The Ship

The conquest of England

Svend Tveskæg became king of Denmark in 985 and before that he had recaptured Sønderjylland and Hedeby. Svend had a dream to conquer England. He got a lot of men together to build Viking ships. It has been found that they sometimes had up to three hundred ships in one raid. The sides of the ship were build of planks that overlapped. That is called building on klink (?). We also use that technique today. The planks (or the tables (?) As they are called) were shaped with axes and but in boiling water and bent to fit. Forward and astern were assembled and pinned/nailed to the stems. Clasps were put into the ship and the tables were pinned to some of them. Slowly the hull took shape. After the ships had been built they neded equipment for the voyage, so Svend Tveskæg sent some men out to get it.

Two weeks later they returned with beer, whey, meat, swords, spears, axes, shields, bows, arrows and wood in case something happened to the ships. There always had to be ropes and extra sails. Now they were ready to leave. Svend Tveskæg and ten thousand six hundred of his men are going to England. Now they are on their way to England. On their way there is a storm and it rain a lot. But the Vikings have no problems with that when they have such good ships. To hours later the storm stopped. Now there is only two nights and five hours til they are in England. They sail and sail and sail and all the while they are having wine and meat. The whole voyage goes well and now they have arrived in England. When the fearless Vikings had come ashore in 985 they raided and conquered. Four days later they had conquered everything around Humberfjord. In three days they conquered York, it was a hard battle for England and the Vikings. England tried to defend itself but it was hopeless, the Vikings also lost a lot of men and it took ten to fourteen days. Five days later the Vikings sent one hundred men to Lincholm and the next day fifty men came back, there were twentyfive men that were guarding Lincholm. Later the Vikings had reinforcements of two hundred men from the east coast from London. They conquered London, that was also a hard battle because they lost many men, they also conquered Northampton and Stamfjord, they had conquered almost half of England. Then the English king Valdemar thought of them paying the Vikings to sail home and then he sent a messenger to tell Svend Tveskæg the Danish king that he would pay them to sail home. The English king would pay one silver piece per man, but Svend said one gold and one silver piece per man and the English king said yes.

Svend Tveskæg withdrew his men and there was peace again and he sailed home with all his money. When the Vikings had returned home again they celebrated it and all the gold and silver they had received to go home and everything they had raided. Now Denmark was rich and England poor. But the English king was still glad that the Vikings had gone home.

Martin, Kasper, Lasse and Bjørn

Children Build a Web about the Vikings Return to Kaerbyskolen