Add this to your to-do list!

Given that a quarter of me hails from Bergen, Norway, and that I had recently read that a Viking settlement had been found near the mouth of the Hudson River, and that Minnesota, my other home, is home to the Vikings, I looked forward to visiting the famous Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, on the Roskilde Fjord, about forty kilometres west of Copenhagen.

I didn't realise what a gem it is.

View onto Roskilde Fjord from inside the museum

Another view onto Roskilde Fjord from inside the museum

A thousand years ago, Roskilde was the capital of Viking Denmark, and continued to be so for several hundred years.  At the time, it was a thriving town with extensive trade connections to all points of the compass.

Its success also brought danger.  Leaders from other parts of the sprawling Danish empire wanted to wrestle control away from Roskilde.  Knowing this, the inhabitants of Roskilde devised a plan to fend off attackers.

To reach Roskilde, an invading fleet would have to sail down the whole length of the Roskilde Fjord – a journey that would take several hours even in the very best conditions.  So Roskilde developed a series of signal fires from the mouth of the fjord.  Should enemy ships be seen, a fire would be lit.  A bit further down the fjord, spotters would see this and set fire to their own pile of wood.  And so on.  It wouldn’t take very long before the alarm would be raised in Roskilde itself, leaving time to muster the defences before the invaders' boats arrived.

To slow the advance of an attacking fleet even more, a barrier was erected in the shortest of the channels heading to Roskilde, near a place called Skuldelev, forcing the boats to take a longer route, which was guarded with a movable barrier.  The Skuldelev barrier comprised five different Viking boats that had been purposefully scuttled and filled with rocks to prevent passage.

They were found in 1962 and are known as Skuldelev 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6.  Originally there were thought to be six ships, but later, researchers concluded that 2 and 4 were from the same ship, subsequently called 2.

And it certainly was one of those discoveries archeologists dream about – five different Viking boats, with much of the timber still intact.

Obviously there were enormous difficulties in recovering the boats – they were under water and had been so for a thousand years, the timber was incredibly delicate and could easily disintegrate if allowed to dry, and there were thousands of pieces lying around that needed to be numbered and classified in three dimensions so the entire scene could be recreated exactly.

The way they proceeded was to build a coffer dam around the boats, slowly drain the water, while at the same time keeping it wet through spraying, then proceed with the recovery.

Once recovered, instead of letting the wood dry out, archeologists sprayed it with a form of large-molecule polyethelene glycol (PEG 4000), which impregnates the wood, allowing it to be displayed in the air.

The coffer dam

Remains of a Viking longboat

Then they studied each of the ships and built frames as accurately as they could to support the wood they had found.  All five of these ships are in the museum.

Skuldelev 1 was a cargo ship about 16 metres long and 5 metres wide, displacing 21 tons.  It is 60% preserved.  Using principles of dendrochronology and the location of tree species, it is pretty certain that it was built in western Norway around 1030 from oak and pine.  A replica, called Ottar was built in 2000/2001.  

Remains of Skuldelev 1

Another view of the remains of Skuldelev 1

Ottar - replica of Skuldelev 1

Skuldelev 2 was an oak-built, sea-going warship, possibly of the skeid type.  It is approximately 30 metres long and 4 metres wide.  It would have had a crew of 70-80 soldiers and would have been very fast, with 60 oars and a large sail of about 110 square metres.  It is thought it was built near Dublin, Ireland, in about 1042, with wood from trees felled in a place called Glendalough.  It is 25% preserved.  The replica was built from 2000 to 2004 and called Havhingsten fra Glendalough (the Sea Stallion from Glendalough).

In 2007, the Sea Stallion, crewed by 65 men and women. returned to Dublin via the Orkneys and Shetlands, then journeyed back to Roskilde around the south of England.  You can see a short video of this epic journey at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yhwXyjVsVM and a remarkable long video (90 minutes) by the BBC at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jhnrNHk3g.  I highly recommend watching the longer one.  

Sea Stallion from Glendalough

Sea Stallion from Glendalough on sea trials

Watching these videos and given my propensity for sea sickness, I probably wouldn’t have been a Viking marauder.

Skuldelev 3 was a cargo ship, 14 metres long and 3 metres wide, possibly of the Byrding type.  It is made from oak and was constructed in Denmark.  It would have been ideal for shorter journeys around Denmark.  It was about 75% preserved.  The reproduction was completed in 1984 and called the Roar Ege.

Skuldelev 3 remains

Inside the Skuldelev 3

Skuldelev 3 at sail

Skuldelev 5 was a smaller warship, possibly of the Snekke type.  It was built of Danish oak, ash, and pine, partly by reusing timber from other ships.  It was about 17 metres long, 2.5 metres wide, and had a draught of only 0.6 metres, which made it almost amphibious.  It could move through extremely shallow water and be easily pulled ashore.  It had 13 pairs of oars and carried 30 fighting men.  It was found about 50% preserved.  Two replicas have been built:  the Helge Ask by the museum, and the Sebbe Als  by a private company. 

