By James Heinz
The ship used in this summer’s blockbuster Christopher Nolan movie “The Odyssey” once sailed the Great Lakes.
An August 14, 2022, WMHS blog posting https://wmhs.org/when-a-viking-ship-sailed-the-great-lakes/ contained information about a replica Viking ship that came to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition in 1893 and then stayed, becoming a static land display today in a Chicago suburb.
At the end of the post, I recounted voyages to America by other Viking ship replicas in these words “I remember seeing another Viking longship in Chicago in 2016. She was tied up at Navy Pier for a Tall Ships festival. I remember one of the crew telling me that they almost didn’t make it to Chicago, because when they got to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence Seaway, they discovered that they were required to hire a Great Lakes pilot, for which they had not budgeted…This ship is called DRAKEN HARALD HARFAGRE… https://www.drakenhh.com/”
Photo at top of page
DRAKEN HARALD HARFAGRE is the ship used in the movie “The Odyssey.”
According to WMHS files, DRAKEN displaces 95 tons, is 115 feet long, 26 feet wide, and draws 8 feet of water. She has an auxiliary diesel engine and carries 2,800 square feet of sail. Her name means “Dragon Harold Fairhair” in English.
Nolan’s film has been criticized for inaccuracy and using an ancient Viking ship as a stand in for an ancient Greek ship from thousands of years earlier is one of the criticisms. There is an additional criticism of DRAKEN:
It is not a replica Viking ship.
According to WMHS files, DRAKEN’s construction does not correspond to either the archeological evidence or the descriptions in the Norse sagas, which are the Norse version of Homer’s Odyssey. It is a modern construction built using ancient Norse shipbuilding traditions.
Ancient Norse shipbuilding techniques differed from ancient Greek techniques. Viking ships were clinker built, with overlapped oak planks fastened with iron nails. Ancient Greek ships were built shell first, with the hull being constructed first of pine planks sewn together edge to edge with cords and the frame being constructed of oak inside the completed hull with poplar wood pegs holding it together.
Both ancient Greek and Viking warships were propelled by a single square sail and oars, 50 of them for DRAKEN, each pulled by two men. Both types of ship were of shallow draft and were made to make it easy to beach them, like a World War II LST https://wmhs.org/a-ship-in-muskegon-harbor-participated-in-d-day/
As for DRAKEN’s Great Lakes tour, Wikipedia tells us that this was the itinerary:
- 1–3 July – Toronto, Ontario*
- 8 July – Fairport Harbor, Ohio, U.S.*
- 14 July – Bay City, Michigan, U.S.*
- 22 July – Beaver Island. Michigan, U.S.
- 27 July – Chicago, Illinois, U.S.*
- 5 Aug – Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.*
Further stops had been planned but the tour was cut short because the U.S. Coast Guard classified her as a commercial vessel. That meant she had to pay $400,000 in Great Lakes pilot fees, as my original article noted. The photo showing her tied to a dock was taken in Green Bay which became the last stop of the tour.
DRAKEN is not the only Norwegian ship to sail the Great Lakes in recent years: https://wmhs.org/the-mystery-ship-of-the-manitowoc-marina/ and https://wmhs.org/more-on-the-mystery-ship-of-manitowocs-marina/
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Photos courtesy of Wikipedia
James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
