This is actually a letter that I wrote to Josh to go along with a Viking book that I got him (can someone send me his address by the way?)
I visited a Viking museum in Roskilde Denmark with a friend who also shares Danish ancestry. The main exhibit of the museum were five ships the Vikings had sunk in Roskilde Fjord. From what I have been able to learn, the Vikings built towns in inland bays or fjords because there was greater protection from invaders there. In Roskilde there were three shipping channels that lead through the fjord and to the town. Two were straight and would be easy for enemy invaders to discover. the third was crooked and required local knowledge of the fjord to navigate. It was in one of the straight channels that the Vikings sunk the ships in order to block the passage (it also appears that they built a movable fence type blockade in the other straight channel to protect it.
In the 60’s or 70’s some archeologists discovered the remains of the ships and were able to pull them up from the bottom of the fjord and reassemble them. This museum has built replicas of all five ships they found. One of the replicas was built in Dublin Ireland, where some of the Vikings settled and had a large influence on the culture. The ship sailed and rowed from Dublin to Roskilde as a living archeology experiment. One of the first things that they discovered is that it did not work to have all 60 oars going at once but rather to have half that so that the rowers could have the space to move their bodies through a full powerful stroke.
At the museum I was really impressed with all of the info they had on the different types of woods that the Vikings used to build their ships and what woods strengths and weaknesses would make them best suited for different parts of the ship. They had a boat building shop there where they used tools that the Vikings used and you could see that the Vikings were very knowledgeable and skilled craftsmen.
Boat building shop using Viking era techniques and tools
This is the boat that sailed from Dublin!
This is me in a play Viking ship. I wasn’t being a very good Viking there. I guess it was my turn to be ballast rather than a rower!
3 comments:
your posts on Danmark are remarkable, I truly admire your courage at going somewhere you don't know the language and figuring out how to ride the train.
You are one tough cookie.
thanks for sharing with us - I will e-mail Josh (and Clay's address!)
Great post Kris! Glad you were able to have such a good time too. Every picture I've seen has clouds and blue sky ... was the weather that nice all the time you were there?
Go Vikings!
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