Skuldelev 5 replica Sebbe Als at sail

Skuldelev 6 was a combined fishing cargo vessel, about 12 metres long, 2.5 metres wide, and 0.5 metres draught.  It was about 70% preserved.  A replica, Kraka Fyr, is on view at the museum.

Kraka Fyr

What made the museum even more fascinating was that the replicas of all of the boats were made using the same tools and techniques as would have been used when the boats were originally built.  The museum is not only a ship museum, but also a ship-making museum, with sections making rope, sails, and so on.

Boat being built Viking style

But wait, there’s more!

All of the Skuldelev boats are displayed in a custom-built museum on the shores of the Roskilde Fjord.  It is truly stunning.

In 1997, construction started on a harbour next to the museum for the various replicas and other traditionally-built boats.  (Perhaps we should suggest that one be named the Rra Kubu.)  During the construction, nine other Viking boats were found, including the largest longboat ever found – it would have been 37 metres long (about 125 feet) – twice the length of Columbus’s Santa Maria.  Historians speculate that due to its immense size it could have been built for Cnut the Great (commonly known as King Canute).

Keel of longest longboat

The preservation of the timbers from these boats has taken years and employed more advanced techniques than those used on the Skuldelev boats.  Here’s a brief description of how they did it, taken from the informative Donsmaps website (http://www.donsmaps.com/viking1.html).

For the Roskilde ships, PEG 2000, a lower molecular weight form of the preserving agent was used, which penetrated the wood better. It acted as a stabilising agent, and acts as a cryoprotector during the freezing stage, when the wood is dried using a vacuum freeze drying process. The concentration was increased from 10% to 40% over a period of three years or more. The final impregnation was at 95% at 60° C or at 50% at 20° C depending on the degradation pattern. The drying period depended on the thickness of the objects and lasted from a few months to more than half a year. 

The Danish team of conservators and technicians, led by Kristiane Straetkvern, have been responsible for the conservation and analysis of the surviving timbers of Roskilde 6 (approx. 20% survives of the original ship).

Restoring the great longboat

 The pieces need to be put into moulds in order to obtain the correct shape. At the time of excavation, complete and thorough 3D measurements of all the pieces was undertaken, making this possible. The moulds and wood were placed in the vacuum freeze-dryer and frozen to about -30° C. The ice is then sublimed by vacuum freeze-drying, which takes from 4 to 6 months, depending on the thickness of the objects. 

After conservation, the planks were dry, but not shaped to fit into the reconstructed ship. Moulds for each plank were prepared, and the dry, full PEG impregnated plank was placed on the mould and heated to 60° C in a humid chamber for several hours until the PEG melted and the wood became flexible. While still warm, the plank in the mould was given the correct curvature, fragments were connected with toothpicks or thin wooden and metal sticks and the wood left to cool and solidify. The plank was lifted to the supporting frame and mounted. 

Walking around the dock and seeing the replicas was an amazing experience.  I was totally gobsmacked by the museum and what they do.

Put it on your to-do list.

Stan – Thursday

Acknowledgements:  I have used materials and photos from Don’s Maps (http://www.donsmaps.com/viking1.html) and from the English version of the museum website (http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/). 

The museum also has a diorama of a hypothetical raid on Roskilde by a Norwegian Viking fleet.  It was in anticipation of such a raid that the barriers at Skuldelev were put in place.  The diorama is replicated on the Don’s Maps Viking website and very much worth reading.

Boy in the Suitcase

Here's a tip of the chapeau to Lene Kaaberboel and Agnete Friis the co- authors of the amazing Boy in the Suitcase that is published today. Congratulations Lene and Agnete! We met on the SOHO bowling team at Bouchercon. Lene and Agnete hail from Denmark and this, the first of the Nina Borg novels now in English, pulls you and doesn't let gol
They graciously accepted MIE's offer to tell us about Denmark. Enjoy, Cara

There was a celebrity birthday in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. Some call the birthday girl a social experiment, some consider her a tired old junkie who should have been euthanized a long time ago, others are charmed and drawn by her wit, her style, her creativity, and her charm. Countless artists, musicians, actors, and writers have celebrated her. Visitors come from around the globe. To the police she has become a regular training partner, to the politicians, mostly a head-ache. And then there are those who simply call her home.
Christiania has just turned 40. It was in 1971, on September the 26th, that a group of unauthorized civilians broke through the fence of the abandoned military barracks and training grounds spread alongside Copenhagen’s century-old fortifications. Basically, they are still there. The area stretches for miles along both sides of the former city moat, surprisingly rural in places, with muddy gravel paths and lots of unkempt greenery, a village inside a city, and a law onto itself. When you leave Christiania, the sign above the gate says: “You are now entering the EU”. And they mean it. The Christianites call their neighborhood a “free town”, and it is often referred to simply as The Town. They do not consider themselves a regular and regularized part of Danish society; instead, they stubbornly claim the right to be different.


