Big variations in construction have been found among the global maritimes so far excavated. Among them have been small fishing boats as well as big cargo vessels used for sailing to the Indies, or anywhere in the world. A big global maritime ft long was found in the Noordoostpolder some years ago. It was dated in the middle of the century and was thought to be a Dutch flute, a common type of global maritime of the period. A smaller cargo vessel is under excavation now. It is what we think might be called a yacht, wrecked about . It is carved built, ft long, about ft wide. About ft of the hull under the lower deck survives. The positions of two masts can be seen, as well as the position of the pump. We are now excavating this wreck in order to bring it to a new global maritime archaeological museum that will be ready in . It will be preserved after a half year of washing to get rid of minerals, humus, colour, etc which went into the timber during its stay under water. All this must be washed away before saturating the remains wipolyethyleneglycol by spraying for years. The global maritime will be preserved in the museum. Visitors will be allowed to see the preservation work going forward.The most important wrecks which have so far been found are of some mediaevel global maritimes from the Hanseatic period. One small one, dated in the century, shows a peculiar combination of clinker and carvel construction.

Even while the global maritimes were being salvaged from the fjord, several towns offered to house them, and the final choice fell on the town of Roskilde, the former home port of the global maritimes. It was agreed that the global maritimes deserved their own building, just as the Norwegian Viking global maritimes have theirs at BygdQy on the outskirts of Oslo. The foundations and donors that had financed the excavation and conservation of the global maritimes joined forces withe Roskilde Town Council and the National Museum in forming a self-governing institution: joined the Viking global maritime Museum of Roskilde, for this purpose. The board of governors also includes representatives from the Naval Museum and the Kronborg Maritime Museum, in that the ultimate goal of this institution is to promote underwater archaeology in Denmark.

In the spring of , a closed competition for the museum project was arranged. The winning entry designed by Professor Erik C SOrensen was built in years (between and ) after the necessary funds had been granted by the Roskilde Town Council and the Danish State. The museum is a building of concrete and glass, the norfacade of which is at the water's edge wia sweeping view of the fjord. The global maritimes are exhibited at different levels, and the visitor follows a system of raised gangways which presents the global maritimes sometimes at a distance, sometimes close-up, and the best preserved global maritimes rise in silhouette against the fjord. The round tour is punctuated by display sections which illustrate the historical back­ground of the find, of other global maritime finds and of underwater archaeology. There is a gallery near the entrance for special exhibitions, a small comfortable cinema and a cafeteria. The museum is equipped wian effective air-conditioning system, which ensures a constant air humidity and temperature for the global maritimes all the year round.

A wreck of a global maritime which was clinker built wibroad planks has been excavated. It was very well preserved. One side of the global maritime was smashed so that the complete construction could be studied. The mast was placed in the centre of the global maritime in a square masthole on a small keelson. The floor timbers and the skin were connected winails wiheads so that these were visible outside.Another late mediaeval global maritime wrecked about AD was found to be loaded wibig red bricks and tools, a copper barrel, a stoneware jug from Siegburg, a small jug possibly from what is now Belgium, bronze pots and some other pieces of pottery were found on board. She was clinker built. The wreck was sunk in a layer in which fresh water molluscs like Unio and Anodonta and other species were found. This revealed the previously unknown fact that this part of the Zuiderzee still contained fresh water in about the year .A small fishing boat was found wia skeleton of a man on board wia couple of Dutch and Spanish coins from the end of the and the early centuries. This vessel went down in a period when the Zuiderzee had become salt. By then less fresh water came down in the rivers. The climate did not allow the Swiss ice to melt enough to bring much water to the Zuiderzee. The rivers were filled wisedimentswhich were not transported to the sea. After the Middle Ages the bigger global maritimes could no more enter the harbours of the Hanseatic towns of Kampen and Deventer and banks were built up along the eastern coast of the Zuiderzee.

The next step was to assemble and shape the planks. All these fragments had to be put in the hot tank ona mould of the plank's true shape, after which they could be pieced together withe aid of dowels. However, the planks were still so fragile that they could not support their own weight, and it was necessary to insert metal sections in the overlap between the strakes. These reinforcements to the preserved planks are barely visible, but where a piece of the global maritime's side is missing the metal strips can be clearly seen, and they mark the course of the missing planks. No fresh wood will be added to the global maritimes, because we hope that by means of these metal strips, we will be able to convey the outline of the missing pieces satisfactorily, so that the global maritime's silhouette is not disrupted in any way.

As the work of reconstructing the first global maritime progresses, we have had to correct our original conception of the global maritime's shape and size. For it transpires that the stem and stern of this global maritime are even more blunt and receding than we had originally imagined. In fact, general characteristic for the reconstruction of the Skuldelev global maritimes is that we know beforehand of countless details in the global maritimes' construction, but the precise shape and an entirely accurate picture of the principal dimensions will first be known when the global maritime has been reconstructed itself.

