Roskilde - a day at the museum: Camping with a view of the Roskilde Fjord
We spent a glorious day at the Viking Ships Museum. What an incredible facility - you get to see 5 original ships that have been restored and rebuilt. The restoration was a painstaking labour of love for the archaeologists. They called the thousands of pieces of the 5 ships, the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle. The challenges they faced in preserving wood that had been in saltwater for over a thousand years required a process whereby they sprayed and soaked the wood for days with a substance that permeated the wood and replaced the water. As well, they successfully retained the shape of the pieces (except for one) so that they could fit the boats back together again. The Museum is very much a living museum with ship builders building replicas of the ships, workers making masts, rope, blacksmiths, etc. All are working in the traditional Viking way using honouring traditional techniques and the type of materials. This is a hands on interactive museum with much to see and do. We had planned to be here for a few hours, but that wasn't possible - so we decided to camp across the fjord at a campground and head off tomorrow.
Barry was really looking forward to returning here as he had been here with his parents on a cycling trip 49 years ago, a year after the Museum first opened. In our home we have a very heavy copper replica of a viking ship that he carried on his bike during their tour.
There were five ships found in the harbour and restored. At the time, these ships had been sunk as a defense strategy, closing off one of the channels to Roskilde. This ship is a smaller merchant ship that could hold several tons of cargo and required only 4 people to sail it. The piece on the bow is not original - that piece has been saved but its shape became a bit distorted in the restoration.
The piece of the bow that doesn't fit. Our guide explained that the Danish restoration is exceptional in that they didn't change any shapes or alter pieces to make them fit. They honoured the ship building technique of the Vikings. In Norway, years earlier, a restoration was done and pieces were adjusted to fit. The problem with this is that when they built replicas, the formula was wrong and the new ships sank.
An English tour guide who has a Bachelor's degree from Oxford and is doing her Masters at Copenhagen University in Medieval History. Her humour and insights helped us to understand the scope of the achievement of the restoration.
