We did not actually go into Copenhagen today we’ve been there before and it’s a great city but we hate to repeat ourselves if possible.
We instead, went out to the city of Roskilde, about 45 minutes from Copenhagen. Roskilde is the home of the Viking Ship Museum. The tour was also supposed to include a visit to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Roskilde Cathedral. However, there’s a funeral today so we can’t go in. Really this is no loss to us, we’ve seen the inside of plenty of cathedrals and frankly Lutheran ones are not that exciting inside – no disrespect intended.
The good news was, the tour guide had the time to take us along the backroads to Roskilde and we got to see some charming little villages. We stopped in one to look around and we liked this far better than another cathedral. Later on we got to see the former royal stables in Roskilde.
The Viking Ship Museum was founded after the discovery of five Viking ships in the local waters in the 1950’s. The ships were purposely placed, or intentionally sunk to block all but the most difficult sea transit to the city. By strategically placing these blockades they forced their enemies past encampments that would send a warning down to the city in the event of an attack.
Archeologists built a caisson around the area where the ships were and painstakingly removed the timbers one by one. Once removed they worked to preserve them but this isn’t as easy as letting the wood dry out. All the pieces were placed in a water tank and a glycerin compound was slowly added to the water. Overtime the glycerin replaces the water in the wood and hardens allowing them to be handled and displayed. For some of the bigger pieces it took over a year.
The museum then built metal frames for the boats, using the wood where it was available to give an overall picture of the vessel. As you can see, some had more wood recovered then others. They were able to recover some of the original wooden pegs.
In addition to restoring the boats, they also built replicas that are used both for display and for actual cruising. There were several around, both in and out of the water. This was the largest one.
The Vikings were not just warriors marauding about the countryside as they are often depicted. Most were farmers and settlers. However, over the years the name Viking only gets applied to the war like members. Last year we saw where the Viking settlements were in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland.
The museum is still working to preserve new finds even today. There was one recently found just outside Copenhagen. Ordinarily, a wreck is left at the bottom where it was found but in this case the channel is going to be widened so the wreck would be demolished. They are using the same preservation techniques on this vessel.
The tour guide we had today was great. One of the best, if not THE best ones we’ve had for the last month. She was so enthusiastic about all the topics presented from the Vikings to living in Denmark.
She noted that the Danes will adopt English words for things, like ambulance. They don’t feel the need to make up a Danish word for it, unlike the Norwegians who have to come up with their own word for everything (a dig at the neighbors).
She also noted that the Danes will adopt traditions from other countries as well. Within the last 20 years Denmark has adopted Halloween and trick or treating. She told us years ago kids came to her house for the first time, but her husband didn’t know anything about it and was a little freaked out.
The weather was not great today, pretty cold actually. The air temperature was in the high 50’s but the wind was really strong and of course we had rain in the afternoon.
We did have a little bit of excitement at the end of the day. Just a few minutes before the ‘all aboard’ time a call went out asking two couples to check in with guest services. This is done when the ship realizes they have no record of the people being on board but assume it might be a glitch with their cards.
Later, the Captain came on and said two couples are not back from the city and they don’t know where they are but they have to leave at a certain time whether they showed up or not. What the ship personnel do in these cases is go through the passengers’ safe to get their passports (assuming they didn’t take them ashore) and then leave them with the port agent so the folks can get to the next port and meet the ship.
In this case the two couples did eventually show and we left 45 minutes late. They came on a public bus (! Didn’t they think a cab would be better!). They were lucky, the ship doesn’t have to wait for people. Maybe we’ll get the scoop from other passengers tomorrow about what happened.
So tomorrow is packing day. We’ll have to have our suitcases out in the hallway by midnight tomorrow. It’s a sea day so there will be no report tomorrow.
On Saturday we disembark. Our flight is actually on Sunday so we’re staying over at the airport before flying home. We’ll be at the Hilton again. This wasn’t our original plan, our flight on Saturday was changed from the afternoon to mid-morning. There is no way we could guarantee getting to the airport by that time so we had to move it to the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment