Bondevika og leidangsnausta

If you follow the trail from the church to the Northwest of the island you will come to Bondevika. In Bondevika are the remains of 2 large boathouses. The embankments that supported the boathouse walls are clearly visible. The Boathouses were built in the second half of the 900s, and were probably a part of the Leidang system. Leidang was an arrangement to get free farmers to equip and man ships for expeditions and war. In Norway the leidangen was establised by Håkon the good around 950. The coastline, as far as the salmon went up the rivers was divided by ship owners. Each ship owner would be responsible for providing a longship of people and provisions for the King’s use. The largest boathouse in Bondevika could have housed a 20 sesser. A 20 sesser had 40 pairs of oars and a crew of up to 100 men. The smaller could have housed a small ‘knar’ or bus that was used for the transportation of people and goods. Leidang ships were to be built and stored on the King’s soil. It was also a requirement that the sails for the Leidang ships were stored in the church. We can assume that the boathouses in Bondevika served as Leidang boathouses from the end of the Viking age onwards. At the Romsdal museum in Molde you can see a 3d visualization of both the Leidang boathouse and the marketplace, you can move around in the virtual landscape which has been created based on the wealth of materials discovered from the excavations and research carried out on Veøya. The picture shows the position of the boathouse and how it would have looked like in the 900s.