We decided to visit on a windy afternoon a few weeks after the big day. It is the week of the fall break, and there are plenty of tourists strolling through the gates – mostly younger people, but also quite a few families and middle-aged couples. Christiania has become one of the sights. There are cafes, restaurants and craft shops, open workshops like the Women’s Forge (while the smiths are still women, they now employ a few men for the rough work … ) and an art museum. If you want to buy a stylish purse made from old bicycle tires, this is the place …



At Spiseloppen, one of Christiania’s oldest restaurants, the food is good, plentiful, and reasonably priced, which means that the atmosphere is generally lively. It’s run by a coop, and they pay rent, VAT and taxes ”just like everybody else”, as they pointedly remark. NOMA it is not, and restaurant critics sometimes remark unfavorably on a somewhat accidental meeting of ingredients, but it’s a popular place.

However, there is no doubt that the Christiania locality most often in the news and most prominent in most people’s mind, is the alley and square which the Christianites have tried to rename the Green District, but which in the public mind retains its old name: Pusher Street.
The birthday was celebrated with concerts and exhibitions, cake and good food, speeches and songs – and probably quite a few joints. The fairly open cannabis trade attracts its own kind of tourists. The Christianites themselves cracked down on the hard stuff back in the late seventies and evicted both users and dealers, a no-tolerance policy they still maintain. But although the buying and selling of cannabis sativa is illegal in Denmark, the Christianites have not banned it, or applied their own measures of prevention.

There is a large sign stating the Christianite rules for the Green District, posted in English to make sure the fairly cosmopolitan crowd understands: “We have three rules in The Green District. Have fun, don’t take photographs, and don’t run.” The reason for the “don’t run” rule is that running creates panic and disturbance because dealers and customers alike will assume there is a raid in progress. We would have liked to take a picture of the sign for you, but …….


As we walk past the deceptively flea-market like booths the first time, a longish line of tray tables displays a variety of neatly labeled resinous lumps, (if you really want to see it, just google “Christiania” and “hash”) and it’s obvious from the smell that the wares are being liberally sampled. Stand still and breathe deeply for a while, and you could probably get a buzz from the atmosphere alone. When we return an hour later, after a stroll through the more rural parts, not a single dealer is in sight. They seem to have vanished completely, presumably in response to their own particular early warning system.
Would you raise a child here, in an area that holds the unofficial national record for Most Frequent Police Raids in an Urban Area? In a neighborhood where hot running water is a bit optional, and very little is up to code, unless you count the codes used by the tradesmen of the Green District, a.k.a. Pusher Street? Most people would probably answer that question with a horrified “No!” Yet The Town looks after its children – there are four different day care centers, a children’s theater, a small riding school, and a youth club. The children have a say in the running of things, just like everyone else. In many ways, being a child here is like growing up in a village. And if nothing else, it certainly teaches you that people come in a lot of varieties, and that a cell phone is not a requirement for happiness.


Christiania has a number of cottage industries, but the most successful has to be Christiania Bikes. They are everywhere – and not just around The Town. The Christiania Bike is the cyclist’s answer to the pickup truck. They can be used to transport just about everything – from children and daily shopping to IKEA furniture. They, or the various look-alikes from later competitors, have not only become part of the daily commuting traffic in Copenhagen’s busy bicycles lanes, they are also important icons if you want to signal cool green values like sustainability and an active life style. When the recently appointed ministers in the new government went to meet the Queen for the first time, several of them rode in on Christiania-type Bikes. And the guy in the first picture on the website below is the Danish crown prince, Frederik, taking his son, young prince Christian, to kindergarten.
http://christianiacykel12.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/materialer-modeller-og-priser-pa-en-christiania-cykel/

Architecture around here is haphazard and anarchistic. Today, Christiania is owned by a foundation to which all of the inhabitants contribute exactly the same amount every month, whether they inhabit 8 square meters of self-constructed shack with outdoor shower and outhouse, or one of the spacious, newly renovated apartments in the old military headquarters. Once you’ve been approved and issued a citizen’s license (a camel-and-keyhole proposition, as tight as everything else is loose), freedom is just about the only rule. Want to live in a treehouse, a teepee, or a viking cottage? Christiania has seen it all. This, more than almost anything else, is what provokes and intrigues suburbian tourists. Somehow, they can’t help wondering what the place could look like if only someone did it up a little bit. And yes, some Christianites are doing that, too. Insulation, double glazing, and a few tasteful Danish Modern classics. But they do it quietly, because out here, that’s the sort of behaviour that will have the neighbours frowning. Old hippies never die, they just redecorate.


We passed the remains of a memorial on our way out. A ragged collection of soggy flowers, a few cards. Someone who lived and died here, with the ashes presumably now scattered under the calm, green surface below the banks. Living here is a life choice. This is not just a neighbourhood, but most definitely a way of life – and death.

We take our leave of the birthday girl. She’s looking little worn, to be sure. A little scarred. Illusions not quite intact. Happy birthday, all the same – we, at least, are glad to see that she is still here.


Agnete and Lene - Tuesday from Denmark