e had thirty-two oars, sixteen on each side. It says something
for the seamanship of the Northmen that it was with ships like this they
sailed the Atlantic waves off the west coast of Ireland, and made their way
by the North Sea and the verge of the Arctic to the Faroes, Iceland,
Greenland, and the mysterious "Vineland."[4]

[4] Some interesting light was thrown upon the voyages of the
Norsemen by a practical experiment made in 1893. A Viking ship
was built on the precise lines and dimensions of the ancient
ship dug out of the mound of Gokstadt in 1880, 77 feet long with
a beam of 17 feet, and was rigged with one mast and a square
mainsail and jib foresail. As a prelude to her being shown at
the Chicago Exhibition she was successfully taken across the
Atlantic under sail and without an escorting ship. She left
Bergen on May 1st, 1893, and arrived at Newport, Rhode Island,
U.S.A., on June 13th. She was commanded by Captain Magnus
Andersen, who in 1886 had performed the feat of crossing the
Atlantic in an open boat. Andersen had a crew of eleven men in
the Viking ship. He reported that she had met with some bad
weather and proved an excellent sea boat. Her average speed was
nine knots, but with a fair wind she did eleven. In the
following year the ship was accidentally sunk in the Chicago
river, and raised and broken up.

Raiding in the Irish Sea, Olaf Tryggveson made a stay in a harbour of the
Scilly Islands, and there he became a convert to Christianity. On the same
voyage he married the Countess Gyde, sister of his namesake, Olaf Kvaran,
the Danish King of Dublin. It was while he was staying in Ireland with the
Dublin Danes that he heard news from Norway that opened larger ambitions to
him. The land was divided among many chiefs, and the most powerful of them
was hated as an oppressor by the people, who, he was told, would gladly
welcome as their king a leader as famed as Olaf Tryggveson, and
representing the line of Harold the Fair-haired. Helped by the Danes of
Ireland, he sailed back to Norway, to win its crown for himself, and to
cast down the worship of Thor and Odin, and make the land part of
Christendom.

In the first enterprise he was quickly successful, and in 995 he was
recognized as King of Norway at Trondhjem. During the five years that he
reigned he devoted much of his energy to the second part of his mission,
and made among his country