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The Vikings were ranked among the best the best ship builders in the world. They built the ships out of wood from the Scandinavian forests, mostly oak. All the stakes are made of oak and the grain of wood runs with the curved planks. The ribs and planking under ....

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.... to twenty men. These ships were deep and wide and fifty- four feet long. They sailed through the ocean mostly by the sails and not much by rowers. Early Viking navigators depended on the sun and the stars, but by the 900's they developed a system to figure out which direction they were sailing. They made a table of figures with the sun's midday height for each week of the year, with using a measuring stick and the table of figures a navigator could estimate the latitude of the ships location. Over the years the Viking ships improved and so did their navigation skills. The contacts with other countries increased and so did the many talents of t ....