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Turning from eugenics to more practical matters, it was the brain and the manual skill of the Viking that invented and perfected our modern sailing ship. Stripped of its barbaric excrescences at stem and stern, and of its rows of shields and ornaments, the lines of the Viking ship of Gokstad found there buried but entire, are the lines of our herring boats of fifty years ago.
The ships were moved by oars and sails; they had rudders, no doubt such as the Gokstad ship, for the hero Arrow-Odd used a rudder as a weapon. "Champions". Professed fighting men were often kept by kings and earls about their court as useful in feud and fray. Harald Fairhair's champions are admirably described in the contemporary Raven Song by Hornclofe
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