Viking Ships
Roskilde – 17th May
It would be wrong to come all the way to Scandinavia and not visit a Viking Museum, so today we went to a Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. Having already studied Vikings at University this museum appealed to me most because the history course I completed touched on who they were, why they travelled and how they lived, but not so much on the construction of the boats and how they were used.
The museum is reasonably priced at NZ$40 each which includes a guided tour indoors (or self guided by audio), a guided or self guided tour outdoors, a shop to part with more money, a free 24 hour car park, a place to eat your lunch (or café if rich), plus other activities. There were more options to pay for a trip on the Fjord in a replica Viking ship, you row out, they sail you around for a bit and then you row the boat back.
Outdoor activities include making a boat if you are a kid, watching a larger boat being built outdoors or a smaller one indoors, looking at old ships or looking at the volunteers sitting in the ship having a beer for lunch, why not?
My driver is a responsible person and unfortunately couldn’t join them.
[Ed – Sven and Olaf, Tuborg in hand, were having a chat about carrying the volunteer workload on their shoulders]
Guided tours are definitely the way to go at this museum. They are for an hour and the ticket office suggested we join the English tour and pull out if we get bored. We definitely didn’t get bored as our tour guide spoke loudly, clearly and with much passion and humour. She was an archaeologist and could support everything she said with details of how they know the information, such as science (e.g carbon dating) or Rune Stones etc. There were several partial ships on display and each one was described as to its purpose i.e. war, cargo, etc, how it was built, the wood used, the function of parts of the ship and where they came from i.e. Norway, Denmark or Ireland. The rest of the museum had a lot of information and photos about how they discovered the boats, recovered them from the fjord and pieced them back together. The metal structures in the photos are there to indicate how the ship would have looked and also to hold the recovered remains in place.
There are more photos and information in and outside the museum about a team of people who sailed in a Viking ship in modern days from Ireland to react the voyage taken by one of the ships they found in the harbour. Using scientific technology they can date the construction period of the ship and where it comes from by looking at the type of tree wood and its life rings.
Another good thing about having an archaeologist as a tour guide is that she covered many other things about Vikings like, who they really were, what they worn, how they communicated, how and what they traded and their relationship with Christian leaders.
There was lots of humour as apparently we have a false perception of Vikings from film and TV series. They were actually short in stature, colourfully clothed in wool not brown leather, don’t just live off meat, only a small proportion sailed in boats and they often used deception to beat their enemy rather than combat war.
After lunch we went to the Roskilde Cathedral which has UNESCO listed status.
21 Kings and 18 queens are buried here; there is even a place ready for Queen Margrethe II.
Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside the cathedral as there was a funeral being held.
Today’s ABBA tribute is from ‘The Piper’ (1980) for all the Vikings who were not sailors. It is a misconception that all Vikings were seafaring warriors, the backbone of Viking society was actually the farmers, the craftsmen and all the other folk who kept the settlement going on a daily basis and produced goods for consumption and trade.
They came from the hills
And they came from the valleys and the plains
They struggled in the cold
In the heat and the snow and in the rain