Roskilde ships
Five Viking boats were found at Roskilde in the 1960s.
In the 1960s the remains of five Viking ships were found at Skuldelev in the Roskilde Fjord, Denmark. This find revealed an enormous amount about the techniques of Viking ship building. The ships dated to the 11th century and appeared to have been deliberately sunk, to make a blockade in the fjord. They ranged from a small warship to a deep-sea trading ship.
The Skuldelev ships were clinker built - with planks which overlap one another - a characteristic of Viking shipbuilding. They all had a single mast, and double-ended hulls with curved stems. Analysis of the planks showed that the wood used ranged from Norwegian pine to oak from Ireland. The planks of wood from these ships were preserved and eventually reconstructed in the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum. To learn more about Viking ship building the museum has since built a replica of the small warship, known as Skuldelev 5, using Viking techniques. Following on from this success they are now attempting to build a replica of Skuldelev 2, a 30-metre-long warship.
The remains of a Viking ship found at Roskilde
In the mid-90s, an extension to the museum was built specifically to house these reconstructed Viking ships. It was during the building works for this extension that a whole new excavation began. In the autumn of 1996 the builders encountered ship parts in the soil. Further excavation revealed nine ships. Some of these ships are from the middle ages, but one is certainly a Viking warship. Known as Roskilde 6 it measured some 36m in length - the longest Viking ship ever discovered. The trees used to make the ship were dated using dendrochronology, showing the ship to have been made sometime around AD 1,025. Today the timbers are also going through a lengthy process of conservation, to ensure these ships can join the Skuldelev ships as historical records of the Viking period.
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Published: 2001-10-01
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