When I take a walk from my home on the marshy Essex coast, I pause at the coast road to sit on a bench that overlooks the wide Blackwater Estuary as it f lows from the North Sea up to the town of Maldon.
I often reflect that if I had sat on this very spot in the year 991AD, I would have seen a large f leet of Viking longships sailing up the river to attack the Saxon town. The resulting Battle of Maldon was a Viking victory that changed the course of English history and established Danish Viking rule over a large part of England that became known as the Danelaw.
The Vikings are best known for their brutal raids on the coastal towns and villages of Britain and Europe during the period we call the Dark Ages. The people who were unfortunate enough to receive a visit from them were slaughtered, abducted and enslaved, but these ‘sea raiders’ were also outstanding seafarers and had a strong artistic tradition that centred on woodcarving and metalworking. The longships that carried them across the seas and rivers of the world from Newfoundland in the west to Byzantium (Istanbul) in the east were central to their culture, and the prows and sternposts of these ships were finely carved in a distinctive Viking style.
This project is a carved panel based on the prow decoration of the most famous of the ships preserved in the Oslo Viking Ship Museum in Norway – called the Oseberg ship (see right) after the place where it was discovered buried in a bog in 1904. It is an oak panel carved in very low relief, as the original was to withstand ploughing through the ocean waves. I have used Jacobean Dark Oak wood stain and dark brown polish to give it the black oak finish of the original ship.
The Oseberg ship
The Oseberg ship was ceremonially buried with the bodies of two women, one believed to be a queen, and the magnificent grave goods to accompany them into the afterlife. Carbon dating and tree-ring analysis indicate that the oak-hulled clinker-built ship was built around 820AD and the burial took place in 834AD.
The prow of the Oseberg ship, and many of the wooden artefacts found within it, are magnificently carved in a variant of the Viking interlaced style that is called the ‘Oseberg style’. Its principal features are swirling patterns of serpent-like creatures that interlace around their own and adjacent bodies in low relief. Their upper surfaces are frequently f lat with very fine cross-hatching to provide texture. Most of the patterns include a notable feature called the ‘gripping beast’, which is typical of much Viking decoration. The serpent-like ‘gripping beasts’ clasp on to their bodies and tails, either with their mouths or with little human-like hands.
1. Get a piece of oak 575 x 165 x 25mm and some carbon paper. Make a full-size copy of the drawing to fit this. You can get this done at a print shop, or you can scan it into your computer and print it out on two sheets of A4 paper2. Tape the drawing firmly on to the wood with some carbon paper under it. Trace on the outline of the curved panel and all the features of the pattern. Finish by tracing on the cross- hatching with a ruler so you have clear, straight lines to follow when carving3. Cut out the shape of the panel with a bandsaw, jigsaw, or whatever saws you have that can cut a long curve4. Tidy up the edges with a spokeshave. Use a carpenter’s marking gauge and a pencil to mark a line on the edges 8mm below the board surface5. Set up the piece on your bench, with blocks of wood holding it in place. It helps if you can walk around your bench so you can make each cut from the best angle. Make sure you have a sharp 2mm V-tool for the cross-hatching in this project. Colour in the background areas that will be excavated to make it easier to see the pattern when carving
Blocking out
6. Start carving by using a 6mm V-tool to cut around the pattern lines on the outside and in the internal areas. Go fairly deep to create a stop line for chiselling out the background7. Chisel out the background area outside the pattern down to the level of the 8mm gauge line. Ideally use a 10mm No.7 or No.9 gouge and keep the ‘wings’ above the surface to prevent splinters running off into the pattern area. Pay close attention to the subsurface grain as it may run up or down independently to the surface grain direction8. Use a small f lat chisel and various gouges to bring the sides of the pattern to a clean vertical edge. Bost down vertically to cut out the tight curves, but on the longer curves you can chisel horizontally along the edges to get a smoother finish9. Use a flat chisel to level the background surface. Make a depth gauge by inserting a screw through a f lat piece of wood with the tip protruding 8mm. Lay the wood on the pattern area and move it about so the screw scratches the background at any point where the depth is less than 8mm, then work down the scratched areas10. To bring the background to a clean and smooth surface, hold the flat chisel vertically and pull it towards you. This will scrape up fine shavings