[Jeff Higgins]

O.k., well that finally worked, so on to "the rest of the story".

I was pretty excited to see this ship on YouTube and to read the story behind it. Quite an undertaking, really. They are touting the ship and the crew as retracing the trans-Atlantic crossing of original Viking ships, doing it all pretty much as the Vikings of yore had done it.

Except for one small detail, it turns out, which it appears they are going to some lengths to hide, or at least not being very up front about. It has a pair of diesel engines... not even listed as "propulsion" on their Wiki page, nor mentioned on any of the videos, facebook page, or any of that. I first noticed something odd when watching one of their videos, with the ship making pretty good headway - with the sail down and no oars in the water. Kind of disappointing...

They (quite defensively) claim that they would not have been allowed by Norwegian authorities to even build it without modern power on board, which I'm sure is true. Oh well. I suppose modern safety regulations have made it somewhat difficult to be a Viking. Still pretty cool, and they do try to minimize its use, just maneuvering in the harbors and what not. Pretty rough going on the open seas at any rate: