Who we are?
The Ansteorran Longship Project is being executed by the members of “The
Ansteorran Longship Company”. The group members are primarily gathered
from the populace of the Barony
of Bjornsborg, Kingdom
of Ansteorra, of the SCA
Inc. The SCA is a non-profit educational organization with international
participation. By studying the social, cultural, economic and geographical
historical accounts, we try to re-create the middle ages. However, we don’t
do wars of conquest, plagues etc, so you can say we try to re-create the Middle
Ages, as they should have been.
Within this context, members choose a place, time and persona of someone who
could have lived there and then. By conducting historical research of their
chosen framework, they design and make clothing, tools, artifacts, weapons
ect, practice the skills and trades of then and there and try to present (or
act out) the social and cultural status and behavior of their chosen persona.
The crew of the Ansteorran Longship Company have generally chosen a Norse
persona in the time period 700 to 1100 AD, the period of widespread expansion
by the Norse civilization. The most prominent factor supporting this expansion
was the Viking Ship.
What we are doing?
One day, Thorgard (Mark Burns) said, “It is my dream to build and
sail a Viking Longship in the waters of Texas.” As time passed, (never
mind how much) more of us became infected with this thought and we started
building. First, a building to work in, then construction practice as we assumed
the maintenance on the 22 foot replica “Skelmir”. More time passed
and material and tool gathering later we started on the ship of Thorgard's
dream. It will be 40 feet long and 8 feet wide. It will hold a crew of up
to 17. Since we don't have a pine and oak forest we can harvest, we are using
standard lumber and plywood. For example we didn't have a oak tree trunk to
carve for the bow and stern posts, we laminated 2 X 12 pine lumber to an approximate
shape and carved that to final shape. We'll use plywood scarfed strakes instead
of slitting logs. Not really accurate for a true reproduction but we are using
what we reasonably can get.
Why are we doing it?
As stated, we're going to sail it. We will learn what it is to sail a long,
narrow boat of shallow draft, keel-less hull and a square sail. Without a
following or quartering wind, we'll also have to learn to row together 10
to 12 at a time. But most importantly, we intend to show it off. As we have
with Skelmir, we will visit schools, universities and fairs to show people
what we have done, the history of the longship and the Norse culture and their
impact on history and today's world. To date, we have made presentations at
numerous schools in the San Antonio/Austin area and spent the summer of 2001
on display in the Houston Museum of Natural Science with the Smithsonian Institution
display of “Vikings, The North Atlantic Saga”.
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