Early medieval Frisian ships

Gepubliceerd op 26 februari 2025 om 12:36
In early medieval Frisia, travelling by water was often much faster than travelling by land through the overgrown, swampy marshlands. Frisians relied heavily on ships to traverse the watery landscape they lived in. In doing so, they relied on different types of ships for different purposes.
 
Log vessels
The oldest type of vessel used by the early medieval Frisians was the log canoe. These boats consisted of a long, hollowed-out tree trunk. Log canoes like this date back to at least the Mesolithic. This is evident from the log canoe found in Pesse in Drenthe, which is 10.000 years old and with that the oldest know vessel in the world. During the Roman period, the design of the log canoe was altered, so that the log was curved outwards and kept in shape with wooden rafters. The size of the boat increased, so more cargo or people could be carried. The most famous find of this ship type is the ‘Utrecht I’-ship. These log boats – in contrast to the log canoes – may have been seaworthy, as one of this type made of Dutch wood was found in England; the Queenhithe ship. This log boat is dated to the tenth century.
 
Barges
River barges were used to transport goods and people. The model of the early medieval barge does not differ much from modern barges: they’re basically big, broad, flat-bottomed trays designed to carry cargo on calm waters. The ship's bottom planks were attached side by side so the ship had no keel. Barges appear to have been very common in early medieval Frisia and its hinterland. Many finds of barges have been found in Utrecht, Vleuten, Deventer and Tiel, and recycled bits of barges have been found in wells in Oegstgeest and Leeuwarden. The earliest early medieval barge is the ‘Utrecht 6’-ship, dated to 680 AD.
 
Cogs
Naturally, the early medieval Frisians also used sea-worthy vessels for distant voyages; the cog. In fact, according to the Annales Bertiniani from the ninth century, the Frisians used this ship so often that they were described by the word ‘Cokingi’, which translates to ‘men of the cog’. How these ships looked like, however, is a topic of debate. It is certain that these types of Frisian cogs should not be confused with the twelve- and thirteenth-century cogs used by the Hanseatic League. Although the early medieval Frisian cog was probably the predecessor of the Hanseatic cogs, they weren’t the same type of ship. The Frisian cog was probably made out of overlapping planks and could’ve had a windward, which served as a kind of removable keel. This combined the advantages of a flatboat in shallow waters with the lugging power of a keelboat. The use of windwards in Scandinavian shipbuilding is know from a depiction on a piece of wooden furniture from the Oseberg ship. This raises the question how similar Frisian and Scandinavian ships could’ve been, but this seems difficult to answer due to lack of finds of early medieval cogs in Frisia. A link to a digital reconstruction of an interpretation of a Frisian cog is added in the sources!

 

Impression of a Frisian cog. Drawing by Arne Zuidhoek

Impression of an early medieval barge. Drawing by Arne Zuidhoek

Depiction of a ship with windward on a wooden piece of furniture from the Oseberg ship, circa 800. Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway.

Depiction of a ship on the reverse of a Dorestad-ship type denarius of Louis the Pious. These coins were minted in Dorestad - modern-day Wijk bij Duurstede in the Netherlands. Could this be a representation of a Frisian cog without a windward?

 

Sources and further reading:

 

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