The Guardian
Vikings conquered Europe thanks to an unexpected technological innovation. They learned how to make tar on an industrial scale and used it to waterproof their longships so that they could undertake large-scale, lengthy pillaging trips around Europe – and across the Atlantic, say archaeologists. Norse raiders were the original Boys from the Blackstuff, it transpires.
The discovery is the work of Andreas Hennius, of Uppsala University. In Antiquity, he reports finding critical evidence that shows output from tar pits in Scandinavia increased dramatically just as Vikings began raiding other parts of Europe. These pits could have made up to 300 litres in a single production cycle, enough to waterproof large numbers of ships. “Tar production … developed from a small-scale activity … into large-scale production that relocated to forested outlands during the Viking period,” says Hennius. “This change … resulted from the increasing demand for tar driven by an evolving maritime culture.”
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Now
Hennius has pitched in with his theory. Tar drove Vikings to be the hammer of
the gods in Europe. He says tar has been used for millennia
to waterproof boats. It was made in pits filled with pine wood, covered with
turf and set on fire. Small domestic tar kilns were found in Sweden in the
early 2000s. These dated to between AD100 and 400. But much larger pits were
found during road construction and dated to between 680 and 900, when the rise
of the Vikings began. They were originally thought to have been used for making
charcoal, but Hennius’s investigation has revealed they had a different
purpose: tar manufacture.
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