We leave our bikes in the shed today and walk Roskilde. We see the Museum of Contemporary Art – weird. We see Ragnarock, a rock and roll museum – not really worth the walk to get there. We see the Roskilde Museum – well done museum but we cruise it as we only have 15 minutes before it closes.
The highlight and best part of the day happens first. The Viking Ship Museum. We arrive down by the water in time for the 11am sailing on a replica of a Viking fishing boat.
The Viking boat we sailed.
There are 14 guests and 2 instructors. We each have to row and some of the rowers also help set the sail and then jibe. We are all very cooperative and help each other get our long oars into position. Rowing is interesting as some people understand to time strokes with the front rower and some (the lady behind me) just do not grasp it. We keep hitting oars as her rowing is totally out of sync with the rest of us.
Managing the sail in the wind is hard for us inexperienced folk, but the instructor is very calm and we do not overturn the boat. I think his helper guy does a lot that we don’t see in order to keep us on track.
On a Viking ship
We sail the inner harbour out into Roskilde Fjord and then row back in. It isn’t too hard although another lady thought it was. Maybe I’m not working hard enough! You know enjoying the experience too much!
After we moor, we wander the museum watching some fellows construct another replica boat. It is a long project but they seem content shaping the wood by hand (mostly, we did see a band saw) to form the structure.
Next we see five Viking ships that were found and excavated out of the Roskilde Fjord in 1962. The ships date back to about the 11th century, the end of the Viking Age. They are huge ships, some were war ships and some merchant type ships. It is amazing to see the actual timbers that were used to build the boats.
Viking boat we sailed.
A great day seeing weird art, the history of rock music and especially Viking Ships. Tomorrow Copenhagen!