Hello there!
I'm writting a novel that is set at the middle age but I'm not an historian so this kind of things are completely out of my area of expertise. I was wondering how trips were made upstream of a river and what were the conditions to do those kind of trips. I have done a little bit of research but most information is about sea travel or downstream trips. I also know that vikings made upstream raids with their boats and they were very succesfull doing that. So I was wondering if anyone can help me to understand how those travels worked and what were the conditions they took in count for those trips. Also how long they could take, for example if they wanted to go to another upstream city and why they took that amount of time. If you can provide me any example of a real historical route like this that would be great.
I'm not an english native speaker so sorry if I make any mistake. I really appreciate your help and your answers. Thank you!
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.