[Fenrisulfr]

There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various technological innovations (think cotton gin, but plenty more), culture, and economics. The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Great quote about Viking sail ships:

"Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight hours a day with a heavy spindle whorl to produce relatively coarse yarn, a spinner would toil 385 days to make enough for the sail. Plucking the sheep and preparing the wool for spinning required another 600 days. From start to finish, Viking sails took longer to make than the ships they powered."

[duxup]

It doesn't strike me as surprising that the sail would take longer than the boat. The skill to make a boat is impressive but the mechanics of getting it done aren't enormous.

Fabrics and sewing, gathering and prepping those materials and the tedious work seems enormous.

[dimitrios1]

I encourage you to watch some videos online of traditional (mostly hand-tools) Shipwrights. Even with the use of a bandsaw to do the rough milling, it is an arduous and lengthy process. Shipwrights also work with some of the longest planks of wood any form of woodworking does. In the days before machines, there would be scores of workers simply preparing the wood and getting it ready for the ship building.

My hunch would be the reason shipbuilding is faster is it is easier to scale to multiple workers, and there are parts you can do in parallel.

[Ekaros]

The sewing of sail fabric is something different. You need to use heavy duty needle and force it through the fabric. It is somewhat similar I would imagine as dealing with leather.

Wood work deals with big pieces comparatively.

[taneq]

Reminds me of the comparison between computer software and hardware. Hulls are fairly linear. Sails are combinatorial.

[bregma]

Plucking sheep.

You shear sheep, not pluck them. If you're experienced you can sheer about 100 sheep per day. You can skirt and wash the fleece of those same 100 sheep on day two. How are you spending the remaining 598 days?

While I'm not an expert at spinning (although my spouse may be), I would venture that 12 or 15 village women carding and spinning 10 to 12 hours a day would be able to go from sheep to sail in about 3 months. Spindle spinning is very portable and something a woman would do during pretty much every spare moment when her hands were not busy doing something else. Making sails would have been a drop in the bucket when it came to yarn consumption since she also had to make all the clothes and cloth for other uses like sacking, ticking, blankets, etc.

[Someone]

Shearing requires advanced technology that the Vikings may not have had. https://www.griggsagri.co.uk/blog/sheep-shearing-a-brief-his...:

“The sheep were shorn using very basic tools, such as metal, or sharp glass, fashioned into an implement to take whole clumps of wool off at once. Over time, the tools were adapted into scissor-like blades to make the job easier.”

I think you can call that plucking. People use tools to pluck grapes, too.

And 100 a day without a powered tool? Is that realistic?

[pdw]

12-15 women working for 3 months is close to 4 person-years of work. That's higher than the numbers in Fenrisulfr's quote.

[sandworm101]

Plucking is the ancient form of sheering. You literally pull the hair off the sheep by hand. You aren't yanking it out by the roots, the shaft generally broke rather than the root put out of the skin, but I doubt the sheep enjoyed the process. In short: gathering wool from sheep was very different before ready acess to steel shears.

https://www.chassagne.ca/index.php/the-croft-mainmenu-30/the...

"Before the invention of shears, the sheep were plucked or “rooed”, a Scandinavian word for plucking, and this tradition was still carried out on the Shetland Island until about forty years ago."

[AdamN]

100 sheep per day ... with a flat blade since you don't have sheers yet ... while doing all the other chores required to maintain yourself ... accounting for the time it takes for the sheep to grow a coat long enough to sheer in the first place?

[kwhitefoot]

> 100 meters square

I think that might take a bit more than 154 km of yarn.

Presumably you meant 100 square metre. :-)

[soperj]

You'd have to cut the trees, get them from the forest to the build site, and then make lumber out of them and dry them. Can't imagine it would be that much different.

[Someone]

In those times, chances are they moved the build site to the trees, and made sure the trees were close to the water (with more forest and a much smaller population, such trees could probably be found fairly easily)

Also, they didn’t dry the wood. https://regia.org/research/ships/Ships1.htm:

“Timber was used green – in other words, shortly after felling. This is different to more modern practice, where the timber is "seasoned" – left to dry for several years. Green wood is easier to work, and more flexible, which can help with some of the more complex shapes found in Viking boats. Wood can be kept "green" for several years by keeping it immersed in water – a stem (or stern) of a Viking style boat was found on the island of Eig in what, a thousand years ago, had been a lake. As it had never been used – there were no indications of rivet holes – it was probably made up when the boat-builder had got a spare piece of suitable timber, and he was waiting for a similar bit for the stern (or stem) which never arrived.

It is also possible to steam green wood without complex equipment like the steam boxes used today. Simply by heating a plank over a fire, the moisture inside the wood heats up and causes the fibres to loosen. This means that – for a few minutes – it can be twisted into shape with less danger of it splitting and breaking. It is highly likely that this was done during Viking times – we know the technique was used to make "expanded" log boats, for example.”

[Koshkin]

> 154 kilometers (60 miles)

154 km = 95.7 mi