Wallace,

If anything, 1:72 figures would be slightly too small — a figure of a six foot tall person would be 1 inch high at 1:72 but 1.2 inches high at 1:60.

N scale would be way too small — it is, depending on country, between 1:148 and 1:160, which would make the abovementioned six-footer only around half an inch.

If you have a look at this list of railway scales, you'll see that there is one scale, Z0, that is exactly 1:60, although it seems doubtful if it is much used, and one, more common, called S, at 1:64: **LINK**.

However, while figures for model railways tend to be abundant, I rather doubt that many of them look or could easily be converted to look like 11th century Normands, so your best bet might be to go with 1:72 figures; there used at least to be many such not least from Airfix …

Mattias

Why not approach the problem from the opposite end?

Viking ships came in different sizes to the same general design with spars and many fittings in proportion. What is there in the kit to stop you treating it as a larger ship at 1:72 scale? One item that comes to mind is the height of the seats but you could probably raise these unobtrusively by making them a bit thicker and maybe less wide. Shields could be on the large side but they would be in proportion to the ship or maybe you could turn them down a bit with a file/sandpaper.

If the ship is bursting with burly brutal barbarians it is unlikely that most people would notice any discrepancies.

Worth considering anyway.

Colin

Regarding the shields, paint the rims black, that will make them appear smaller.

Colin

If I recall correctly, humans were a little shorter in the 1000s, so that might help. If the height of a 1:72 figure is 1", which it usually is, that would be the equivalent of a 5'8" man (average height for the time) at 1:68. At 1:60, your Vikings would all be 5-footers – and I suspect that there were many of about that height…