Americans aren't taught much about the Dark Ages in school. It is more or less assumed that, aside from a plague or two, not much went on from the fall of Rome in the 5th century, A.D. until the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

     Charlemagne?—Sounds foreign.

     His Paladin?—Don't tell me... Oh, yeah! Richard Boone in that old TV western, right?

     Our studies of the Middle Ages aren't much better. Forget the Crusades and Magna Carta, mention Richard the Lionheart or his brother Prince (later King) John, our mind's eye immediately leaps to the Robin Hood legends. If it weren't for St. Joan of Arc and Shakepeare's Henry V, we'd probably skip over The Hundred Years War entirely, in our mad historical dash to discover America.

     How easily we forget that Columbus was almost 500 years too late to take that honor, that is, from the European perspective. My lovely Hispanic wife likes to remind me that when the Europeans landed, her ancestors had a taco stand on the beach.

     We forget that Vikings ignored the perils that lay at the "edge of the world," and set out in open longboats, sailing to Greenland, Iceland and Newfoundland as early as 1006, A.D. Legend has it that they may have penetrated as far south and west as Ohio.

     While we may appreciate the Norsemen's courage in accomplishing this feat, we fail to be properly awed by their skill as shipbuilders. In their day, Viking longboats were the scourge of the seas from Scandinavia to Africa, and were probably more seaworthy than much later craft, including the fabled Spanish galleon and the dreaded English man-of-war. They certainly fared better than the early ironclads.

     This was interestingly confirmed by Kirk Douglas' film The Vikings. In its quest for authenticity, longboats were painstakingly recreated to scale. To their builders' surprise, they neither pitched nor rolled. In fact, they were found to be so seaworthy that eventually they were sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.

Acknowledgments: 2, 34. Special thanks to Rachel Morones Brown.

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© Russ Brown, 1998, 2003