Denmark 2001

Rothskilde

An old wooden windmill, probably in this stile since the days of the Vikings

At Rothskilde one can see that little has changed in the way of wooden ships since the age of the Vikings. In the background you can see the side of the museum and the impressive longboat under construction.

A model of a Viking vessel in the museum shows the similarity and traditions of boat construction, then and now

A scientist is involved in building an exact, full-scale replica of one of the longboats, using the same tools and methods that the Viking ship builders once used around a thousand years earlier.

A progress shot taken at least a year after I was at Rothskilde of the same long-boat replica

This is a picture taken from a 2010 Viking ship meet at Haithabu, Germany, and depicts the ship from Rothskilde, that I saw under construction here in 2001

A number of the ships that had been intentially sunk in the bay to form a barrier to other advancing Vikings during a territorial war

An exact scale model of one of the ships that had been found in the bay. Identical to the one at Haithabu, just a bit south of here in Germany, near Luebeck. This one had seat benches, They did not all have those. I many the Vikings sat on their sea-chest, that also contained their belongings. The mastfish anchors the mast on deck.

The lone arrow at the upper left points at North America, where we know the Vikings arrived at some time near the end of their history. They also went all along the west coast of the Caspian Sea, (green) and I was told when I was in Baku, Azjerbajan, that the Vikings would bring blond and red-hared slaves to the Arab lands. Much of their wealth was acquired through the slave trade. The red area in England is around York, where you can visit the remains of an old Viking village. York was once the capital of the Viking kingdom in England.