Greer Jarrett

I have always been driven by a powerful curiosity about the stories of the past, particularly about the encounters between different peoples and ideas. My curiosity is most satisfied out of doors, whether on an archaeological excavation, out in the wilderness, or on the sea. In 2020 I was fortunate enough to begin a PhD project of my own design where I developed a new method for reconstructing Viking Age seafaring routes which built upon my own skills as a scientist and an outdoorsman. The key to this method was the discovery that many of the technologies and practices of Viking Age seafaring survived largely unchanged among the coastal communities of western Norway until the turn of the 20th century. In these places, fishermen continued to sail square-rigged clinker boats, much like those used in the Viking Age, providing a great wealth of later evidence which could be integrated into scientific research.

This discovery allowed me to undertake a series of experimental voyages onboard traditional clinker boats throughout the seas of the Viking world. Over the course of three years, these voyages have covered the Norwegian coast from Bergen to the Arctic Circle, the Danish archipelago, and the Baltic Sea. They provided an ideal environment in which to quantify the performance of Viking Age boats and ships, identify probable archaeological sites, and develop a qualitative understanding of the experience of a Viking voyage.

The voyages conducted for this project strongly suggest that scholars have underestimated the capabilities and geographical range of Viking Age seafarers. I hope that this will trigger new investigations in some of the remoter areas of the Viking world, such as the west coast of Greenland and the high arctic, where many Viking Age sites and settlements remain to be discovered.

The raiders, traders, and explorers of the Viking Age covered vast distances across some of the most dangerous seas on earth. But because of the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence, it has long been unclear which sailing routes were used during this period, where important harbors were located, and how far Viking Age sailors ranged across the north Atlantic. Furthermore, academic research has largely been conducted from land, reducing the maritime dimensions of the Viking Age to a distant and under-explored periphery.

My research has aimed to address these issues by thinking from the sea. Through extensive experimental research onboard traditional clinker boats and ethnographic fieldwork among traditional Norwegian fishing communities, I have opened a practical, maritime window on the Viking Age. This has helped establish the sailing performance of Viking Age vessels, reconstruct the routes used during this period, and locate several unidentified harbors and anchorages.

In my work, exploration is as much about knowledge as it is about territory; the sailing voyages I have undertaken have explored under-researched regions, such as the Arctic coast of Norway, but they have also focused on the deep knowledge and skill of Viking Age seafarers. Exploring these ways of knowing and acting at sea offers a new perspective on the past, countering the terrestrial biases of conventional academic research. At the same time, reconstructing ancient seafaring technologies and ways of life provides inspiration for current challenges relating to the marine environment by, for instance, contributing to the transition to sail-powered commercial shipping.