Terps, borgs and the pink granite coast: In search of Vikings

We took the long Store Baelt Bridge from the island of Funen to reach the island of Zeeland. We must have gone by ferry last time we came to Denmark, though neither of us remembers it, as this bridge has only been opened since 1998.

In 950AD Gorm's son, Harald 1, or Bluetooth as he was called, would have sailed the same expanse of water with nearly a hundred oarsmen in one of his graceful Viking ships, back and forward to Roskilde the heart of his empire. Roskilde was where he was buried. His body is said to lie at the base of one of the altar columns in the Roskilde Domkirke with many of the other Danish kings and queens who ruled from here.

Harold's ships would have had a graceful keel made of strong oak and long rows of overlapping strakes forming the hull caulked together with wool and tar. This finely fluted hull would have been reinforced with ribs on the inside and strengthened with stringers and floorboards rubbed shiny with sea brine on the outside. Atop Harald would fly a large square sail of sheep's wool to catch the best winds wherever he wanted to sail: whether to trade or to raid. Often the sail would cost more than the boat build.

Vikings were extraordinary seamen. They roamed the waterways for hundreds of years stretching from the seas of Eastern Europe far across to the North America waters where they regularly traded for bone and skins.

Actual boats, that the Vikings have designed, built and rowed, have been successfully dug from watery graves, rescued and displayed at the Viking Museum here in Roskilde where Harald reigned.

We were so impressed with this the first time we visited that we spent another sunny afternoon here on the Roskilde waterfront, enjoying the exhibits. Amazing what they have found buried in the peaty preservative waters of the Nordic seas: even an entire boat builder's chest filled with axes, knives, chisels--all the equipment any reputable Viking boat builder would need in order to construct a boat hewn from local timbers.

From these and the marks on the boats that have survived, museum archaeologists have built their own tools and fashioned their own boats using similar tools of trade as the Vikings used. Their boats have become exhibits here and in other museums around the world; they also build for private buyers who fancy a boat like a Viking built.

I think Harald would have enjoyed all this retrieval and exhibition: being a man with a such a strong sense of history himself: he would have appreciated the sensibility of it in others.