Viking wool sails

[twstoerzinger]

At the 02 Nov 2023 Precision Trailer Sailors Happy Hour, the topic of the Vikings having used wool sails somehow came up. My dear wife, Helen, was familiar with a recent attempt to duplicate the sails used in the Viking era (700 - 1000 AD). This link will take you to the "Norwegian Textile Letter" article on weaving and sailing a wool sail.
     https://norwegiantextileletter.com/article/lessons-learned-from-weaving/
I see that modern machine stitching was used for some of the work, but hand stitching was also used as would have been the case in the Viking age. You will see in the text that the weaver had to abandon the spun wool and switch to a blend of cotton and linen. The Vikings supposedly also used linen fiber, but cotton would have been unknown to them. At the end of the article there is a photo of the boat under sail (sort of) on Lake Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis.

[Riggerdood]

Great article! I was glad we got to continue that discussion at tonight's PSHH. I haven't seen the terms "Z-twist" and "S-twist" thread since my days as a parachute rigger and gear manufacturer. We used Z-twist, or left twist, on the single needle machines, while on the double needle machines we used Z-twist on the right side, and S-twist, or right twist, on the left side since the hook is on the opposite side of the needle on the left. Z-twist works fine for both sides' bobbins.

If you really want to nerd out on this topic (Helen? ;~), these two pages from Poynter's The Parachute Manual (the parachute rigger's "bible") describe the difference between the two. Of course, the same principles would apply to making and sewing together sailcloth.


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