oléron : the Medieval laws of the sea
• Cod fisheries

References