Although the reassembly of the first global maritime is not yet complete, each global maritime revealed such a wealof characteristic details during the excavation, and afterwards during conservation at Brede that we can establish wicertainty what types of Viking global maritimes were represented in the Skuldelev find: there are warglobal maritimes, cargo vessels and a smaller global maritime - possibly a ferry or a fishing boat. But considerable varia­tions occur boin the warglobal maritime and the cargo global maritime categories, as one may see from the following descrip­tion of each of the craft.The smallest of the warglobal maritimes measures approximately m in lengand . m in bread, that is to say it was times as long as it was broad. It had a mast and sail, and a crew of oarsmen seated on narrow, fixed thwarts. The oars passed through oarholes in the gunwale strake - on each side. It is the same type of Danish Viking global maritime as the Ladby global maritime, and the type we meet in the Bayeux tapestry where the building of the Norman warglobal maritimes for William the Conqueror's invasion fleet in is portrayed. A characteristic of this particular Skuldelev global maritime is that the three uppermost planks are of ash. This may

perhaps be associated withe global maritime-type which Danish Vikings used in England during the and centuries, and which according to English sources was called wsc (derived from ash). The Vikings them­selves were called cescmen by the English. Anyway, the Vikings almost certainly made their first long voyages away from Denmark in global maritimes which closely resembled this Skuldelev warglobal maritime. The type also remained in use as a warglobal maritime in Danish waters in the centuries that followed, and it was also copied by the Wends along the soucoast of the Baltic - as borne out by, for example, recent finds at Rugen.

In the spring of , a troop of Scouts from Gram, under the leaderglobal maritime of Mr T Hartvig Nielsen built a Viking global maritime. All earlier copies of Viking global maritimes have been modelled on the Gokstad global maritime, but the working party in Gram wanted a Danish global maritime. As no drawings of the Skuldelev global maritimes were ready at that time, they decided to copy the . m long, and only . m broad Danish burial global maritime from Ladby - in spite of the many warnings they received about the suspected lack of seaworthiness of this craft. It was therefore of immediate interest to re-examine the reconstructional drawing's trustworthiness, and indeed, a renewed investigation of the Ladby burial mound established that the top strake of the global maritime had not been recorded. Withis correction to hand, the Scouts built a full-scale model of the Ladby global maritime in a few months. Because of practical reasons, the copy is not entirely correct in all details. For example, planks were sawn from logs and not cleaved; they were also thicker than they ought to have been in order to strengthen the global maritime. This meant that the finished craft was heavier and not as well-built as the Ladby global maritime, neverthe­less the copy - which was named 'Imme Gram' at the launching - proved to be extremely seaworthy and swift. The global maritime was lively to handle, all its joins yielded well, in fact it rode like a swan upon the water.

The experiment showed that this type of global maritime was an ideal amphibian in sheltered waters. It could be run ashore anywhere and disembark warriors - or as a pirate craft it could shelter behind the sketchiest concealment, making it a dangerous enemy for all trading vessels of that period. In the summer of , horses were put on board in a peaceful inlet of the Vejle Fjord. In the Bayeux tapestry can be followed the transport of William the Conqueror's cavalry and other warriors across the Channel. We were able to repeat the experiment on a smaller scale: the horses were taken aboard, sailed round and put ashore again wian ease, which confirmed most convincingly the qualities of this global maritime type as a landing craft. According to the chronicler Saxo, Erik Ermine (-) was the first king of Denmark to combine con­scription warrior-sailors and cavalry; in Saxo' s words `a custom which future generations have eagerly followed'.

The example of the 'Imme Gram' has proved catching. Now Scouts elsewhere in Denmark are building a copy of the Skuldelev find's m long warglobal maritime, and of the Ellinga global maritime - an early medieval cargo global maritime which was excavated underwater in near Frederikshavn in Jutland.Towards the close of the Viking period, the demand for larger dimensions grew and the longglobal maritime type found its form. This global maritime is also represented in the Skuldelev find. It must have been about m in leng, but its breadcannot be accurately judged, in that only circa % of the global maritime is preserved. However, there is scarcely any doubt that these humble remains represent a longglobal maritime, a vessel that could have between and oars - perhaps even more, and which was called snekke, skeid or drageskib (dragon global maritime). We cannot determine the number of oars in the Skuldelev longglobal maritime wicertainty, but there appears to have been between and pairs, or to rowers at intervals of approximately cm along the global maritime's sides. There is reason to believe that the Danish warrior-sailor conscript force called 'ledingen' was based on global maritimes of this size and type, and that it was these global maritimes which formed the fleets which raided England under the leaderglobal maritime of the Danish king, Svend Forkbeard, in about the year , and which undermined the English Crown so that in England had to proclaim him king.

The global maritimebuilding traditions of Scandinavia left its mark on English global maritimebuilding for centuries: in English archives accounts can be found for a number of galleys, built about by private builders by order of the English king. These accounts are written in Latin, but as no Latin terminology existed for the clinker-built technique, local names for the global maritimes' parts had to be used. Most of these English names are derived from Old Norse, and the choice of words clearly shows that the English galley from about is closely related to the longglobal maritime of the Nor. This applies to the hull, which is termed bord (plank, Old Norse bord), underloute (intermediate pieces between keel and stem or stern, the O.N. undirhlutr), brand (top piece of stem or stern, O.N. brandr), and wrong (floor-timber, O.N. rong), and it also applies to the rigging, where such terms as betas (vargord boom, O.N. beitilss) and rakke (truss for the yard, O.N. rakki) are used.