Hi everyone. I am researching a topic for a paper that could be one day turn into an actual marine archeological site. Just some background. I studied ancient Middle Eastern cultures as my specific area. Ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, Hitties, etc... you get the point. I moved on to the medieval age and one of my all time favorites was the Al Andalus and the story of Amir Abd al-Rahman. That’s where the Vikings enter my research. I moved forward towards the raiding era of the Vikings. I thought it was incredible the extent they had extended their raiding abilities. When reading historical documents that back up the presence of the Vikings on their way out of the Mediterranean showed (since we don’t know if Bjorn ironside existed or not) they were attacked. many ships that were filled with plunder sank. I have been researching into the fact that no one has looked for these ships in the strait of Gibraltar to my knowledge. Is anyone aware if they have made these discoveries? This is the focus of my paper. I want to show that they maybe sitting where they sank at the bottom of the strait off the coast of southern Spain. Understandably I am hoping it is on the coastal area compared directly in the middle of the strait.
No discoveries made as yet. I suspect the easiest answer is to consider depositional and taphonomic problems—Would a viking ship still exist in recoverable form, if sunk off the Straits of Gibraltar over one thousand years ago? And if so, how would we find and identify it? I suspect the ships themselves would have deteriorated to nothing, but there might still be diagnostic traces—bones with the right isotopes, particular kinds of artifacts, certain patterns of ballast piles (some work on this last has been done for Hedeby harbor, but only in German, insofar as I know).
Regarding primary textual sources, I'd point you to Ann Christys 2015 Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean. It's an excellent overview and discussion of sources, including surviving material culture. She points to one of my all-time favorite discoveries: a viking mouse found on the Madeira island, almost 500 mi (800 km) off the coast of Morocco. Some of her work is free for download off her academia page, although you might need to register for an account.
You should also be aware of the research begun by Irene García Losquño, currently of the University of Alicante. She received her PhD from the University of Aberdeen, and while still there as a postdoc, she started a project on vikings in Iberia. It was widely reported and published two short videos, although I'm not sure anything further came of the project. It might be worth perusing through her most current profile and perhaps even reaching out to her. The only publication I could find was an article on Norse place-names in Iberia, which might be of some use. Place-names have been especially useful for tracing Norse influence in northern England.
Regarding general viking sailing stuff, I'd point you to a pair of books published by the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (alas, its Norwegian counterpart lacks a similar research staff). These are Wulfstan's Voyage and Ohthere's Voyages. These two travelers visited the court of Alfred the Great in England, ca. 890, and accounts of their voyages were recorded (albeit not directly transcribed; lots of anthropological questions here) in a geography book as part of a larger work on history. The two volumes linked above came from a pair of conferences dedicated to studying their short accounts. For a more general overview, there's a couple good chapters in Viking Empires. The authors aren't specialists, but it's nonetheless a synthesis of good work on viking sailing.
Finally, if this is out of your field, I'd just note that current conventions are to use the term "viking" (with a little "v") to specifically refer to viking raiders, as a synonym with pirates. We no longer see these people as representatives of the larger culture from which they came, which we instead term "Norse", which is the modern term for the language they spoke. During the Viking Age itself, they would typically be called Danes, Northmen, pagans, or pirates, or the Latin/Old English/Old Irish equivalents. Documents about Scandinavia are few, but missionaries referred in general to the northern peoples or northern regions, and then more specifically to the diverse petty kingdoms that existed, until they began to consolidate into larger kingdoms ca. 1000.
Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to our rules. This policy is further explained in this Rules Roundtable thread and this META Thread.
As a result, we'd also like to remind potential answerers to follow our rules on homework - please make sure that your answers focus appropriately on clarifications and detailing the resources that OP could be using.
Additionally, while users may be able to help you out with specifics relating to your question, we also have plenty of information on /r/AskHistorians on how to find and understand good sources in general. For instance, please check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay.