One morning as I walked the dog, a ship had arrived overnight. At the pier next to the scenic viewpoint of the bridge that has brought us to Langeland, Denmark, a wooden ship in bright blue and yellow colours was moored. The grinning dragon in the stern left no doubt: This was a viking ship.
A young man appeared from under a tent midships and I stroke up a conversation. This was a replica of the Ladby Ship, a buried viking ship unearthed some 100 years ago near Kerteminde, Fyn. With the help of craftsmen from the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, a team of volunteers had built a replica of the 21.5 meter viking ship. They were now testing the ship on a summer cruise.
I only vaguely recall visiting the Viking Museum Ladby as a kid so I decided to take a detour on our drive home to visit the museum.
The Ladby Ship
The ship was discovered in 1935 as a local farmer found what he believed was an iron spear tip when he plowed his field. Farmed for centuries, the fertile hills next to the fjord were known for revealing occasional bone fragments and grave gifts. This time as the team of amateur archeologists started excavating, they uncovered a line of iron nails. At some point, one of them realised, could this be a ship? And indeed, buried under the hill lay a complete viking ship, the first to be discovered in modern times and hard evidence of Denmark’s viking past.
The dig uncovered 2000 iron nails, an impressive iron anchor with chain, and skeletons of dogs and horses. No wood remain of the ship only the outlines pressed into the soil. Of the viking buried with his ship and favourite companions, only few bone fragments remain. A few years after he was laid to rest in the mound, someone dug into the hill and removed the decomposed remains but leaving the grave gifts behind. Perhaps to give him a Christian burial elsewhere, perhaps his enemies to desecrate his bones. We will never know.
As the ship was too difficult to move back then, a museum was built around the site. The ship was enclosed in a glass cage and a hill was restored over a concrete shell. Visitors today can enter the burial mound and see the ship preserved as the archeologists left it back in 1935.
The museum today
In the nearby museum building, you can explore a replica of the ship as imagined at the time of the burial in 925-930 AD. The story of the burial is told in an impressive tapestry in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry, a six year project by local volunteers. When not raiding foreign shores touring nearby ports, the working replica ship seating 32 rowers lays on display at a pier.
For me the most impressive moment of the visit was to stand on top of the reconstructed burial mound and take in the nearby landscape. The view of the fjord with the small town of Kerteminde in the distance guarding the narrow opening to the sea. The imposing hilltop across the water where the viking chieftain laid to rest in the mound may have had his stronghold. The rolling cornfields soon ripe for harvesting.
Not hard to imagine how these fertile lands and well protected shallow waters would have made a magnificent home for a viking chieftain.
Under construction is a viking village and scenic picnic grounds making the Ladby Ship Museum a good choice for a scenic detour as you drive across Fyn during the summer. Take the exit north from the freeway in Nyborg towards Kerteminde and enjoy also the beautiful landscape as you drive the 20 km to the museum.
