On a foggy morning off Norway’s craggy coast, a square-rigged clinker boat—a descendant of Viking craft—glided between islands. No compass guided its crew. No engine rumbled below deck. Instead, Greer Jarrett, an archaeologist from Lund University, navigated using only the wind, waves, and tradition. His goal was to see the world as a Viking once did, and to find what the maps have long missed.
“The thing I am interested in is what happened on the journeys between these major trading centres,” Jarrett explained.
From September 2021 to July 2022, Jarrett and his team sailed 1,494 nautical miles in seven different Nordic boats—some no longer than a city bus. Their voyage, described in a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory , was experimental archaeology in its most literal form: a quest to reconstruct where the Vikings went, how they got there, and why. In the process, they learned that Viking ships were more capable than previously thought, and their harbors were farther out than anticipated.
“It’s clear that the Vikings had a very different world view to ours. We really have to think of their world as a place where the sea was completely central to all movement.
A Maritime Puzzle Missing Its Middle
Vikings are often remembered as raiders and looters, but that misses an essential point. Vikings were masters of the sea—sailors whose longships stitched together a vast web from Greenland to Baghdad, and even reached North America. Archaeologists have long known their start and end points: Bergen, Trondheim, Dublin, Ribe. But what happened in between has been largely guesswork.
Jarrett saw an opportunity in this void. What if the real story of Viking trade lay not in the grand cities but in the quiet, forgotten harbors between them?
“My hypothesis is that this decentralised network of ports, located on small islands and peninsulas, was central to making trade efficient during the Viking Age,” Jarrett noted.
These ports—dubbed “havens” by the researchers—needed to be more than just rest stops. They had to offer fresh water, shelter from wind and swell, space for multiple boats, and be accessible even in low visibility. Perhaps most importantly, they had to sit in what Jarrett terms “transition zones”: liminal spaces between Norway’s exposed outer coast and its maze-like inner fjords.
Testing the Waters—Literally
To reconstruct Viking seafaring, Jarrett took to the sea himself. He piloted clinker-built boats along Norway’s western coast, including vessels like the fembøring and the faering—traditional designs with roots stretching back to the Viking Age. The team also built a strong camaraderie, helping each other in situations that were pretty dire
In one expedition, the yard holding the mainsail snapped 25 kilometers from shore. The crew lashed together oars to hold the sail upright.
“We had to lash two oars together to hold the sail, and hope that it would hold,” he said. They made it back safely, but the repairs took days.
These were not scripted stunts. They were reminders of how treacherous the journey could be, even for experienced mariners. It’s also what the Vikings would have had to face.
Jarrett’s crew endured katabatic winds—violent gusts that barrel down mountain slopes—and freezing rain that numbed their fingers. They encountered sudden fog banks and, on one voyage, a minke whale that surfaced so close it rocked the boat.
“I realised just how crucial it is to have a good crew,” Jarrett reflected. “If you don’t have a crew that can cooperate and put up with each other for long periods, these journeys would probably be impossible.”
Digital Oceans, Ancient Eyes
But this voyage wasn’t just about firsthand experience. Jarrett complemented his sailing logs with cutting-edge digital models of ancient sea levels, accounting for nearly 1,200 years of geological change. Due to isostatic rebound—where the land rises after the retreat of ice sheets—many coastal areas sit up to six meters higher today than they did in the Viking Age.
By reconstructing past shorelines and simulating what the seascape looked like around 800 AD, Jarrett could assess whether a modern bay would have made sense as a Viking stopover.
He then layered this with oral histories from 19th- and 20th-century Norwegian sailors—men who, like the Vikings, steered by sight and story.
In the absence of maps or compasses, Viking sailors used “mental maps” built from experience and oral lore. Islands like Torghatten and Skrova held mythological significance that helped sailors remember their significance and dangers.
He calls this web of navigation-by-narrative a “Maritime Cultural Mindscape.” Using a hybrid method involving archaeology, oceanography, and old-fashioned seamanship, Jarrett identified four sites along the Norwegian coast that may have served as Viking havens:
- Smørhamn, a sheltered harbor once frequented by square-rigged cargo ships called jekter, and possibly a critical waypoint for outer coastal routes.
- Sørøyane, near where the famed Kvalsund boats were discovered, aligning with medieval texts that cite the area as a harbor for ships braving the notoriously stormy headland of Stad.
- Two other unnamed locations, each situated in transition zones and backed by either oral tradition, cartographic hints, or promising archaeological context.
These aren’t definitive discoveries—Jarrett is careful to frame them as hypotheses. But they open new frontiers for future digs, perhaps providing targets where archaeologists can start sifting for timbers, tools, and traces of campfires.
Unlocking the Viking Map
Jarrett’s methodology—combining experiential knowledge, digital mapping, and oral history—offers a new toolkit for archaeologists studying ancient seafaring from Polynesia to the Baltic.
It also challenges the landlocked bias of much historical interpretation.
“This study’s emphasis on practical seafaring knowledge and experience seeks to counter the common academic bias towards terrestrial and textual sources and worldviews,” he writes.
By putting oars back in the water and sails to the wind, Jarrett shows that history doesn’t only live in books or ruins. Sometimes, it drifts in the currents and echoes across the waves.