and leave the surface dead flat11. Use the same processes to excavate the internal voids down to background level. These are smaller and a lot more fiddly, and you will need your smaller tools. A 5mm bent chisel is useful to get a f lat bottom in the small voids. Use the depth gauge again to get them all the same depth12. With the background finished, we can start carving the detail on the pattern areas. Start by marking out and carving the overlaps in the ‘straps’, then slightly slope the straps where they pass under the overlap, leaving the upper strap about 1mm above it. Redraw the cross-hatching pattern where you have carved it away13. Now carve the ‘hands’ of the gripping beasts. There are five of these, each of which has just three fingers. The hands are small and fiddly, and the fingers run across the grain just to make it more difficult. Separate the fingers with a small V-tool, then round over the sides of the hands and fingers. Smooth the surfaces with various gouges14. Move on to the heads of the beasts. There are four of these and they all have a mouth that is gripping a tail or some other strand of strapwork. The one at the top of the carving is at the end of a long neck and has two pieces of strapwork in its mouth. Carve the lower jaw to go under the straps and the upper jaw to go over them. Carefully carve the eye (oval in this case) with small gouges, and add the pupil in the centre with a 2mm veiner. Shape the head and crest by rounding over the sides. Carve a crease in the crest with a small V-tool15. There are three more heads which are all framed within the body. These all have round eyes. Two are gripping straps and the lowest one has a tiny hand in its mouth
Did you know?
The Vikings weren’t just ‘hit and run’ raiders, they established settlements in many countries, of ten far from their Scandinavian homelands. They colonised Iceland, Greenland, and large parts of Russia, Ireland, England, Scotland, and northern France. Normandy was so named as it was colonised by ‘north men’ in the 9th century, and the Normans who conquered Britain in 1066 and subdued the Vikings were themselves of Viking descent. Dublin and York (Jorvik) were both Viking cities, and a large number of towns and villages across northern and eastern Britain were Viking settlements. The Viking Age, as we call it, lasted about 250 years from around 800 to 1066, af ter which the Vikings gradually became more civilised in their dealings with other nations. Today the Scandinavian nations are noted for their peaceable nature.
16. Carve the various straps by rounding over their edges and refining the overlaps. Some have creases down their middle which must be carved in with the small V-tool17. At the bottom end, a large strap with a crease along its middle forms a wide curve to terminate the lower end of the pattern18. We start the cross-hatching decoration by first carving the borders along the sides of each section. Use a small V-tool to make a groove about 2mm in from each edge, then use a 3mm No.9 gouge to round over the edge into the groove19. Use the small V-tool again to carve the cross-hatching. To control the direction of the tool and get the required depth of cut, tap it along with a small mallet. To reduce break-out, carve the cross-grain cuts first, then carve the cuts that are a bit more in line with the grain. Note that the direction of the cross- hatching varies in each section. Some give a diamond-shaped pattern and some are more square20. The carving phase is now finished. Here is the finished carving before decorating, looking rather pale. This is how a Viking ship would have looked when new, but we want our carving to look as though it has been buried in a bog for a thousand years like the Oseberg ship21. To make new oak look ancient, I normally darken it by fuming with ammonia as it gives a more even colour, but in this case I used Jacobean Dark Oak wood dye so the liquid would settle in the grooves in the cross- hatching to enhance the pattern lines and give more contrast. Apply the dye with a soft brush and work it into the crevices22. After the wood dye has dried (about one hour) finish the job by polishing the whole panel, both sides, with a dark brown polish. Work it into the crevices with a stiff brush and polish all the surfaces with a lint-free cloth23. Here is the finished panel, looking suitably ancient in its dark oak colour
Useful tips & advice
When you use a wood stain on a carving, test it first on a piece of the same wood to make sure it gives the effect you want. Dyes can be scarily dark when wet but will usually dry much lighter. It must be applied to clean, bare wood, and the dye may be absorbed differently on end grain and side grain. You will normally need some kind of polish or lacquer after the wood stain to bring out the colour and give it a gloss or sheen
When you apply a finish to a board, make sure you cover the back as well as the front. This will reduce the risk of warping
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