After a crash course in scholarly approaches to the Viking Age, we had the opportunity to become Viking travelers of a sort as we followed a spring-break itinerary through heritage sites in Denmark. Our journey began at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, where I had spent time as a researcher years before. Although the ships were out of the water for winter maintenance and safekeeping, the staff welcomed us and introduced us to four major facets of the museum—an exhibition of ships excavated from the Roskilde fjord, reconstructions of Viking Age ships based on the archaeological remains, workshops where artisans rediscover the crafts needed to build Viking Age ships, and the research and curation of maritime heritage in Denmark and abroad.
-
- Discussing the Sea Stallion, a ship reconstructed based on archaeological finds of Skuldelev 2. Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde.
-
- The main exhibition hall featuring the five Skuldelev ships, with Skuldelev 3 in the foreground. Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde.
-
- A hands-on workshop testing Viking Age skills in using axes to make stanchions. Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde.
Through a remarkable collaboration of museums, we were able to see a similar sweep of archaeological re-creation at nearby Lejre. The site was in use for a kingly hall well before the Viking Age and might well have inspired the stories that lay behind the Old English poem Beowulf. We visited an exhibition of finds from the site and spoke with both a visitor guide and an archaeologist to explore two very different views. We then toured the place where a hall once stood and explored the surrounding landscape. Then we headed to Sagnlandet (Land of Legends), an open-air museum and research center less than a mile away. We spoke there to a director of the museum about their choices in constructing a building based on the Lejre finds, providing an opportunity to compare and contrast similar choices made at the Viking Ship Museum.
-
- Ceramic finds from an Iron Age hall. Lejre Museum, Lejre.
-
- At the site of an Iron Age hall. Lejre.
-
- Exploring burial mounds in the surrounding landscape. Lejre.
-
- The reconstructed Iron Age hall. Sagnlandet, Lejre.
-
- The entrance to the main room. Sagnlandet, Lejre.
-
- The main room of a reconstructed Iron Age hall. Sagnlandet, Lejre.
We spent the remainder of our stay in Copenhagen. The National Museum recently opened a new permanent exhibition on the Viking Age with a temporary component focused particularly on raiding. We spoke with curators and senior researchers about choices both big and small behind the exhibition. While the Viking Ship Museum and the Lejre Museum were essentially built around finds from single sites, the National Museum contends with having a vast collection that it must maintain and curate while only being able to present a small slice of it to visitors in its exhibitions. To conclude our trip, we then visited the conservation labs to see some of the objects that are not on display but are nonetheless invaluable artifacts for researchers. Our visit focused on the conservation of waterlogged finds, especially wood and textiles, providing an apt bookend to a trip that had started with a focus on woodworking and sail-weaving at the Viking Ship Museum.
-
- Promotional banners for the new Viking Age exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark.
-
- The so-called Hårby Valkyrie is among the new finds now on display at the National Museum.
-
- Students examine a sample book of textiles reconstructed for the new exhibition.
-
- Discussing the problems of waterlogged artifacts like ship timbers at the conservation labs.
-
- Archaeological samples of waterlogged wood preserved (or not) by various techniques.
-
- Textiles that had been used as ship caulking now preserved in the conservation labs.
See further
« Previous | Home | Next »
