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Roskilde

Our last day in Denmark was spent in honor of our Viking heritage—and just about all of us have a Viking heritage if we can believe the Danes.  We took the easy thirty-minute train trip to Roskilde to visit the Viking Ship Museum.  Roskilde sits on a long fjord west of Copenhagen, and in Viking times was the capital of what came to be Denmark.  Around a thousand years ago, enemy attacks forced Roskilde’s defenders to sink five ships in the mouth of the fjord to block the channel.  When the museum was established, the ships were excavated and painstakingly preserved to be put on display.  They also serve as the basis of the many reconstructions that sit at anchor at the pier, sea-worthy representations of a lifestyle long gone.

The largest of the reconstructions, a thirty-foot longboat similar to the war ships used by Viking raiders attacking the British Isles hundreds of years ago, sailed to Dublin and back with a crew of 65 in 2007 and 2008.

Not to be outdone, Graeme and I (and two other brave tourists) crewed our own reproduction of a Viking boat on an outing into the Roskilde fjord.  Unfortunately, the size of the boat depends on the size of your crew, so our excursion was taken in the Trolle, a small fishing skiff.  Not quite what I had in mind when I planned a sail on a Viking ship.  We made up for it by donning Viking helmets and weaponry and posing for pictures in the museum later.