Tales of the GS-12 Vikings

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'I'm a Viking. That's the Thing to Be.'

People interested in Viking history and sailing take a voyage on the replica Viking longship called the Sae Hrafn, which means "sea raven," from Calvert Marina on Solomons Island, Md.

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"Yarr," yelled one man on a motorboat, taking off his baseball cap to acknowledge the crew of the Longship Company.

"Sometimes you just embrace the stereotype," Blaydoe said. "The Vikings were the pirates of their day, so we're just a bunch of Captain Jack Sparrows from a few centuries earlier."

Blackistone, or Atli, as his fellow Vikings know him, is the kind of guy who dresses up in chain mail and wields an ax at medieval festivals. He cracks corny jokes about the 10th century -- most of which only he and his Viking counterparts get.

Blackistone said that, when he was a child, he watched the 1958 movie "The Vikings," starring Kirk Douglas. It inspired an interest in Viking culture that stuck more than 40 years later.

"I thought running around, swinging swords, that was sort of cool," Blackistone said. "You get all interested in all the swashbuckling and all, but then you start looking at how the society worked and how the ships worked and how it all had to integrate itself."

In the 1970s, he and a group of friends at the University of Maryland who shared his interest bought a motor whaleboat and converted it according to Viking specifications into Sae Earn, or Sea Eagle.

They paid $101 for the boat and about $120 to transport it. Then they sold its diesel engine for about $100, making almost half their money back.

These days, the Longship Company has the 38-foot ship and a smaller boat. Their motto: "No boat, no Viking."

But the members of the Longship Company are not all the reenactor type, nor is their group an exclusive one. Anyone is welcome to come with them on a voyage, Blackistone said, with or without authentic Viking garb.

One Viking relabeled a bottle of sunscreen to say: "Viking Sun Shield. Loot and pillage, but never burn."

Although the Longship Company is full of people who will debate Viking culture for hours, "we try very hard not to take ourselves seriously," Tristan said.

After a full day on the water, some aspects of the Viking experience are indisputably real.

"After eight hours of rowing, you're going to feel authentic," Blackistone said. "You're even going to smell authentic."