Exploring Viking Shipbuilding with Karine Hagen and Geir Magne Røvik
📅 Aug 26, 2025Viking.TV16 MIN1087 VIEWS16 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Discover the legacy of Nordic craftsmanship as Karine Hagen, Executive Vice President of Viking, is joined by traditional shipbuilder Geir Magne Røvik to explore the fascinating world of Viking shipbuilding. From hand-carved longships to modern maritime design, uncover how ancient seafaring traditions inspire the ships of today. Gain insight into Geir’s unique role in Viking’s ceremonial practices and witness his expert demonstration of age-old shipbuilding techniques, all rooted in Norway’s proud maritime heritage.
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For the next half hour or so, we're going to be at home on board Viking ships — both the original Viking longships as well as our comfortable Viking ships of today, which so many of you are already familiar with — to learn a bit more about the longships which allowed the Vikings to travel as far as they did: far east to Russia, south to Istanbul, which they called Miklegarðr, and as far west as to North America. We join our friend Gair Ruvik, who knows more about the Viking era than anyone I know. You might also recognize Gair from all our Viking ocean ship naming ceremonies, as he brings the axe of relevance that is used by our godmothers to cut the ribbon that releases the aquavit bottle that christens the ship. So it's over to our little tour of the original Viking longships.
In the 8th century, the world faced a new naval power: the Vikings, who set out from Scandinavia in search of adventure, conquests, and knowledge. Envied as explorers and feared as invaders, the Vikings stretched their reach to the edge of the known world and beyond. They built an empire on the back of a key piece of technology: the sleek, agile longship. The longships employed an innovative clinker-built hull, where the planks overlap each other. The design was flexible, required less water displacement, and was extremely stable, thanks to its unique keel configuration.
You have the keel to support when you sail in, but this here — you have an extra keel that is built in the hull. You start with the keel, you continue with the six planks that are going to form the bottom, and the seventh board stays vertical, and that's this one. So therefore when you sail, you get one extra keel that supports you for the direction. After that, it continues flat again and goes to the upper strake. It's sort of like a triple keel.
Yes, triple keel — more stable for sailing. With the longships, the Vikings were able to cover vast distances quickly, mastering both open seas and shallow rivers. They sailed to Britain and France, to America, through the rivers of Russia and Ukraine, to Istanbul, and even to distant Egypt. Elements of the impressive longships were adopted wherever the Vikings sailed. You can still see the influences today in Portugal's rabelo boats and the gondolas of Venice. To give me a better sense of what it took to actually build a longship, Gair walked me through some of the early stages and explained the importance of choosing just the right tree.
When we try to split it, sometimes if the trunk is really good, then we can split this for a half hour in two pieces. But in the worst case, it can take three days.
When we split this timber, we split it along the marrow lines. We first split in two pieces like this, and so into four, so into eight, and so into 16 pieces.
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Hagen, K. (2025, August 26). Exploring Viking Shipbuilding with Karine Hagen and Geir Magne Røvik [Interview transcript]. Viking.TV. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1032655/
MLA
Karine Hagen. "Exploring Viking Shipbuilding with Karine Hagen and Geir Magne Røvik." Viking.TV, 26 Aug. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1032655/.
BibTeX
@misc{hagen2025_1032655,
author = {Karine Hagen},
title = {Exploring Viking Shipbuilding with Karine Hagen and Geir Magne Røvik},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Viking.TV. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1032655/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
